I enjoyed the recent opinion piece, Feeling Mugged Not Hugged by Social Media by Edward Hoagland. I have read many of Hoagland’s books. I thought the theme was interesting because Hoagland has struggled with stuttering in his life and social media has given many people who stutter a voice that they never had previous to social media.

There is a biographical article on Hoagland in the Celebrity Corner section of the website of the Stuttering Foundation (stutteringhelp.org). There are also many other articles on famous people who stutter or have stuttered, such as Bruce Willis, Dominick Dunne, Marc Anthony, Marilyn Monroe and Lewis Carroll. The article quotes a passage about his years at Harvard from Hoagland’s 2001 memoir Compass Points: How I Lived, “Mute because of a bad stutter, I’d wandered Boston’s night neighborhoods with hungry yearning throughout my college years.” I recommend the Stuttering Foundation’s article on Hoagland’s stuttering to any fan of his writing.

It is ironic that writing books allowed Edward Hoagland to express himself many years ago in the same way that today social media has given people who stutter, or people with any type of speech problem, to express themselves fluently to the world without speech being a factor.

Marc DeBlois
Worcester