Friday 6/14/24
Received the following letter this afternoon from someone named Jonathan Hutchison regarding The Sun and Sy Safransky and my comments in these pages about both.
I have read The Sun for forty years. I've seen great writing and not-so-great writing, but I have never encountered there the kind of self-serving, self-pitying, self-congratulatory and delusional piece of bad writing that you have produced here. Your piece showcases horrible grammar, non-existent syntax and continuity of thought, unsubstantiated character assassination, poor organization and the absence of logic. Two things it does have, in abundance; A massive cluster of sour grapes and the very quality you repeatedly impute to Safransky; "Envy".
I believe he was talking about an entry from 2022. Shall we read it again? Let's read it again. Here it is. And I encourage you to click on "The Donkey at the Gates of Heaven." Trust me. Click on it if you're new here or as a refresher.
This was my response:
Thanks for getting in touch. Unfortunately, sending something like this isn't really a wise thing to do. By piece I assume you might be referring to the entry in the blog with Safransky's name in the title.
It's actually come up quite a bit in recent weeks for some reason and I've received a number of letters about it, all of which take the opposite approach of yours. Your remarks, of course, are baseless; the claims about grammar, syntax, the nonexistent logic. A very clear argument was presented, dealing in facts and truths.
As for envy, anyone who is not rage-writing with an agenda and who reads anything by me knows that they'd have the wrong guy there. The idea of being envious of an editor putting forward the likes of "The Donkey at the Gates of Heaven" is a strange assertion.
But you're not acting in good faith are you? I get that. People become upset. Why you feel a need to carry water for this person, though, is odd. I do see that you're apparently a member of a cult? Or something somewhat cult adjacent? I'm sure that doesn't help with limpidity of thought. I suspect you thought this was clever and would impart some sort of lesson but all it serves to do is allow those facts and truths to come out again in a more up to date post. But I appreciate you getting in touch, and I hope you have a nice weekend. I'm sure it's beautiful out there in New Mexico.
How often does something like this happen? It's pretty rare, actually. Once a year, say. Someone yelled at me for an op-ed about the monarchy, and concluded by saying I should go to therapy because I'm adopted. He may have been a medical doctor. I'll get around to whatever I'm going to do with that. It's the truth: I don't want to put you up on here. I'll put that off. But eventually, I'll do what I have to do and what principle dictates. There was one letter defending, I think, the honor of J.W. McCormack. I haven't read it yet, but I know who wrote it. Again, I don't like lighting people up on here. But I know all about this guy and his writing--the two bad pieces he's published in his life--so that's what is going to happen. Then there was Matt Hanson, aka, Junior Colin, of course, with his violent, expletive-laden emission referencing guns and murder. I think that's it, actually, in terms of the negative stuff.
This is nice, too: A recent Sun-based prose off. Like we say, there's talk, and there's walk. We've done both talk and walk here.
There were some errors in that first Syfransky entry. Copy edit things. I try to read these entries back, but it can take a while, and there's always so much happening and to be gotten done. This journal is three million words long and I'm writing thousands of words every day for my actual work. But it was good to tend to that copy edit stuff. I'll look it over again later.
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