Whose Is the Stale Life?

So R. Daniel Foster assumes that every resident of the Berkshire Apartments--except him!--has a “stale” life (“The Staircase Between Us,” Very First Person, Oct. 3). Give me a break.

Foster jettisons a potentially interesting observation about apartment-dwelling souls with his outsized ego and his lack of compassion. He purloins coffee-shop signs, childishly thumps ottomans and assumes that the only interest neighbor Nadine has is in him. (“Nadine has constructed a whole life for me”).

Give me Nadine, her friendly concern, her pear-shaped calves and maroon Thunderbird any day. She sounds adorable. Foster sounds like a mean-spirited boor.

To paraphrase Nadine’s note: “Daniel, I’ve just read things of yours that I wish I hadn’t read.”

Jenny Mead

Charlottesville, Va.