"I've Got Some Advice For You..."

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I was ridiculously excited when I went onto The Washington Post to find they had added not one, not two, but four new advice columnists to an already stellar line up of Carolyn Hax, Ask Amy, and Miss Manners. 

 

Here’s where I out myself - I love advice columns. It’s the first place I go to in any daily, and I have to say WaPo is leading the pack. You have to appreciate a national paper that knows the news is SO exhausting, some times you just want to read about people getting dissed by their mothers-in-law or dealing with that jerk in the office who microwaves fish.

I got hooked on my habit with Ann Landers, of course. I remember both my mother and her mother had multiple yellowing clippings of Ann’s sage advice, stuffed into cookbooks, slid into drawers and pinned to the fridge with magnets. Honestly, A Kenmore without a picture of that smiling, helmet-haired woman seems a little bare.

But times, and hairstyles, have changed, so it’s extremely cool the Post is going for a young, diverse line-up of advice givers. I mean, I love Amy Dickenson (and we had a delightful lunch together at the Orange County Women’s Literary festival a few years back.) But she’s my age, and there are many more types of people in the US than middle class white ladies. 

 

Reds, do you turn to the advice page in your local paper? How about one of those online-only ones, like Dear Prudence in Slate or Ask a Manager? And if you do, can we get away with it by claiming it’s research into possible characters?

LUCY BURDETTE: I do love advice columns, of course! Though my poor advice columnist character Dr. Rebecca Butterman never managed to get the light-as-air tone that the more successful ones have adopted. And don’t tell him this, but I think the guy who does the column in the NYTimes Style section on Sunday is a little meaner than he needs to be. I think you can give people advice and gently tell them they’re acting like idiots without saying it exactly that way. 

 

Though now I suppose I have to confess…I did write to him some years ago and my question showed up in the Times. This was when I truly could not eat food with salt in it and my question had to do with whether a host should accommodate this. (It honestly wasn’t a preference but a medical condition.) He essentially told me to buck up, I probably wasn’t going to starve if I missed one meal:).

I do enjoy reading the questions and figuring out what my advice would be before I read the answers.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Totally love them. Carolyn, of course, and Miss Manners, and the brilliant Meredith Goldstein in the Boston Globe. LOVE THEM.  And The Ethicist in the Times.  OH, yes. But let me say, the other day I ..well, let me ask you.

 

Quick synopsis: Wedding attendee, daughter a friend of the bride. Wedding dinner, very fancy in a hotel. Wedding dinner also VERY elaborate and portions super-generous. After the dinner, our letter-writer asks for a doggie bag to take home the massive leftovers from their own dinner. The waiter instantly appears with a box, but their dinner tablemates, relatives of the bride, are visibly and vocally astonished and critical. 

 

In addition, the attendee’s daughter, friend of the bride, and invited, but pregnant and confined to bed, had asked her parents to bring her a piece of cake,  so they asked for that. And got it.

 

At this point, the relatives of the bride go nuts. They report the food transgressions to the bride’s parents, loudly calling the letter-writers “bumpkins” and the like.

 

In embarrassment and humiliation, the letter-writers leave their boxed food  and piece of cake and head for the door.

 

The letter writers are asking–should they apologize?

 

I will leave it to you, reds and readers.

And yes, Julia, DEFINITELY RESEARCH. 

JENN McKINLAY: Hank I think you have veered off into a delicious favorite of mine called AITA (Am I the A$$hole?) which is a forum on reddit. In this case, I have to say the snooty relations of the bride are the sphincters! Who cares if someone boxes their food? In a world where people are literally starving to death isn’t it nice that they aren’t being grossly wasteful? My middle class upbringing has spoken. LOL. 

I’m a huge fan of Carolyn Hax and remember the grown-ups talking about the columns of Ann Landers and Dear Abby - they were related weren’t they? Was there a scandal there? Anyway, I love to read all of these columns because they certainly give an author material, don’t they? 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I start the day with the columns in the Dallas Morning News over breakfast! Abby, Carolyn, and Miss Manners. I did a panel at a literary festival a few years ago with Judith Martin and she was a hoot! Funny and quite sharp, as you would expect. I wonder if there are any writers who DON’T read advice columns…although often people’s situations are so awful or bizarre that no one would believe them if you put them in a book…

I’m with Jenn on the bride’s horrible relatives. Sounds like the Bridezilla bug must have been contagious!

HALLIE EPHRON: I’m addicted, I confess, to ALL the advice columns that appear in the Boston Globe, NY Times and Washington Post. Which is to say a ton of them. They’re part of my morning exercise to read and either sigh in agreement or snort in derision. Yay Miss Manners, still terrific. And Carolyn Hax. Purveyors of so much good sense. Such fresh air in a world where craziness seems to have no bounds.

The other thing I love to read when I can find it: THE HUNT. In the NY Times. It’s about house- or apartment-hunting usually in the NYC area. I love to ride along vicariously and thank my lucky stars that I bought my house ages ago.

 

RHYS BOWEN: Here’s something you didn’t know about me: back in the nineteen nineties when the internet was young, I was the Love Guru for I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter.  Remember their big campaign with Fabio? (Although why non-butter should be sexy I’ve never understood) but I was asked to write an online romance for their new website. It was so popular that I was then asked to be their Love Guru. So for about a year I answered agony aunt questions. So many of them about a man I’ve met on the internet and I’ve fallen in love with him etc. There ended up being so many questions that I farmed some out to my daughter Anne, who turned out to be really good at this (and has proved it by becoming a psychotherapist).

 

I always felt Ann Landers was good and sensible, but I don’t make a point of reading such columns any longer. But Jenn–AITA. Hooked on that.

 

JULIA: Hands raised, all of you who didn't see Rhys as the Love Guru or that she reads Am I The A$$h@le! Dear readers, do you love advice columns as much as we do? Do you remember any particularly juicy stories? 

Advice Can Be Deadly @LucyBurdette #mystery

LUCY BURDETTE: Today I’m celebrating because the third book in my advice column mystery series is finally out as an ebook! Dr. Butterman (AKA Dr. Aster), the main character in this series, including ASKING FOR MURDER, is an advice columnist. Even though I’m a psychologist and an advice column junkie, I found that writing her columns was not so easy. After cranking out three of her books, I figured out how she would describe her approach: “Most people have a pretty good idea of where they’re already headed when they ask for advice. A wise friend simply shines a flashlight on the path.” 

But it didn’t come naturally to me, and I realize that other advice-giving professionals struggle too.

Dr. Phil, for example, is not one to stand by on the sidelines holding a flashlight. In 2006 while visiting Los Angeles for the “Sisters in Crime Goes to Hollywood” conference, I attended the filming of one of the shows in the doctor’s live studio audience. A pair of sisters who’d been estranged by boyfriend/husband issues fought like cats and dogs for the better part of their fifteen-minute segment. Even Dr. Phil, an expert on handling catfights, looked defeated by the end of the show. These women had come to Dr. Phil for help as a last resort, but darned if they were going to let him get a word in edgewise. After several attempts to expose the bones of the problem and redirect the sisters, he slumped on his barstool, chin in hand, and rolled his eyes at the audience—as if asking the question “where did I go wrong?”
 And Dr. Butterman (aka Dr. Aster) has a very young editor who always wants the columns a little more chipper than feels right to Rebecca. Here’s a little excerpt from ASKING FOR MURDER, showing how she sometimes struggled to hit the right note too:

I used the remaining minutes of my aborted lunch hour to choose a question for my advice column and rough out an answer. I’m a clinical psychologist by day, but in the off hours, I whisk on my advice columnist cloak and write the Ask Dr. Aster column for Bloom! ezine. Sometimes the column feels downright silly; other times, profound. I love it most when it evolves into a Greek chorus of my life, that I didn’t consciously intend. 

This month, my twelve-year-old (a slight exaggeration) editor, Jillian, had asked for columns that fit the category “Bloom! In spring!” In other words, no downers, no freaking stages of grief, no miserable housewives in housecoats abandoned by their freshly-vital, chemically-driven husbands. The advice should be uplifting, encouraging, bursting with new life and new possibilities. Sigh again.

“Happy people don’t ask for advice,” I told her.

“You’ll come up with something!” she chirped back. “I’ll check in with you later in the week.” (Scroll all the way to the bottom to read the column she came up with.)
   
LUCY AGAIN: I read every advice column I come across, but my favorite is Philip Galanes, who writes “Social Q’s” for the New York Times Style section every Sunday. He’s funny and sensible and pulls no punches. Dr. Aster could definitely learn from him!

Do you read advice columns? Any particular advice that has struck home?

And don’t forget, ASKING FOR MURDER is now available for Kindle. You can download it right here.

PS My favorite advice column fangirl moment? Our friend Pat Kennedy introduced me to Margo Howard, Ann Landers’s daughter, and a stellar columnist herself. She kept writing as she was reading DEADLY ADVICE, wondering if she'd sussed out the murderer: "I think it’s XXX. No it must be YYY." And so on. And here was her blurb:

A really plummy mystery, flawlessly plotted, that I especially loved because the heroine is an advice columnist – and a good one! Margo Howard
       “Dear Margo” on Yahoo! News and in 200 newspapers.
                                 (Formerly “Dear Prudence”)


Dear Dr. Aster: 

I volunteer at a local charity that fights mental illness.  I got involved because I believe in the cause, but I also hoped it might be a way to meet a nice guy with similar interests. (Isn’t that what you always recommend to your readers?)  The people on my committee are smart, caring, dedicated--and all married, except for one widower who's slightly older than me though smart and attractive. Lately the married folks take every opportunity to push us together.  There's a lot of winking and elbowing going on, and it's very embarrassing.  He's a nice guy, but there's no chemistry between us—certainly not on my side!  What can I do to stop the matchmaking?  I’d hate to ditch the committee to escape the man.
Yenta's Volunteer Victim in Vermont

Dear Yenta’s Victim:

    Gold stars are in order—I do recommend exactly the path you’ve taken. But oh dear, I had not anticipated this particular roadblock. One question: does Mr. Wonderful seem to feel the same lack of chemistry that you do? If so, it might be easy enough to enlist his help in shrugging off the well-meaning nudges. However, if he appears to have feelings for you, you’ll need another tactic. How about dropping a few not-so-subtle hints about the recent social whirl your new BOYFRIEND has swept you up in?
    And here’s one more thought: Since you signed your letter “Volunteer Victim,” don’t overlook your possible contribution to the drama that’s unfolded. Your fellow workers might be reacting to your subtly-sawing violin strings. Check to be sure you haven’t been moaning about your single status without being aware of it! If that’s the case, dost thou protest too much?
                    Keep up the good works and Happy Spring!