Success’ Many Fathers
David Weddle, in his article on filmmaker Rick Famuyiwa (“Selling Out Was the Deal Breaker,” July 11), erroneously attributed the phrase “ ‘the bitch-goddess’ of success” to Jack Kerouac; it was William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, who, in a letter to H.G. Wells of Sept. 11, 1906, first used the phrase, referring to “the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS.”
CHRIS KELEDJIAN
Venice
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