There's a lot of that going around, of course, the mercenary airing of private affairs, the shameless peddling of what Updike calls "the Judas biography."

Recent years in America have given rise to what we might call the Judas biography, in which a former spouse or friend of a living writer confides to print an intimate portrait less flattering than might be expected.

John Updike didn't coin the term 'Judas biography' (When revenge means a stab in the hardback, January 23); he adapted it from a remark of Oscar Wilde's: "Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography."