Mr. Horgan:
What exactly is it that you do well? Your obsession with me and my unfortunate encounter with another minor man like yourself, Dale Peck, seems to have made you incapable of actual assessment. I find it interesting that you, like that capital of blubber and resentment, Terry Teachout, are capable of never avoiding anything of substance in your scorn, which seems to almost always be about condescension upwards. Ad hominem will do, particularly when called out.

It would have been interesting if you had addressed any of the concerns in my africana.com interview, particularly about the narrow scope of most American fiction, which tends not to venture into worlds where people of varous ethnic, religious, and class backgrounds meet. Was I right or was I wrong? Are there other black female characters like Leeann and Cecelia in contemporary fiction, both of whom are highly refined and down home as the gutbucket itself? Was Charles Johnson wrong when he wrong of the novel that it is "a fresh vision, one that dares to take risks in the name of truth: a novel that brims over with engaging characters and observations of contemporary American ife that are so insightful they break the spell of racial ideologies and agitprop fiction that have too long distorted our understanding of what black (and American) literature can be." Is Johnson wrong? How would you know? You would have to read the novel to find that out.

Further, your citing of Michael Thelwell's review is a perfect example of your your trouble with intellectual diaper rash. I guess when you get itched up you gotta bitch at SOMEBODY. Thelwell is a doctrinaire black nationalist academic of West Indian origin who would, of course, be angry at my novel that doesn't buy into the idea that suffering oppression from white people anywhere makes all black people essentially the same. There are serious distinctions to be made, and, as far as I know, I am the only one who has consistently addressed them. Black Americans--unlike colonials who had no more than economic impact on the "mother countries"--were central to the forming of American culture. I think Constance Rourke and John A. Kowenhoven could help you understand the broad details of that, which I'm fairly sure that you don't. By the way, Thelwell and I are friends who disagree on almost everything about American culture and domestic or international politics. Thelwell himself told me how impressed he was by my fresh and accurate rendering of the range and complexity of Negro culture in the South, but that he did not intend for the review to be fair. Its purprose was to get revenge for what he considered my harsh and unfair commentary about the late work of James Baldwin. He might well deny it now, but he knows he said it.

Further, these professional haters of Western culture who take advantage of the tenure system in our academies provide perspectives that would be crushed if the West were at all like the Marxist countries and heroes they celebrate. No, dummy, I don't think they should be summarily fired; I just think they should be recognized for what they are. But that would be too much for a gossip website on which nothing of intellectual substance seems to ever appear, only the tone of knowing all but providing the reader with nothing. There is an old Negro saying about Jack the Bear, "making plenty of tracks but going nowhere."
Stanley Crouch

Mr. Horgan:
The world "never" should be removed from the second sentence of the first paragraph. It is a mistake and makes the sentence say exactly the opposite of what I meant.
STANLEY CROUCH

Intellectual diaper rash. Wait, let me get a pen.

I have no idea whether this is real or not, but I've emailed Crouch at the Daily News to ask him if he has an AOL account and used it to comment on my site. It certainly sounds like him to me, but then apparently I have a tin ear for the majesty of Crouch's prose, so what do I know?

Hi Beatrice, Mr. Hogan, et al,

Re: Your comments on Stanley Crouch's recent Africana.com interview. I am the "interlocutor" in question, and I have a couple of things to say about your take on my intro to the review:

First, you are right -- I DO need a copy editor, but thus far, AOL, Africana.com's accidental proprietor, doesn't see the funding of such positions as a top priority. Still, no excuses for the shaky grammar.

Second, the paperback edition of Stanley Crouch's novel IS a fall release, since Vintage and other publishers for the past few years have regularly sent out fall titles starting in the summer or sometimes even in late spring; could that trick of timing have confused you?

Finally, your lack of interest in what the "interlocutor has to say" simply proves my theory about the BLOGOSPHERE in general, AND about blogs that originate in the hot-house, echo-chamber, jerk off capital of the New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. insulated and insular media corridor don't provide a single thing to readers interested in ANYTHING OF DEPTH concerning black Americans. (And yes, I mixed my metaphors and followed them up with a long ass run-on, too -- sue me!)

Yep, Beatrice, Gawker, Wonkette, etc., like your counter-part webzines Slate, and Salon, are so freaking hip, so postmodern, that you can actually MAKE FUN of black Americans under the guise of being BEYOND old racial tropes, and yet NONE of you ever bother to hire black writers or editors. For that matter, to my knowledge, few of you "hot" blogs or even Slate or Salon hardly ever bother to COMMISSION articles, essays, etc., by black writers, columnists, etc! So, I'm not surprised that you weren't interested in what Stanley Crouch's interviewer at Africana.com had to say. I'm just feeling mighty surprised that you managed to get the spelling of the site's name correct in your posting.

Rock on!

Amy Alexander,
Media Columnist,
Africana.com

One hesitates to assume, without confirmation, that this insane and semi-literate rant was actually written by Crouch -- or indeed by anybody who's ever been mistaken for a professional writer. Still, it's not entirely out of character, and if it was in fact Crouch who wrote it, it's worth contemplating for a moment, if only so that you can someday say, Yes, you were there, you saw it, the final dissolution of a man's reputation.

Consider, for examply, the fact that the writer -- let's call him 'Crouch' -- insists on laboriously producing hundreds of words in opposition to figures whom he nevertheless labels minor; further, that he actually types out phrases from reviews of his own books, an almost unprecedented display of insecurity, like that of an 8 year old touting his gold stars. How sad. How annoying. If this is not a stupendous waste of his time, it's surely a waste of ours.

Consider, again, that the phrase "both of whom" has no coherent antecedant; that the clause '"be angry at my novel that doesn't buy into the idea..." is ludicrously awkward, as is "...could help you understand the broad details of that, which I'm fairly sure that you don't" (in general, Crouch seems to have a little trouble with his indicatives); that "to ever appear" is an egregiously split infinitive. And so on.

Really, who wrote this laughable and incompetent nonsense? Was it really Crouch, or someone intent on embarassing him?

So, who exactly is Amy Alexander, anyway? I've never heard of her.

As it happens, Amy Alexander is the editor of The Farrakhan Factor, an anthology of essays I reviewed positively in my former capacity as Amazon.com's black studies editor. Of course, in that instance Alexander had the benefit of genuinely talented writers to do the heavy lifting for her; recent evidence suggests that left to her own devices she is not nearly so successful.

Oh, is that all? Wow, from the way she carried on, I had gotten the impression she was actually important.

"Yep, Beatrice, Gawker, Wonkette, etc., like your counter-part webzines Slate, and Salon, are so freaking hip, so postmodern, that you can actually MAKE FUN of black Americans under the guise of being BEYOND old racial tropes, and yet NONE of you ever bother to hire black writers or editors. For that matter, to my knowledge, few of you "hot" blogs or even Slate or Salon hardly ever bother to COMMISSION articles, essays, etc., by black writers, columnists, etc! So, I'm not surprised that you weren't interested in what Stanley Crouch's interviewer at Africana.com had to say. I'm just feeling mighty surprised that you managed to get the spelling of the site's name correct in your posting."

Is it possible that you could take time out of your busy Crouch-bashing schedule to address this? I'd LOVE to read what you have to say.

Way ahead of you, whoever you are. And since I had to remove ad hominem attacks from your comment, which I now present in edited form, and since you used a fake email address with a profanity in the domain name, you're banned.