CRAB APPLE

Is there some sort of creative law against appreciating success? Once more we are treated to the troubled musings of a talented but troubled rising star, Fiona Apple, who seems to be terminally bothered by this “business” of being wanted (“Riding a ‘Tidal’ Wave,” by Elysa Gardner, Nov. 3).

“I never really wanted to do this,” she says. Excuse me if I hurl. Demo tapes don’t accidentally get recorded and handed off to prominent record industry people when one doesn’t want to get noticed. Somewhere there is the desire to be heard and appreciated, the business be damned. Even the Bob Dylans and Eddie Vedders of the world can relate to that.

Much as I like what I have heard of her music, I have little sympathy for someone who insists on distancing herself from the very dream she cultivated. Of course, there is always the alternative of working at a Woolworth’s counter and retreating nightly to dark and obscure coffeehouses to release the angst-filled muse, but that doesn’t pay nearly so well, does it?

BOB LOZA

Burbank