My apologies for taking so long to respond; I've been out of town for several days, and rather sick on top of it.

I have been asked to convey to you the respect and admiration of my friend astralounge (astralounge.diaryland.com... you may have seen her linked to some of my entries. She is one of my favorite verbal sparring partners). She has been privy to our correspondence, and has taken an immediate shine to you. Personally, I think she just likes to see me knocked down a notch or two.

I will attempt to address the issues you raised in your last message point by point.

To start with, I would like to say that your approach to literary criticism makes a great deal of sense, though it is distressing to me to be forced to admit that the bulk of literary aesthetics are dictated by whimsy. Your comparison between publishing and a beauty pageant seems obvious after the fact... but it was something that I have simply never considered before.

I suppose that somewhere in the back of my head, I've always held on to the subconscious notion that there is some sort of objective standard that all writing should be held to... that there is some style of writing that will appeal to everyone. That's a strange thing for me to realize, since in most other matters I tend to disregard the possibility of objective truth or absolute standards.

I certainly do not begrudge anyone their positive opinion of Blake House. It was not to my taste, as I have made clear, but if it provided something useful or worthwhile (or even if it simply offered a pleasant afternoon's diversion) to another reader, more power to them, and to you. As an eager reader of horror, I am all too familiar with people looking down their noses at my choice in books, and I have long since come to terms with the fact that one cannot dictate what others find pleasurable. There is no accounting for taste, and there shouldn't need to be.

Additionally, I must add that the idea of someone reading Blake House and enjoying it out of a desire to spite me tickles me pink.

I am pleased to hear that you are devoid of the objectionable quality of cynicism, and that you therefore do not believe that I am merely hiding behind the facade of a confessed liar in order to avoid taking responsibility for the reprehensible views that I sometimes express on Unequivocal. Were I a cynical person, I might be tempted to believe that you were, indeed, accusing me of cowardice. Thankfully, I am not a cynic either. Merely a liar.

To be honest though, my disclaimer on Unequivocal is accurate. I make a concerted effort not to write about things that I believe in and feel strongly about. Writing becomes much less entertaining, I think, when you become emotionally invested in proving a given point. That isn't to say that none of my honest opinions make it onto Unequivocal... but I try my best not to argue about anything near and dear to me. An online forum is simply not the place to bare your soul.

Now, on to money and happiness. Let me start by stating that the bulk of the entry in question was not intended to be directed at you or at your book. Your book called the phrase to mind, but I wasn't responding to you specifically (indeed, until now I had no idea if you agreed with the sentiment or not). My grasp on reality is not so tenuous that I would take an author to task over the viewpoint expressed by one of his characters in a novel.

No, what I was railing against was the phrase itself, and the fact that so many people pretend to buy into it. I stick with my original sentiment, and with my original (quite intentional, I assure you) wording: it is a pretty statement, a pointless statement, and a wholly inaccurate statement. It sounds lovely, and on the surface it feels right, but it is flawed.

As someone who is versed in the principles of Chaos magic, you are doubtless aware of how much of an impact our thoughts and beliefs have on reality. It is well within our power to dictate our own emotional states, provided that our basic physical needs are taken care of. Shelter, food, creature comforts... these things are a sufficient basis for human happiness, provided that the human in question is willing to rise above the general tendency that we have to embrace discomfort and suffering.

Your friend, of course, is an exception to this. For her, money cannot buy happiness, and her suffering does not constitute stupidity. Of course not. But she is the exception, at least in my experience. Most of the miserable people that I know are not miserable because they are sick... they are miserable because they refuse the very concept of happiness. They are miserable because they embrace their misery and wallow in it. They are miserable because they have made a decision to be miserable. They are, in a word, stupid.

In my experience, happiness is an easy thing to attain, so long as you are willing to embrace it, and so long as you have the material needs to reach your goal (and, as you have astutely pointed out, health). So. My final formulation: If you are a reasonably intelligent person, and reasonably well adjusted, money does indeed buy happiness, provided that you haven't somehow fallen into miserably unfortunate circumstances.

This is the problem with logically evaluating aphorisms; you are forced to continue to qualify and revise them until they stop being pretty. Ah well; I started it this time around, so it behooves me to suck it up.

Moving on:

As far as "innocent victims," I understand your point, but I feel that comparing the victims of 9-11 to crime victims or rape victims is inconsistent with the point that I was driving at. I don't think that it is appropriate or healthy to encourage the mindset that victims are always innocent. It allows people to absolve themselves of personal responsibility, and it encourages activities and behaviors that make people easier to victimize. It never fails to amaze me when I hear, for example, women make the claim that they should have the right to walk down any street in the middle of the night and feel safe. Yes, you should have that right... but that doesn't change the fact that if you do indeed choose to walk down a dark street in the middle of the night, you are being foolish.

Making the claim that victims are always innocent substitutes idealism for reality, and it encourages reprehensibly stupid and dangerous behavior. No victim ever *deserves* to be assaulted... but a lot of them were probably foolish not to see it coming.

My underlying point in the entry in question was not that everyone deserves whatever happens to them, but rather that making the assumption that victims are exempt from any sort of responsibility for engaging in risky behavior is unreasonable, irresponsible and damaging. I maintain that if you ever find yourself being mugged, raped, kidnapped or murdered, there is an excellent chance that you made a foolish and dangerous decision at some point earlier in the day. That does not mean that you deserved the results, nor does it exonerate the victimizer... but it does mean that you cannot be held blameless.

A quick word on the Google searches. My initial ranking claims were accurate (though they have changed slightly now). The phrase I was searching for was ("adrian savage" + horror) and ("adrian savage" + novels). I currently rank number 18 and number 10 respectively.

I will, of course, strip your e-mail address out of any correspondence before posting it. And if there is ever anything in any of these messages that you would prefer not to see posted, please let me know. I have rather stringent views on what constitutes appropriate online content, and I would not want to do anything that you felt was disrespectful of your privacy.

And, on a final note, please do not misinterpret my acknowledgment of your kindness. I was not implying that there was anything weak or gentle about your previous correspondence. I was simply acknowledging your grandmotherly kindness, and I meant no offense:

Once a student of Zen asked his teacher, "Who is the Buddha?" The master replied by picking up his staff and whacking his pupil hard against the

head. The student, as emotionally hurt as physically, left the teacher and

went in search of a new master. Eventually he was accepted by an instructor who realized that the student had been exposed to Zen. The new teacher asked the student where he had studied, whereupon the student explained how his former master had hit him. The new master became indignant with anger. "Go back to your former teacher," he demanded, "and apologize for not thanking him for his grandmotherly kindness!"

Best regards and apologies for the excessively long message,