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Hell Hath No Fury
Aired February 13, 2004 - 15:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN CNN ANCHOR: Well, when it was time to walk away from love, Nancy Sinatra sang the perfect anthem for it. But while a lot of lovers get the boot, some also get a beating from a poison pen in the form of a "Dear John" letter. Now, you wouldn't think people would want to hang onto these brutal goodbyes, but apparently they have.
And writer/editor Anna Holmes has collected some classic kiss- offs in her book "Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters From the End of the Affair." She joins us from our New York studio to give us the dish on dumps.
Hi there, Anna.
ANNA HOLMES, EDITOR, "HELL HATH NO FURY": Hi. How are you?
LIN: I'm fine.
You know, I was reading your book last night and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because, you know, clearly, these are women in crises. And they found so many different ways to say, get the heck out of my life or I'm glad you're gone or you broke my heart. And before we actually even talk about it, we really have to give the viewers a taste of what you found.
And I want to share one. The first one that we have here is actually a classic. This is two writers talking to each other, Rebecca West to H.G. Wells. And she writes: "During the next few days I shall either put a bullet through my head or commit something more shattering to myself than death. At any rate, I shall be quite a different person. I refuse to be cheated out of my deathbed scene. I always knew that you would hurt me to death some day, but I hoped to choose the time and place."
Oh, oh, cutting words.
HOLMES: That hurts.
LIN: How did you get these letters?
HOLMES: The older letters, the historical ones, a lot of them had been published in previously published collections of women's letters. For example, an anthology of the letters of Virginia Woolf or letters from queens of England.
But the more modern letters, the letters written by women who are still alive, I mostly got them via the Internet. I put out lots of authors' queries all over the place. And women told other women, who told other women, and they e-mailed me.
LIN: Right.
This one. OK, I did not know that this was a 16-year-old girl writing to her married lover. She writes -- this is Jessica to Scott: "I hope you realize that you lost the best thing that you ever had, me. In fact, out of the two of us, you make me seem god-like. You are like four steps below me on the food chain. No one makes Mac and Cheese quite like I do or makes chocolate milk better. No one will ever listen to you yap about nothing like I did."
And it got better and better. This girl was angry. But was it Scott, the married man, who gave up the letter to you?
HOLMES: No, it was Jessica. Jessica, I think, saw a posting I put on a Web site. And she was 18 when she sent it to me. She'd written it when she was 16. And I immediately fell in love with it because of the references to the mac and cheese. We all know those little things that you have in a relationship that only you know and he knows.
(CROSSTALK)
LIN: What did you learn, though? What did you about women in general and how they handle a breakup vs. maybe what you know about men?
HOLMES: The way that women handle a breakup, it really depends on the type of breakup. And these letters range from women who are doing the cheating writing to a man, to women who've been cheated on, people who just fell out of love. Some are angry letters. There's a whole chapter of angry letters.
LIN: Right.
HOLMES: But I'd say the majority of them are sentimental and melancholy.
LIN: Right.
And you speak of -- since we are in wartime here, I want to share this letter. We have it as No. 5. It's from Lois. It's a letter written during World War II from Lois to Harry: "Honey, if you ever intended to marry me, I wished you would have done so before you left, although we had known each other such a short time. You see, Harry, darling, I'm afraid it's too late now, as I am already married. I didn't mean to tell you while you were over there, but I didn't want you to think I had just stopped writing."
Geez, don't do me any favors. I hope he wasn't at the Battle of the Bulge.
HOLMES: The "Dear John" letters are the most poignant to me, because they're usually sent to very, very young guys, 18, 19-year-old guys who are serving our country abroad. And they have no control over what's going on with their relationship and no way to really fight for the woman back, because they're so far away.
LIN: Right, right, and fighting for their own lives.
Let's share a last one from Betsy to Ben. Talk about honesty after 9/11. She writes: "I did something I never thought I was capable of to someone I love so deeply. I cheated on you, Ben. I am so sorry. I don't know how I got so caught up. The worst part of the whole thing is that I don't regret what I did. I do regret that I hurt you and that things will never be the same between us."
You would think that she -- it's like a confessional from this woman.
HOLMES: Yes, I think that that's the purpose of these letters, in many cases, is, they're confessional, cathartic pieces of writing that aren't always sent to the recipients. They're often just written just to get it off one's chest.
LIN: Anna, thank you very much for sharing from the heart, from many hearts, and homes.
HOLMES: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired February 13, 2004 - 15:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN CNN ANCHOR: Well, when it was time to walk away from love, Nancy Sinatra sang the perfect anthem for it. But while a lot of lovers get the boot, some also get a beating from a poison pen in the form of a "Dear John" letter. Now, you wouldn't think people would want to hang onto these brutal goodbyes, but apparently they have.
And writer/editor Anna Holmes has collected some classic kiss- offs in her book "Hell Hath No Fury: Women's Letters From the End of the Affair." She joins us from our New York studio to give us the dish on dumps.
Hi there, Anna.
ANNA HOLMES, EDITOR, "HELL HATH NO FURY": Hi. How are you?
LIN: I'm fine.
You know, I was reading your book last night and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because, you know, clearly, these are women in crises. And they found so many different ways to say, get the heck out of my life or I'm glad you're gone or you broke my heart. And before we actually even talk about it, we really have to give the viewers a taste of what you found.
And I want to share one. The first one that we have here is actually a classic. This is two writers talking to each other, Rebecca West to H.G. Wells. And she writes: "During the next few days I shall either put a bullet through my head or commit something more shattering to myself than death. At any rate, I shall be quite a different person. I refuse to be cheated out of my deathbed scene. I always knew that you would hurt me to death some day, but I hoped to choose the time and place."
Oh, oh, cutting words.
HOLMES: That hurts.
LIN: How did you get these letters?
HOLMES: The older letters, the historical ones, a lot of them had been published in previously published collections of women's letters. For example, an anthology of the letters of Virginia Woolf or letters from queens of England.
But the more modern letters, the letters written by women who are still alive, I mostly got them via the Internet. I put out lots of authors' queries all over the place. And women told other women, who told other women, and they e-mailed me.
LIN: Right.
This one. OK, I did not know that this was a 16-year-old girl writing to her married lover. She writes -- this is Jessica to Scott: "I hope you realize that you lost the best thing that you ever had, me. In fact, out of the two of us, you make me seem god-like. You are like four steps below me on the food chain. No one makes Mac and Cheese quite like I do or makes chocolate milk better. No one will ever listen to you yap about nothing like I did."
And it got better and better. This girl was angry. But was it Scott, the married man, who gave up the letter to you?
HOLMES: No, it was Jessica. Jessica, I think, saw a posting I put on a Web site. And she was 18 when she sent it to me. She'd written it when she was 16. And I immediately fell in love with it because of the references to the mac and cheese. We all know those little things that you have in a relationship that only you know and he knows.
(CROSSTALK)
LIN: What did you learn, though? What did you about women in general and how they handle a breakup vs. maybe what you know about men?
HOLMES: The way that women handle a breakup, it really depends on the type of breakup. And these letters range from women who are doing the cheating writing to a man, to women who've been cheated on, people who just fell out of love. Some are angry letters. There's a whole chapter of angry letters.
LIN: Right.
HOLMES: But I'd say the majority of them are sentimental and melancholy.
LIN: Right.
And you speak of -- since we are in wartime here, I want to share this letter. We have it as No. 5. It's from Lois. It's a letter written during World War II from Lois to Harry: "Honey, if you ever intended to marry me, I wished you would have done so before you left, although we had known each other such a short time. You see, Harry, darling, I'm afraid it's too late now, as I am already married. I didn't mean to tell you while you were over there, but I didn't want you to think I had just stopped writing."
Geez, don't do me any favors. I hope he wasn't at the Battle of the Bulge.
HOLMES: The "Dear John" letters are the most poignant to me, because they're usually sent to very, very young guys, 18, 19-year-old guys who are serving our country abroad. And they have no control over what's going on with their relationship and no way to really fight for the woman back, because they're so far away.
LIN: Right, right, and fighting for their own lives.
Let's share a last one from Betsy to Ben. Talk about honesty after 9/11. She writes: "I did something I never thought I was capable of to someone I love so deeply. I cheated on you, Ben. I am so sorry. I don't know how I got so caught up. The worst part of the whole thing is that I don't regret what I did. I do regret that I hurt you and that things will never be the same between us."
You would think that she -- it's like a confessional from this woman.
HOLMES: Yes, I think that that's the purpose of these letters, in many cases, is, they're confessional, cathartic pieces of writing that aren't always sent to the recipients. They're often just written just to get it off one's chest.
LIN: Anna, thank you very much for sharing from the heart, from many hearts, and homes.
HOLMES: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
