After several months of deliberation at the Tribune , she was offered the job, and her column debuted on July 20, The intent was clear: by putting her in Ann Landers's old space, the Tribune was using the Landers franchise to launch Dickinson to readers.
Her arrival was not without controversy. After an interview on CNN in which Dickinson promised readers a "funnier" and "more entertaining" read, Margo Howard whose syndicated column the Tribune canceled when "Ask Amy" debuted told Newsday , "Nobody compares her favorably to my mother except herself. And she didn't like that at all, and I don't blame her. Strictly speaking, they were correct. The paper was replacing the Ann Landers column.
That doesn't mean that I am any replacement for Ann Landers. But they were making this association for the readers. And you know what? It worked. It got a lot of attention. But Margo, they also canceled her column, and she hates that, and one day I expect that to happen to me, and I'll hate that. Dickinson never knows what she'll find when she walks into her small office on the fifth floor of the Tribune building each morning. Unlike Lederer, she is without assistants or a wing to herself. Hanging on a bulletin board are columns sent back to her by readers.
Another has "B. Alongside these columns is a postcard that says,. And I don't want to be afraid of the 'Horseshit' stamp, because then I'm a lost man. All I've got is my own point of view. It's just a reminder that it's going to be okay; it's something I have to go through. It's fair to say that Dickinson has a job quite unlike any other. The task of most beat reporters is to work sources, sometimes by promising them anonymity, to get them to reveal information they normally wouldn't share.
Over time that stress can wear you down, or drive you to drink. Dickinson's stress is different: her stories come to her in an overwhelming flood. She opens all her own mail, reads all her own letters. The flood of input is not limited to the mail. One day, as we sat talking in her office, Dickinson answered the phone to discover an angry reader named Florence on the other end of the line.
Florence was upset that Dickinson had used the words "safe sex" in a recent column. I can't change it, because it's already been written, but I really appreciate your point of view. Do I believe in it? Well, when I say 'safe sex,' it's just kind of terminology.
The only safe sex is no sex—is that what you mean? I understand. Okay, thanks for calling. Dickinson's column schedule works on a model that is the reverse of the New York Times crossword puzzle's: she begins with hard issues on Monday and gets lighter as the week goes on.
Sundays are reserved for spiritual matters. Unlike Lederer, Dickinson rarely answers letters that won't be published, which explains why she gets e-mails like this one:. She does not change the wording of a question, and she does not try to respond with pointed, one-paragraph responses, as Lederer did. Indeed, her answer is sometimes twice as long as the letter. A day spent reading Dickinson's letters is both a reminder of the universality of human experience and a barometer of cultural trends.
There are timeless letters from the brokenhearted, who cannot sleep, who cannot trust; from a woman with a sexless marriage whose husband seems always to be hanging out with a certain female co-worker; from the twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend of a divorced man who cannot stand the affection his ex-wife shows him. But there are also angry letters from grandmothers upset at the belly-shirts their granddaughters wear. There are e-mails from affluent and middle-income people tired of being hit up for every benefit or walk for diabetes or breast cancer.
And there are truculent responses from animal owners, to whom Dickinson has tried to explain that their pets are not human beings. And, of course, there are the crush letters. One was from a man in Florida, who told her she looked great and that they should meet for coffee and do some "mutual pleasuring.
It was signed, "Very Gaily Yours. When people write about dating, I kind of laugh along with them, because I've had my share of blind dates. So I think I come off as this quirky single woman. I don't, quite frankly, think of myself as a single mom, but it's an important part of my public persona. One afternoon, as Dickinson and I watched Dr.
Phil and ploughed through a box full of clipped, mutilated "Ask Amy" and "Dear Abby" columns, sent by a clearly troubled reader, there was a knock on the door. A Tribune writer—who wishes to remain nameless—had come up with the solution for a problem of her own, but wanted to run it by Dickinson, whom she referred to as "Ask. He had flown to Chicago for a date. That had gone well, so she had traveled to Nebraska for three or four days. That hadn't gone as well.
You just can't go from not knowing somebody at all to being around each other constantly. But in recent months, she said, she hadn't been able to stop thinking about this guy, and in recent weeks the two had gotten back in touch. She wanted to invite him to an event at the opera, but she didn't want him to stay at her place.
It wasn't that she didn't want to sleep with him—she didn't know yet whether or not she did. But she had a small apartment, and the weekend could be choked with tension. Would he be insulted, she asked "Ask," if she offered to put him up at the W Hotel? At this point Dickinson, having turned down the volume on Dr. Phil , began to establish how things should be.
Yes, the writer should invite the man to town, but she should say, "Please let me put you up at the W. It's the coolest hotel in town.
It's got the greatest, best bar, my place is super-tiny, and I'm really excited to see you. It's a really lovely gesture to make. I'm really, really excited for you. Somebody might be getting some. God willing. Perhaps Dickinson's greatest natural asset is the ability to draw people's problems out of them, even in real life—not feeding on these people as if she were drawing strength from their misery but, rather, responding to them with empathy and warmth and understanding. Naturally, over the days I spent with Dickinson I found myself starting to tell her things—especially about the previous twelve months, a year I've officially categorized as the worst of my life.
I told her how I'd left a good job and the graces of an editor I hold in my heart second only to my father in order to work for more money at a multinational corporation from which, each day, I would come home feeling battered and intellectually unchallenged and devoid of hope. Over dinner and two glasses of bourbon one night I told her about how I'd fallen in love, real love, for the first time in my adult life, with the woman I thought would be the mother of my children—only to have my heart shattered.
I told her about a friendship that had effectively ended alongside the breakup, and about … well, you know. Dickinson listened and related her own work and love experiences, making me feel better. Which I suppose is what a good advice columnist does: she shows you that you are not alone in the world, shows you that someone understands, lets you know that everyone goes batshit sometimes, and that recovering from it can lead you to expectations and views that translate to a new life, a better life.
In Dickinson's home town for Halloween weekend, I began to understand where this ability comes from. Freeville, New York, where her ancestors settled in the years after the Revolutionary War, is the kind of place Garrison Keillor deadpans about, but whose complexities Thornton Wilder truly understood.
Here she was raised, the youngest of four, on the dairy farm at the edge of the village that her father, Charles "Buck" Dickinson, tried to manage until it simply overwhelmed him. He left it and his family when Amy was twelve. Making the best of it, Dickinson's mother, Jane, sold the livestock and equipment at auction and at forty-eight became a typist at Cornell. Two deans encouraged her to enroll in the school full time and earn an undergraduate degree.
So I just don't say 'Get a life. Wouldn't that be my first choice? But I feel like I know what it means to get a life—it's a combination of bootstraps and real emotional resilience and temperament. Given what has happened to her in life, one can understand how Dickinson, a popular, stay-out-of-trouble, participate-in-everything girl in high school, might have turned into Miss Lonelyhearts, the forlorn, dispirited, and ultimately hateful advice-columnist character in the bleak novella by Nathanael West.
After meeting Anthony Mason her junior year at Georgetown, Dickinson spent most of her twenties in his shadow as he grew prominent in TV news. Dickinson followed him, first to New York and then to London, settling into life as a housewife and a mother.
Though based in London, Mason was rarely around his wife and infant daughter. By his own estimate, he told me recently, he spent days away from home one year.
In Mason ended the marriage. The divorce is something that Dickinson is "still dealing with," according to her closest friend, Kirk Read, a professor at Bates College, in Maine. If anything, Dickinson told me, her being divorced helps the column. When I write about marriage, it's an abstract concept to me. It truly is at this point. I'm much more comfortable and much more intimate with divorce. Some of the marriage questions really take much more work and thought for me, because I have to imagine what these long, long marriages are like.
Plus, constantly thinking about what needs to be done makes it difficult for me to enjoy being present in the moment. My mom was like this, so I know I get it from her! Dear Just Like: Perfectionism is often inherited, and this trait can have real, lasting and unhealthy consequences.
Did your mother hold a high-stress job similar to yours? If not, her lifestyle might have left more room for making things perfect at home. I applaud your insight concerning the impact your tendencies would have on a family. Your kids would be the first to notice how hard you are on yourself, and they could inherit the high-strung anxiety that goes along with that.
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