I Ain’t Changing It: Norman Mailer’s publisher...

I Ain’t Changing It: Norman Mailer’s publisher wants the dangling modifier in the first sentence of the author’s new book corrected, but Mailer says if it sounds good, don’t mess with it. “Harlot’s Ghost” begins: “On a late winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.” The sentence could be read to mean that recollections, not a person, were driving the car. A Random House official says the sentence should have been caught early on and will be fixed in future editions. Mailer says no way: “I like the rhythm as it stands.”

Helpmate: Juliet needs a secretary, but don’t tell Romeo. A council official in Verona, Italy, fabled home of Shakespeare’s couple, said the city needs someone to answer love letters addressed to her. The applicant should be skilled in penning answers to the two missives a day sent to Juliet from around the world.

Smashing Work: Political cartoonist Bill Mauldin injured his drawing hand while working on a 1946 Jeep he used as a model for his satirical sculpture of a GI shooting an Army vehicle. Chris Mauldin said in Santa Fe, N.M., that her 70-year-old husband was injured last week when he jacked up the vehicle to attach a snowplow. The Jeep slipped, she said, smashing two fingers on Mauldin’s left hand. The bronze sculpture depicts a GI putting a broken-down Jeep out of its misery. Mauldin’s wife says he’ll recover.

Taxed: They’re fed up and they’re not going to take it any more. Rising property taxes have forced residents of an island that has long been part of Portland, Maine’s largest city, to think about getting out. Peaks Island residents voted 197-39 over the weekend to hold a referendum on secession next year, because an island homeowner with property valued at $138,000 now gets taxed $3,093. Islanders say they could slash the tax in half if they were on their own.