Ivan Reitman's Young Adult is only the latest in a long line of films which portray authors as helpless, or vindictive, or bothIn Jason Reitman's film Young Adult, released last week, Mavis Geary (Charlize Theron) returns to her midwest hometown to stalk a high school boyfriend, prompted by an email, with a picture of a newborn daughter, that shows him to be happily married. Mistakenly convinced he must nevertheless be still in love with her, she suffers a series of humiliations. Deluded, washed-up, twisted, alcoholic, she is also – it almost goes without saying, given Hollywood's stereotypes – a blocked writer, the movie taking its title from the generic novels she produces.Here we go again, connoisseurs of cinema's portraits of ...