Robert Olen Butler and the Really Weird Email

Posted on August 2, 2007

The Internets are abuzz with the wild email sent around by Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler. Butler decided to send an email to explain to friends and colleagues exactly why and how his wife, novelist Elizabeth Dewberry, left him to be one of billionaire Ted Turner's many girlfriends. Apparently, Turner has some kind of Hugh Hefner-like arrangement with four women who share him. Each gets one week of The Ted each month. The email gives intimate details about his soon to be ex-wife's life, health issues and relationship with The Ted. Naturally, it was just a matter of time before it got posted on the Web.

Butler begins the details of his missive: "Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it. Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner." This is clear, if a little dramatic, and if it had ended here, as a means of conveying sad but relevant news to close friends, then all would be fine. But, um, there's more.
He then tells readers that, as Dewberry has spoken about publicly, she had been sexually abused by her grandfather and that the abuse was "tacitly condoned by her radically Evangelical Christian parents." He says he was able to help her for a few years: "She says I saved her life." Still, she had issues, mainly that she was never able to "step out of the shadow" of his Pulitzer, even though "everyone has heard me proclaim my sincere high regard for her as an artist."
Then, he goes on to say, Dewberry "nearly died from an intestinal blockage in Argentina while on a trip with Ted" in March. This uncomfortable experience led her to leave him for said media mogul, he writes, perhaps because "it is very common for a woman to be drawn to men who remind them of their childhood abusers. Ted is such a man, though fortunately, he is far from being abusive. From all that I can tell, he is kind to her, loyal, considerate, and devoted to his family, and perhaps, therefore, he can redeem some things for her."

The email gets weirder from there. It is, however, quite well-written. The moral of the story is clear: if you marry a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, you really should expect everything that happens to you and your marriage to end up as inspiration for -- if not another award-winning novel -- a spicy email to colleagues after the marriage goes bust.