“Writers,
not psychiatrists, are the true interpreters of the human mind and heart, and
we have been at it for a very long time.” – Florence
King
Born
in Washington, D.C. on this date in 1936, King was a longtime National Review
essayist and columnist, where her column “The Misanthrope’s
Corner” not only served up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques but also
earned her the title “The Queen of Mean.”
She wrote the column right up to her death (just one day after her 80th
birthday) in 2016.
King
started her journalism career for The Raleigh News and Observer, where
she won the North Carolina Press Woman Award for Reporting. That led to the job offer and nearly lifelong
tenure at The National Review. She also wrote a couple of
romance novels and penned Southern Ladies and Gentlemen, a humorous
"Guide to the South for Yankees.”
Her most popular book is Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady,
a semi-autobiographical work focused on, among other things, her grandmother's,
mother's, and father's construct of what it meant to “be a
lady.”
“Write clearly, succinctly and with purpose," she advised. "Writers who have nothing to say always
strain for metaphors to say it in.”
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