What a way to get into the Wall Street Journal.

   
The following is probably the only context whereby a PR-type like myself -- whose signature is to write prolifically while working behind the scenes -- will ever see his name in any publication, let alone the Wall Street Journal. The following was published on Thursday, May 28, 2009, on the Letters Page of the WSJ:

WALL STREET JOURNAL – OPINION – LETTERS
Dry the Starting Tear For This Mortgagee

James Hagerty's excellent review of Edmund Andrews's book "Busted" ("Nice House, Big Loan," Bookshelf, May 26) underlines the small window of shelf relevance of titles trying to "cash in" on a recession that's still being referred to in the present tense.

Mr. Andrews trivializes his woes with the home loan meltdown by setting them against a backdrop of a mildly lurid midlife crisis. Mr. Hagerty correctly notes that, contrary to Mr. Andrews's assertions, most economists and housing analysts did, in fact, buy into generations of accepted thinking about how real-estate markets work, which makes all the more puzzling Mr. Andrews's alternating bouts of inward-directed self-loathing and outward-directed rage. Amid this recession, I want instructive and cautionary insiders' tales, not confessionals.

David Kusumoto
San Diego

(Original material © 2009 by David Kusumoto.)