A yahoo who does not give his name but calls himself Vunderguy is asking a Houyhnhnm named John C Wright what is my emotional reaction to a man who calls himself Vox Day but whose real name is Theodore Beale.
Speaking of flights and fancy, what’s your take on your publisher, Vox Day?
Despite the bouncing gaiety of the question, I answered it soberly, saying this: I think he has too high an opinion of me and my work, frankly. This is based on private communications with him, where he grants me more praise than I think just. While it is right and proper, as a matter of professional courtesy, for an editor to flatter a writer he publishes, I am afraid in this case he overestimates my talent, albeit I am grateful for the flattery, because I am quite vain.
Vunderguy answers with this indirect comment:
While that insight is a bit humanizing of him, I meant in regards to his more… ‘fringe’ views.
I was not aware that Mr. Beale needed ‘humanizing’ whatever that word means. As a Houyhnhnm, the process sounds painful and dangerous and much to be avoided.
Growing mildly impatient, in my unemotional way, I remarked: “Fringe views? Is this a guessing game where you act like a coy schoolgirl and do not say what you mean, while I act like a man and speak in complete sentences?” And I mentioned some of Mr Beale’s unusual views, for example on drug legalization and other libertarian issues, which are not mainstream.
After that, Mr. Guy (as I shall hereafter call the anonymous accuser) finally agreed to speak plainly and ask his question, or, rather, his accusation disguised as a question.
I say ‘his’ because in English, when the sex of the antecedent is unknown or undetermined, this is the proper pronoun. The delicate indirectness with which Mr. Guy asks his questions, however, is more typically seen in women, or was, back in the day when women practiced feminine delicacy.
Since it is an accusation and not a question, in a properly lawyerly fashion, let me answer point by point:
Alright, I’ll just up and say it then.
I raise a supercilious eyebrow at the introductory sentence, as if the accuser has to brace himself before he tells his true opinion. I am, like all Houyhnhnms, unsympathetic to the concept of having to brace yourself before telling the truth.
To me, it is not only unexceptional, a default setting, so to speak. The opposite, which is to gossip, to backbite, to say the thing which is not is the unusual thing, nay, the unheard-of thing.
However, to be clear, this introductory preamble is neither here nor there. It is not an apology for the previous hemming and hawing, nor an explanation of it, merely a statement that henceforth, the language will be direct.
He seems to me to be something of a white supremacist, even though he’s about as white as I am, or at least, draw those kinds of people towards him.
This language, unfortunately, is less than direct. Read the remainder of this entry »
