With the 1 October issue of The New Yorker, James Wood made his debut as a staff writer at the magazine, covering the literary beat. In so doing, Mr. Wood stepped into shoes once worn by the likes of Edmund Wilson and Clifton Fadiman. Indeed, Wilson was something of a literary engineer, altering the direction in which the stream of readers and writers flowed toward each other. A measure of the esteem with which Wilson is still held in some quarters is the forthcoming two-volume Library of America set of his works, the LOA being a series that Wilson himself put into gestation back in the 1960s.

One thought that Wilson’s shoes had been filled by Professor Louis Menand (who had a terrific essay on Jack Kerouac in the same issue), but never mind. Like Wilson, Mr. Wood came to the New Yorker after a stint at The New Republic. Mr. Wood, who is British, had been a senior editor at the New Republic since 1996, and it was deemed something of a coup for The New Yorker to acquire his services, for which the Anglophilic publication had been pitching woo for years. Mr. Wood’s old boss at the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, quipped to the NYT that “The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom The New Yorker can eventually staff itself.”

Few looked at the reasons why Mr. Wood might be leaving the New Republic (which, thanks to his and other evacuations, among other woes, now emanates the fumes of a sinking ship), but instead focused on what the New Yorker would gain. And Mr. Wood himself allowed to the media as how he “wouldn’t go soft” in his new digs, adding that lately at the The New Republic, “I was repeating myself,” that “the pieces were becoming a bit automatic, a bit inevitable.” Mr. Wood went on to note that he wished to “find and promote unknown or younger writers.” It thus became as a bit of a surprise when, in his inaugural review, Mr. Wood reviewed a new book by … Robert Alter, a longtime contributor to the New Republic himself and a frequent subject of invariably laudatory reviews, as was Mr. Wood in his review. This week, Mr. Wood takes on that “unknown” ” younger” writer &$151; Philip Roth, another inevitable TNR subject. So far, Mr. Wood’s essays have the musty smell of leftover New Republic pieces. Mr. Wieseltier told The New York Observer that his “fondest wish is that James will write as if he never left.” On the basis of Mr. Wood’s first two reviews, at least, it appears his wish is coming true.

You may recall the case of young Damian Arlyn, the 31-year-old manager of the Corvallis video store DVD World whose blog Windmills of My Mind was indulging in an obsession with Arlyn’s favorite director through a gimmick called “31 Days of Spielberg,” when it was stopped dead in its tracks in late August by charges of plagiarism. Mr. Arlyn admitted the borrowings from his academic superiors but maintained that he would not be gagged.

Well, I dropped in on Windmills the other day and found that the site, as of September 12, shows only one update. In it, an unrepentant Mr. Arlyn vaguely addresses the charges against him. Announcing that “This blog is not dead nor am I [though his internet connection is down, forcing him to use the library], Mr. Arlyn goes on to reveal that he “needed some time to get away and think about what had happened, how it happened and whether or not I planned to continue blogging,” before going on to complain that “in the interim other things of a personal nature occurred in my life that were not much fun (when it rains, it pours sometimes) and which can certainly force one to realize that there is much more to life than just the ‘virtual world.’” Without much of a transition, Mr. Arlyn then announces that “I eventually decided that I will continue to blog but I will not be rushed. I will proceed with “31 Days of Spielberg” as soon as I am able to (picking up where I left off with the entry on Jurassic Park) which will probably be when my internet is working again. Hope that clears things up.”

It doesn’t. Somehow, Mr. Arlyn has twisted events around so that he is the victim, and like Senator Craig, now refuses to go away. Where, after being charged with the most egregious sin in journalism, which Mr. Arlyn admits committing, does he find the gall to cast himself in the role of victim here? It turns out that such flourishes of public self-pity come easily to Mr. Arlyn, for he is himself an actor and director down in Corvallis, where he has played Malvolio in Twelfth Night and directed a stage production of Dracula, for which he also designed the set and the poster. Like his Hollywood brethren, Mr. Arlyn can use any spotlight, even the strobe on a prison wall, for a thespian turn, and exposure of a transgression is not shameful but further opportunity for attention and proclamations of self-pity.

His fans, however, continue to rally around Mr. Arlyn. In the talkback to his Sept. 12 announcement, Jeremy, it seems, speaks for Doc, Megan, Tucker Piper, J.D. and other acolytes (or DVD World employees and Corvallis Community Theatre techies), when he writes, “Glad to hear it Damian. I never lost faith not for a second. I’m sorry to hear about your difficulties and hope you get through it all right. I’ll be your loyal reader when you get back into the swing of things so good luck and see you soon.” Perhaps his fans appreciate that Mr. Arlyn, as Shaw said of Shakespeare, can tell a pretty good story — as long as someone else tells it to him first.

Every era gets the Everyman it deserves. If the silent period of cinema had Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, and the 1950s and ’60s had Tom Ewell and Jack Lemmon; if the 1980s and ’90s bounced back and forth between Robin Williams and Steve Martin, and still do, well, then, for better or worse, add Ben Stiller as another modern Everyman. In this case, it’s for worse, however. Though Stiller started out as an “edgy” satirical comic, like others before him such as Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, he appears to want to be loved for himself, and taken seriously as an “actor.” If not that, then at least a sex symbol. In that regard, Stiller’s collaborations with the Farrelly Brothers suit that need. Each of the two films, starting with There’s Something about Mary offer him up as a put-upon but essentially right-thinking fellow who finds himself unjustly treated and trapped in one awkward situation after another. Meanwhile, the film assumes an audience loyalty to the character that is unearned. Now, in the remake of The Heartbreak Kid, we are offered the same thing. As the main character, Ed Cantrow, finds himself on a honeymoon with a woman who turns out to be a monster while falling in love with another hotel guest who is more his type, an impatient viewer might wonder why Ed deserves either woman or any woman at all.

As is well known, the Farrelly Brothers’ Heartbreak Kid is a remake of the ’70s comedy directed by Elaine May from a Bruce Jay Friedman short story called “A Change of Plan” and scribed by Neil Simon (albeit updated with kitty rings and deviated septums). The first film was an early example of the “humor of discomfort” later realized in modern works such as Swingers and The Office. You’re not really supposed to like the people, but rather just observe them, perhaps as cautionary tales. May’s HK offered up all sorts of tense, difficult ethnic issues and Charles Grodin’s drive to dump his vulgar wife for a shiksa is almost inexplicable. Essentially, he married to get sex, to get his girlfriend finally to put out. But during a honeymoon in Florida, the arriviste in him comes out horribly.

In the Farrelly Brothers version, Cantrow is a neutral, aethnic fellow who runs a sporting goods store in San Francisco, a singleton who has the coupling of others thrown in his face all day. When he finally finds a girl, Lila (Malin Akerman, the Silk Spectre in the forthcoming Watchman movie), and marries her abruptly, her incompatible qualities are only revealed during their honeymoon in Cabo. There he meets Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), the perfect girl. In a reversal of the earlier film, it is Miranda’s family, Southerners from Oxford, Mississippi, where they are all sports coaches of one variety or another, that is extremely ethnic in its own way. Elaine May’s Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd, the era’s paradigmatic unobtainable girl next door) was a standard-issue sorority sister type, well bred and educated. Here, Miranda is a sporty brunette, a game girl, and elfin woman with a sense of fun, completely unlike the icy Kelly. The resemblances, such as they are, begin to take over only then. The remake doesn’t even begin to truly resemble the first one until 26 minutes in, when Lila wants to inscribe little post-coital circles and squares on Cantrow’s hairy chest.

Lila’s obnoxious qualities are broadly drawn. She turns out to be an illiterate unemployed former coke whore who is 26K in debt. In a legacy of her coke years she snorts apple juice out of her nose, and sings along to every song, regardless of genre (although knowing the words to all the songs ever written strikes me as a useful quality). She knows every sexual position in the lore of the Kama Sutra except the missionary position. In other words, we are set up to endorse Cantrow’s straying attentions when Lila is confined to bed with a bad sunburn and Miranda’s family welcomes him prematurely into their fold.

Both films are onto something difficult to define and rarely treated in popular entertainment, which is the sense of regret over missed opportunities one sometimes feels even in the midst of ostensibly sublime happiness. To underscore that, Lila might better have been played by another alluring, popular dish, such as Cameron Diaz, so that Cantrow’s choices and situations are hard.

But instead the Farrellys have made this project (which they came to after it had already been conceived with Jason Bateman and Amy Poehler under the direction of Barry Sonnenfeld) their own. There are more complex miscommunications involved, thanks to a pair of evil twins; there is the use of the sun and moon as dull time-transition devices; there is the appeal to pathetic nerd fantasy in showing a girl actually wanting a guy; and there is the inevitable gross moment, in this case the display of Lila’s overgrown bush with its bejeweled addendum. To its credit, the last 10 minutes feature more narrative twists, but they serve to render the film more farce-like, as opposed to the first film’s mirror to a similar scene in The Graduate, directed by May’s ex-partner in stand up comedy, Mike Nichols. But in the end, the Farrellys prefer happiness to triumph over second thoughts, cold ambition, and sad regrets.