What is Rotten Romance?

I’ve been an art journalist for nearly 30 years, writing for ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal, among other venues, but I was recently noodling around in some old files when I came upon two chapters for a book about Internet dating written 15 years ago (my agent at the time told me, Fuhgeddabout it….too many books on that subject). I found them so sprightly, funny, and readable—one was about getting conned by an irresistible Lothario, the other about dating married men—that I realized I had a lifetime of stories about failed relationships and bad dates. They comprise an autobiography of sorts, a painfully humorous memoir of trying to find the bliss and comfort that fulfills some and eludes so many.

If you need an antidote to the Times’s “Modern Love” and “Tiny Love Stories,” you’ll enjoy these. If you are a fan of David Sedaris, Fran Lebowitz, early Nora Ephron, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and E. Jean Carroll, these newsletters are for you!

“You are a fabulous, hilarious writer,” observed Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Natalie Angier. And here are a few other accolades since I launched a couple of months ago: “This could be a great Netflix series!” “Irresistibly entertaining and so well observed!” “I want more!”

Why not subscribe? You have nothing to lose, and you might feel better about your own rotten romances.