title: Reputations Under Fire: Winners and Losers in the Libel Business
author:  David Hooper 
description: A rollickingly enjoyable account<b>INDEPENDENT</b><br /><br />This book is a delight<b>NEW LAW JOURNAL</b><br /><br />This book has a place in the lawyer's office as well as on the home bookshelf.<b>TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT</b>
zlib_text: _Also by Janet Malcolm_  
    
    
  
  
  DIANA AND NIKON
  
  
  PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE IMPOSSIBLE PROFESSION
  
  
  IN THE FREUD ARCHIVES
  
  
  # Afterword
  
  
  ALTHOUGH writers and publishers like to grumble about the proliferation of
  libel lawsuits in this country, few would seriously propose that anything be
  done to reverse the trend. The Ayatollah’s death sentence on Salman Rushdie
  brings into relief the primitive feeling that lies behind every libel suit,
  and makes the writer only too grateful for the mechanism the law provides for
  transforming the displeased subject’s impulse to kill him into the move
  civilized aim of extracting large sums of money from him. Although the money
  is rarely collected—most libel suits end in defeat for the plaintiff or in a
  modest settlement—the lawsuit itself functions as a powerful therapeutic
  agent, ridding the subject of his feelings of humiliating powerlessness and
  restoring to him his cheer and _amour propre_. From the lawyer who takes him
  into his care he immediately rec