The kind of letters I like to receive
This is exactly the sort of letter/e-mail every author wants to receive, written by a thinking person who actually understands what I was trying to do with the book. Every once in a while I’m lucky enough to get one of these. Thanks, Barbara M.
Dear Mr. Emerson,
There are a few dozen authors whose work I cherish and collect, and you’ve been one of them for years. But I’ve never felt moved to write to one of my favorites til today. I have to thank you for what you’ve accomplished in writing Cape Disappointment.
I’m one of the huge number of thinking people troubled by anomalies and discrepancies in our common experience — open questions where discussion is absolutely prohibited, whole groups of people saying, “But what about this?” dismissed as lunatic-fringe “truthers”. And of course I’ve been wondering at both the precision timing and the instant spackling-over of the Wellstone “accident” ever since it happened.
You did SUCH a remarkable job of presenting the unpalatable reality in which we sure seem to live these days, while also defusing the inhibitions about paranoia and “lunatic” conspiracy theory that keep us from even thinking about it. I am full of admiration.
Using Bert as the vehicle for Black’s wrestling with his own anti-paranoia programming, and thus walking the reader through the walls of their own, was simply brilliant. And your understated prose style was so perfect for the exploration of this rant-inducing topic — I can’t think of many other people who could have pulled this off. Plus you still managed to make it a really good mystery read, not a polemic.
This can’t have been easy to write, or to live with — thank you for doing it. I’m thinking that I will probably be buying and giving away copies for awhile — you’ve done such a solid job of making the case for the truth, and fiction makes a much better carrier than nonfiction when a big change in thinking is required.
This book is a huge gift to America, and maybe also the only justice Paul Wellstone will ever get. Thanks for it.
Sincerely,
Barbara M.
Port Angeles, WA.
