Let Day have her privacy

IN HER article about David Kaufman’s biography of Doris Day, “Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door,” writer Susan King quotes the author as saying that Day “will not talk about the past” and “I don’t think she’s ever had a truly confidential, candid conversation with anybody on this earth. I don’t think she is capable of being intimate” [“Shadows of Day,” July 5].

My question to Kaufman: What and who dictate the necessity of such a conversation? One of the definitions of intimate is “very personal, private.” In fact, Kaufman does not know if, when, or how Day has dealt with her past, and that is well and good. Confession is good for the soul, indeed. But what right have public media to appoint themselves to the position of confessor?

Whether or not Day is or feels like a “wounded and abandoned human being” (Kaufman) is nobody’s business but her own. At 86, she appears to be doing what she wants to do. Let her live out her era absent the intrusion of our era’s morbid addiction to tell-all prattle that pains person and demeans spirit.

Janis Holmberg

Brea

I couldn’t believe David Kaufman had the audacity to say about Doris Day, “I don’t think she’s ever had a truly confidential, candid conversation with anybody on this earth. I don’t think she is capable of being intimate.”

I don’t know Doris Day intimately, but one can only watch her work and see her obvious capacity for intimacy. She is intensely intimate with her beloved animals. She had a child. She has had many deeply close and long-lasting friendships throughout her decades. I’m sure she’s quite capable of being confidential, candid and intimate with many on this earth, including the earth itself.

Her reward for not granting an interview to Kaufman for his unauthorized biography was to be insulted by his dime-store, amateur psychology. I think it’s wrong. The author is really out of line and foolish in his lack of insight into such an astounding and complex woman who just happens to like the privacy that she has earned.

Dan Tirman

West Hollywood