Yours etc., Brigadier Arthur Gormanstrop (Mrs).

Ever notice how Jane Smiley seems to appear on the NYT letters page all the time? Jack Shafer did, so he asked around, and the answer turns out to be pretty obvious.

"Depending on what's going on in the world, I send them a letter every day," Smiley says from her California home. "Some days I send two."

Not so surprising. What did shock me was the transformation in Smiley, who I haven't really seen since the late 1990s. At some point, she took a page from the post-divorce Meg Ryan handbook...