Madam, - Fiona McCann's timely article "Misery Lit - How painful lives became a publishing sensation" (Life Features, November 7th) made me laugh and cry, as misery lit should.
Let's have no more of misery-lit writers waffling about how they wrote the book for themselves and not for the readers. It's a fad, a money-maker. I don't blame writers, agents or the publishers for promoting this "Je pleure et j'écris" school. I blame the critics who don't call this money-spinner what it is.
The truly great writers and novelists often transmuted personal difficulties into high art through fiction; just as often, they didn't use their personal troubles at all, and only through their biographers have we learned anything of them. If I want to read confessions I'll go to St Augustine. - Yours, etc,
FRED JOHNSTON, Circular Road, Galway.