James Wolcott: Ratfink Writes New Book

Such gorgeous weather we've been enjoying in New York. Good-to-be-alive weather, driving the blues away. The news has also cooperated with this morale lift. The Yankees went down in shabby defeat in the first round of the playoffs, igniting a welter of recriminations, which is always fun. The Mets advanced, inspiring Proustian memories of Mookie Wilson. The Eagles put a clamp on the Cowboys and T.O.'s fat mouth. The poll numbers for the midterms have been looking rather chipper. It would take a lot to spoil the splendor of this Indian summer interlude.

Then I opened my mail yesterday.

I got a lot of mail, much of it forwarded in boxes and bags from Vanity Fair. As a vital node in the cultural nexus of the universe, I'm understandably on the receiving end of a ton of personal mail, press releases, book galleys, preview DVDs, and similar various assorted crap. I sort through the mounting debris quickly, efficiently, tearing open envelopes and cardboard casings with my rugged Chuck Norris hands as the cats sneeze from the envelope-pad fluff. Most of the mail is mundane, routine. But every once in a while I receive something that gives me pause, spurs a reaction.

As when yesterday I received the galley of Dinesh D'Souza's new book from Doubleday, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, to be published in January 2007.