"Ah! There is the archvillain." said Publisher Bennett Cerf when he encountered Author Jessica Mitford a few months ago in Manhattan. "I hope you are not going to murder us."
Cerf had ample reason for apprehension. The scourge of the profession of undertaking had recently turned her journalistic skepticism toward one of Cerf's sideline ventures. As a result, in the current issue of the Atlantic, Miss Mitford dexterously deflates the Famous Writers School, a heavily promoted mail-order concern in Westport, Conn.
The school's "guiding faculty," as its advertisements stress, includes Cerf and such other...