Hate Mail

Sloane Vega has written the Sharp Edges column at Meridian Magazine for three years — culture criticism, earnest and precise, bylined under her own name. Six months ago, editor-in-chief Marcus Webb approached her about an anonymous column series: Sharp Edges (SE) in formal debate with The Gadfly (TG), another anonymous Meridian columnist whose contrarian cultural criticism has been generating reader mail. Neither columnist knows who the other is. Neither knows they sit six feet apart. Sloane has spent fourteen months in organized professional avoidance with Beck Callahan, Meridian's features writer, since a staff meeting where he said her work was "too earnest" and she called his "shallow." They have not spoken directly since March. The Correspondence — a formal twelve-week SE/TG exchange — launches in October. The columns immediately generate outsized readership. The argument is real: Sloane-as-SE argues that criticism requires positions, earnestness, stakes. Beck-as-The-Gadfly argues for the critical remove, the precision of the outside view, the value of the question over the answer.