A little harsh? You are way too kind my friend. It's absurd beyond the pale - Middle Passage is a fine novel. On this score, Thelwell's a buffoon.

Thelwell's not a buffoon, but he is coming from another black school of intellectual thought. My feeling is that each school has a bit of the truth, but not all of it.

I find some of Charles Johnson's work rather thick. 'Thick' meaning that while I still have him in my library, I can't feel him or access him yet. I've got to wait until I can. I readily admit that it's my difficulty; once I can read a Johnson novel, then I'll know whether it is worth my while or not.

On the other hand, I know for sure when I violently disagree with someone or get a whiff of something below standard I hadn't counted on. Crouch's novel was not the great novel acknowledging what I call 'white folks blues.' It wasn't even an attempt at a novel.

What shall I call it? A 540-page rumination.

I haven't actually read Middle Passage, though I did read Dreamer in preparation for an interview with Johnson that in retrospect is somewhat egregiously titled. (Actually, an interview I took over halfway through and revised from top to bottom, so if any questions sound lame to you, those were probably mine, ha ha!) And then a few years later I read a collection of essays.

I think I see where Thelwell is getting at in his critique of Johnson, and while I'm too some extent supportive of the argument that non-Europeans should find a voice of self-expression that relies less and less upon European models--to put the issue in its most oblique terms--I'd ultimately come down on the side of casting one's philosophical nets as wide as possible and taking anything that works no matter where it came from, as long as you're honest about where you got it and try to present it contextually.

I'm still open-mouthed about something I hadn't heard about in the first week of March: Richard Ford's spittle barrage at Colson Whitehead at a Poets and Writers confab.

I'm shaking my head in shock over this one. However, I'm not surprised. He and his wife used one review as target practice a few years back. Someone was bound to snap sometime. And yet...

While I liked "Multitude of Sins"--it wasn't what I think is one of his stronger works. It was rather repetitious. I wanted these white dudes to take action. Which made Whitehead's 'hateration' against the book--sort of a black Dale Peck job, but more lower case--all the more interesting and enjoyable, especially that last line of his.

One more thing: Stanley "writing is fighting" Crouch and Richard (ex-boxer) Ford are supposed to be best buds, stemming from their NYTM-sponsored "Huck and Jim" boat ride on the Mississippi a while back. (I'm reserving judgment on that junket.) Can I get a witness that something may be UP here as far as literary feudin', fightin' and fussin'? Maybe some saltpeter tossed surreptitiously into these cats' drinks before they lay eyes on likely critics and adversaries across the Brie and the fruit wedges is what is needed here.

A last one: I agree with the idea of casting those nets, and those possibilities.