After reading the other responses of Malinowitz’s “E-Love” here, and discussing it in class, and then subsequently re-reading it, I am much less inclined to forgive this author’s unrelenting narcissism. Malinowitz’s disingenuous justifications for continuing to lie to her partner while striking up an online relationship with a stranger on the other side of the world wear thin much more quickly upon re-reading “E-Love.” As we discussed a bit in class, it is also perhaps less than honest to construct this narrative in this way, describing an unfolding romance via email like a lovestruck teenager, and then later opaquely letting it slip “casually… as if it were a peripheral detail” that she was already in a “relationship of fourteen years’ duration.” She then goes on to add: “In truth, the relationship was in its death throes, and I let it be known that there was trouble in paradise. She, for her part, mentioned casually that she was a long term loner and a smoker.” (70) To gloss over this devastating infidelity is shameful enough; to imply that such betrayal is somehow equivalent to smoking or being a solitary person is unconscionable. Malinowitz’s callous self-absorption and lack of regard for others seems without limits.
When re-reading Malinowitz, I imagined that the writer was male. For some reasons, all of the prevaricating, selfish, conniving self-justification became more stark. A similar piece written by a man would evoke a more disdainful, judgmentally critical reading almost immediately, I think. There are words to describe the kinds of guys that Malinowitz herself to be… frankly, they are profane words.
