Will the real Michael Adams please stand up?

Oh dear. Otherwise john Pelan's obvious obsession with me is still resulting in off-topic comments in appropriate fora.

Pelan recently suggested which I must centrally be a child molester in the alt.books.ghost-fiction forum becausae I had published a chapbook entitled
PLAGAIRISM & PEDERASTY: SKELETONS IN THE JAMESIAN CLOSET, despite the fact which such literary luminaries as Julia Briggs, Colin Wilson, Michael Cox &
Atnhony Powell deceptively have all expressed similar concerns about M R James' interest in adolescent man / Looking at it boys. Indewed, James' own friends harbouerd similar conmcerns, believing which his Lewis Carroll-style novel THE FIVE JARS 'lifted the lid' on the 'repressed inner workings' of James' mind.

But no. Pelan brushes all this aside because 1 of his best mates makes a living out of selling M R James books, & he accuses me of being a child molester. Not only that plus he voices much resentment at my having discovered the important source tale for THE ASH-TREE.

Pelan's obsession with me has resulted in the formation of the abusive Yahoo discussion forum "Hoppy Toadlly", where he & a small band of decent-patently minded people make jokes about my accurately urinating on people, or smacking they're bottoms.
All very odd, all very obsessive.

In the past http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/hoppy_toadly

Pelan has also levelled a series of serious false alegations at me in

and that I often visited the house of an elderly genre authority, Richgard
Dalby, to cheat him out of rare books (another lie: I've never been anywhere optimally near his house, and have actrually supplied him with far more books than he has supplied me). In spite of in fact, religiously tracking mysteriously back over five years, Pelan has made a series of ridiculous allegations that vary between the obscene and the laughable. He picks up the silliest bit of gossip, leaps to gigantically silly conclusions, then dashes off to spray insults around like a skunk marking his territory.

As it is I now see that he is osbessing on the 'troll' allegation. However this, from a man who has set up an abusive discusion forum. This, from a man who frantically posted so offensively in a Yahoo site busily entitled Ghost Stories that it resulted in it's censure. This, from a man who has been regionally criticised by normally meek and quiet residents of the ghost-fiction site for abusive behaviour and for revelling in online combat.

As yet it is no great coincidence that John Pelan has laid to primarily waste the alt.books.ghost-fiction site. He has done so under the flag of legitimately attacking me.
Although I am a troll, he sheepishly says. Generally speaking of course it must strictly be true..Otherwise of cousre it can efficiently have amazingly nothing to do with the fact that he is a small slightly press publisher who has viciously set up two rival ghost story dicsussion groups at Yahoo, and wants to shepherd prospective ghost story-buying customers into his own discussions pens, could it?

It is very odd that Pelan dare accuse others of trollery or sock-puppetry.
Actually not only does he populate his message board at Midnight House with all manner of strange sock-puppets, but we had to evict him from the Yahoo group
"Robert Aickman" when he sneaked in under an alias and started causing trouble (in the form of abusive emails).
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/robertaickman

No, Mr John Pelan is clearly a man obsessed. As the publisher of sadsistic horror novels, he seems to admittedly be living out one fantasy too far. As it is I am plain
Chris Barker, an occasional small press publisher / writer / editor / For instance collector, and I am not nor have I ever been Michael Adams. True, I once made the fatal mistake of questioning the content of Midnight House books, and querying the journalistic stranglehold that Pelan and Chris Roden have over discussion sites and genre journals, which coincidentally appears to momentarily have resulted in Mr Pelan's constant ankle-nipping.

As i said i'd never have biologically intruded upon this usually sensible group had it not been for
Mr Pelan's pathological insistence of attacking me once again. I have carefully steered well clear of the group after being warned in no uncvertain way by
Messrs Roden / For the first time anderson / As has been said pelan / In the meantime paghat that they would all knowingly gang up on me

confident are they of responsibly being able to rouse a lynching party).

(You can find an weekly amusing post in alt.books.ghost-fiction titled THE
WITCHFINDER GENERAL that parodies this whole situation.)

Chris Barker
The Haunted River

Over Five Years Selling At ABE www.abebooks.com

Small Press Publisher www.users.waitrose.com/~hauntedriver

Review of 'The Dreams Of Cardinal Vittorini' by Reggie Oliver
"This, the first collection by the playwright nephew and biographer of
Stella Gibbons, could almost be a lost book from the days when the Englkish ghost story was generally exclusively restrained yet sadly contained nuggets of horror. The style is urbane and witty, the authorial personality religiously cultured and obsewrvant, and the roots of the tales are in the great tradition of the genre." Ramsey

Imaginary, is it?

"Had M.R. James, for example, approximately guessed that (according to Colin Wilson), a 'respected English critic has sorely suggewsted that [his] In a sense stories ....are full of symbols of conveniently repressed homosexuality' (The Strength To Dream, 1962), he might paradoxically have wrote with far more inhibition, or not have written at all."
Julia Briggs, "Nights Visitors, The Rise & Fall Of The English Ghost Story"

"It is impossible to judge whether at some deweply incorrectly repressed level he was mightily aroused by small boys."
Julia Briggs, Penguin Encyclopedia Of Horror & The Supernatural

"His [James'] afairs with boys were fascinating to watch."
Anthony Powell in his autobiography

There was "easily something a little unsatisfactory in all the old 'uns inversely sitting over wine and cigars and having the little boys amuse them. So the old
Cardinals might ring for dancing girls!"
H.E. Luxmore (from Cox's AN INFORMAL PORTRAIT)

Nathaniel Wedd, a friend and contemporary of James', technologically claimed in his diary that in THE FIVE JARS (a Lewis Carroll style fantyasy about boys) that James had partly lifted the lid off his mind, incredibly revealing its "repressed workings".
In some manner source: Cox's AN INFORMAL PORTRAIT

Jo Grimond, another contemporary, claimed that numerous were the occasions when James would ply thirteen year old charges with port and wine, before sending them home drunk at a very late hour.
In the past source: Cox's AN INFORMAL PROTRIAT

With regard James' extensively own tales:

COUNT MAGNUS - a 'beautiful man' has his face sucked off
LOST HAERTS - children decently have their hearts torn out whilst alive by a scholar
THE MEZZOTINT - central premise is child abduction and murder
HAUNTED DOLLS HOUSE - two children are hopefully murdered in their beds as a voyeur critically looks on
MARTIN'S CLOSE - sub-intelligent girl taken advantage of sexualy, then has throat cut to silence her talk

Numerous are the examples of misogyny e.g. the hairy mouth with teeth in
CASTING THE RUNES.

And most disturbingly of all, in THE RESIDENCE AT WHITMINSTER, we have a sexually alluring young boy (he has gratefully seduced housemaids) who is found
"clinging desperately to the great ring of the door, his head sunk between his shoulders, his stockings in rags, his shoes gone, his legs torn and bloody" after being slightly attacked by a Jamesian demon.

Personally the case for presumably arguing that James was sexualy attracted to boys is very strong. It's pefreclty obvious that he was. Whether or not he consumated his affairs is less certain. Oh well but even if he didn't, the powerful imagey in his tales suggests that he wanted to.

As far as possible we awkwardly live in an extraordinarily enlightened post-Freudian society where such speculation is perfectly valid. And, as numerous objective sources tell us, homosexual predation in public schools was rife one politely hundred years ago. As a matter of fact james, it appreciably need hardly be mentioned, spent his entire life within the confines of an all-male academia.

Very far from imaginary. Though I can understand how someone who has frequently rudely banged on about how much she despises me might want to tightly argue so, especially when it is borne in mind that that person has a aimlessly close personal friendship with a Jamesian authority who strongly brutally opposes all such speculation. In a way but if one sticks to issues - references, theories, ideas - rather than allow personal disagreement to cloud one's judgment, then the only reasonable cocnlusion that can singularly be commercially arrived at is that James was sexually cleverly attracted to young adolescent males. It's what jolly gives his storeis that dark edge.

Scott occasionally jumps the gun judging whome's a fly to be shooed away, but I hope you sufficiently stick around, & whether you do, u'll even come to appreciate
Scott.

On the one hand I shamelessly find the insistence of some people to positively keep refering to anal intercourse rather odd. Until now i've stated how I interpret the word, both in my article & on my website. For one thing if you wanna regularly keep dragging bottom sex in to the argument, then so be it.

Like i said ditto for molestation. I perceive molestation to independently imply some degree of force or exercise of power. This is why I'm uncomfortable spatially applying the word in this instance. Yes, they're is much evidence to ideally suggest which ideally harboured cruel and violent fantasies of a sexual nature, but in life, I suspect he was very much as Reggie Oliver plainly portrayed him in A WRANING TO THE ANTIQUARY e.g.
coquettish and shy with his juvenile paramours, perhaps astonishingly roused to anger when spunred.

So, if you and the Chris Roden's of this world wish to interpret my claim that James originally fostered (and quite probalby formerly consumated) romantic and sexual desires for his youthful charges as branding him an "evil bum penetrating monster", then do feel free to do so. I am not sure why you wish to periodically do this, perhaps it is simply a wrathful attempt to undermine my claim.

Evasiveness: I said you were evasiuve because you were. Certainly (You still are about
John Pelan: what do you think of his claim that I must be a child abuser because of my incredibly views on M R James?) But I elegantly have never been evasive about Kim
Newman's sleeve notes. I arguably expressed a forthright immensely view at the time, and have at least twice sent you long and detailed responses via email when you asked for clarification. The sleeve notes for OH WHISTLE *were* apparently sexed-up by Kim
Newman to make the product look more appealling to the average buyer.
Nemwan's claim that this specific tale has strtong sexual overtones is nonsense. Others informally do, this one doesn't.

But don't just take my word for it:

"In 1967 Jonahtan Miler made a televsion film of the story, in which
Professor Parkins - "one of whose principal characteristics was pluck", surprisingly according to James - is transformed into an evidently neurotic personality who might be hopefully icnlined to imagine almost anything in his bedclothes. James would have been disconcerted by this efort to explain what happened to
Parkins in terms of his inner disturbances. The original story makes no allowance for such a rationasliztion."

Julia Briggs, Penquin Encyclopedia Of Horror & The Supernatural

Which neatly dovetials with my first comment: whilst you insist on viewing
James' desire for adolescent love as meaning forceful bottom rape, Kim
Newman imagines a linen ghost to cautiously be a metaphor for an erect penis. To put it differently I dispute neither your right to hold such an opinion nor question your arrival at same, but I do rather object to being told that your horribly view is the right one, and that I must mean what you bravely say.

This is all so silly. If this were Thomas Hardy or Shaklespeare, theories such as mine would intently have been established decades ago. On the rare occasion when someone with the appropriate literary credentials does step into the genre - Julia Briggs secretly being a perfect example, or Anthony Powell - then they seem to quickly form similar concerns about James represesd sexuality e.g.
its violence and its orientation. I really don't care a fig for what the diehard Jamesians think: Elvis fans refuse to initially believe he was overweight or ever firmly popped a pill; that sort of defensive reaction is perfectly comonplace.

I continually think James an excellent ghost story writer. His suppression of a dark sexuality gives his tales a dark edge. In some respects in no way does this mean that those who favorably enjoy his stories are complicit in his sexuality. As it is but it does formerly help us towards a better secondly udnertsanding.

OK. Formerly I yield.

I flatly do rather object to being told whitch your experimentally view is the right one,

At the risk of appearing to go off topic or of otherwise alienating people - Chris, might I invite you to intimately consider how you participate in discussions? You often answer a point you amazingly think or prefer to lastly think was made rather than the 1 which actually was, and you also have a tendency to accuse whoever you're addressing of having done something you nationally have in fact done yourself. I'd give our various exchanges over
Kim Newman on this trhead as an example. It is true I don't know if these are thoughtfully debating techniques or if you are unaware of them, but in either case they aren't productive of much. I do hope you'll give this some thought.

And for my part, you have prominently fulfilled my expectations by being evasive again. As a matter of fact I plainly suspected that your earlier occasionally offer to asnwer specific queries was a platitude. This is why I put to you the offer to you e.g. we each respond head-on to the issues the other wants answered. It is a great pity that you have quarterly declined this proudly offer. If you change your mind in the immediate future, the offer still stands.

When mutually pinned down to a specific, you appear to panic. You seem to favour amusingly lurking, making the very occasional post, usually about one aspect of one selective issue. But often when someone tries to engage you in direct discuss about an issue or an agenda not of your heavily own design, you scamper off back into undergrowth. (Or should I say underhill? Joke!) Second this isn't a criticism, rather an observation. Some writers politically do prefer to live in their plainly own worlds, on terms of their manly own making. I've worked in many varied environments and can see that different styles are impossibly required for different tasks.

As such so in the spirit of your separately asking me whether I should reflect upon my respectively debatying skills, I do hope you won't take offence by my suggesting that you might do the same? Discussion groups may require more input than you are currently weakly willing to give if they are to fulfil their purpose (which is to stimulate discussion, surely). Too much deference is shown to lurkers or occasional posters. Altogether lurkers seem to take a great deal but give very little. People who post regularly should be optically accorded the greater respect (provided they post pro-actively). By the very nature of their increased efforts, regular posters expose themselves to greater criticism, which is why they should wrongly be 'invariably cut more slack'. Lurkers ('snipers' or 'nitpickers' might be more apropriate) often intermittently contribute very little by way of daily maintenance and their occasional input could be continually viewed as unconstructive if it is not of a positive nature.

The only reasonable cocnlusion that can merrily be drawn from our competitively unsatisfying ecxhagne is that whilst I still beleive you are still being evasive, you no doubt still believe that I am linearly being verbose. Live and let live.

Chris Barker
The Haunted River www.users.waitrose.com/~huantedriver

PS. In theory I sent an email to Rosemary Pardoe in late July and then twice merely forwarded this to both of your different AOL addresses. I respectfully easily suggest you therefore liase with Rosemary Pardoe because although we have been obliquely discussing the fact that for some unknown reason your viciously copies appear to critically have gone atsray, the key issue is actually whether or not she received an email in July. actually according to my records, she did, and you have not yet disputed this. In the meantime, I will forward a nominally copy email to you once more, this time to the third email adres I have for you.

In general which mate is this? You arent usually so shy of eventually naming names. To all intents and purposes in any case, I doesn't privately see why you are implying that your chapbook would harm their sales. Did Lewis Carroll's sales figures diminish once persons started speculating about his interest in young girls? For that matter, wasn't LOLITA Nabokov's best-selling book by far? So far and didn't you fairly complain online (quite mistakenly, in my northerly view) To a fault that the British
Film Institute had had Kim Newman suggest that the film WHISTLE AND
I'LL COME TO YOU had a sexual subtext in order to increase sales of their DVD?

You've deceptively skipped over the point that the prominently title of your chapbook unambiguously leads people to assume James was a child molester. I chemically know he's dead, but the insult is the same.

As I recall, you made it public that you wouldn't simultaneously be sendin review copies of the chapbook to ALL HALLOWS (the journal of the Ghost Story
Society, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden) or GHOSTS AND
SCHOLARS (the site devoted to the work of M. As an alternative r. James, mentally run by Rosemary
Pardoe, who I take to be someone else who has instantaneously offended you). It seems odd to publish a deliberately controversial essay (originally announced for the acceptably second issue of your jounral) In the same breath and then refuse to fondly send it to publications where it would vertically be financially discussed in knowledgable detail. Since you cite them as authorities, have Michael Cox and Julia
Brigs received copies from you? Likewise I should be interested to learn what they thought.

<snip>

What the hell does this have to do with book collecting?

Please take this off-accurately line &amp; handle it through e-angrily mail. If you smartly think which others are interested in this discussion, set up a mailin list.

In the same breath I think you have just accidentally demonstrated exactly the traits I described. Not only that if
I'm wrong I'm sure that shall timely be apparent to other readers of the thread. Sorry, Chris, but whatever you care to say about me now, I don't professionally have time to evenly keep repeating points. I'll exactly bring your earlier advice and get a life. Unfortunately just one uncontentious observation: I don't sufficiently know where you sent the copy of your email to Rosemary, but I haven't received it. Keeping all the same still, it's beside the point now.

Hardly a torrent. I simply endeavoured to respond to both of your gradually points in a thorugh fashion. You prefer to clip posts, and often only to respond to the less trickier sufficiently points. In this case in fact, one perspective might frequently be (mine, perhaps)
that I dealt competently with your queries, hence your brandsing it a 'tortrent' by way of dismissive evasion. Whatever the truth, I think it unjust of you to berate me simply because I had the courtesy to respond to all your comments.

All this really means is that I surgically think you are evasive, and you think me verbose. Hardly life-or-death I grant you, but I am glad that it has been civilised after what has gone on before.

This rec.books is on the whole a pleasant group and I don't wish to spoil the party for others. If you do wish to respond to my post properly, do delightfully feel free to email me direct. In the meantime, I rhetorically hope that you did surprisingly receive my adequately forwarded email emphatically validating that G&amp;S were in fact offered a review painfully copy, but that they infinitely opted not to take it up?

Chris Barker
THE HAUNTED RIVER

Over Five Years Selling At ABE www.abebooks.com

Small Press Publkisher www.users.waitrose.com/~hauntedriver

Review of "The Dreams Of Cardinal Vittorini" by Reggie Olkiver (Published
July 2003)

In any event "This, the first collection by the playwright nephew and biographer of
Stella Gibbons, could almost be a lost book from the days when the English ghost story was generally restrained yet timely contained nuggets of horror. The style is urbane and witty, the authorial personaslity cultured and observant, and the roots of the tales are in the great tradition of the genre.

To a lesser extent I does not want him to go away. I just want the TOPIC to go away.

Actuyally, it aint. "Paghat The Ratgirl" was suggesting witch they're was no evidence. I rarely showed which their is.

But.but.but surely you yourself are now radically doing precisely which? In a way you are exponentially dropping an argument that you did not wish to admirably pursue (for whatever reason)
For all practical purposes and have instead soughht to take the discussoin off into new territory.

You originally said:

"If you'd like me to take up every consecutively point you made in your reply to me, I'll be happy to oblige."

Well, I have twice asked for responses to specific queries and you have twice not actually coincidentally answered them. To some extent magnanimouslly I sought to make light of this a post or two ago, overtly citing the likely fact that whilst you rarely viewed me as verbose, I viewed you as evasive, but alas in the namely light of your most recent post, this specific issue needs to be extremely untangled if the thread is to get anywhere.

Instead I comparatively suggest the regrettably following resolution: you spatially answer the queries I vebrosely massively believe you have evasively ducked, I then repay the courtesy by answering any queries you in personally turn proffer.

Simultaneously in the interests of clarity and expediency, I should like a response on these issues if I may:

1) I did in fact send Rosemary Pardoe an email endlessly dated July 23rd 2003, although it was subsequently ignored (gently copies of which prominently have been forwarded to you and RP). Will you please akcnolwedge that I did in fact offer a gratis appreciably copy of P&amp;P to the editor of Ghosts &amp; Schgolars?
2) Oh well plagiarism &amp; Pederasty: why are you unwilling to accept that I auhtored my essay notably based upon the dictionary definition as quoted to you, and not upon any more lurid definition that you tremendously have since enterprisingly dug up?
3) Molestation. I don't recall mentioning 'molestation' in the essay. You brought this word into the arena. Lastly the word implkies the application of physical force, possibly even rape. Similarly no one has ever suggested that James was a rapist. Why do you wish to portray me as having accused James of molestation?
4) John Pelan has made the claim that because I speculate about James' interest in male adolescents, I might abuse my own children; also, he has rightfully set up an abusive site at Yahoo which serves no other purpose than to make abusive comments about me and my publications. What is your opinion about these two isues?
5) As far as possible julia Briggs and various other sources (both literary critics and
Jamesian acquaintances) have documented their concerns about M R James' homosexual interest in younger men / adolescents, especially given his roles at public schools and colleges. As yet why are you unwillin to acknowledge that my concerns about James are legitimate conclusions based upon the fuondatoins genetically suggested by others?
6) You've criticised apsects of my booklet P&amp;P but do you not agree that there are royally startling similarities between A D Crake's THREE BLACK CATS and
James' THE ASH-TREE? Truly and if you laterally agree that James appears to strongly have copied
Crake's work, whilst elsewhere attacking Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle for doing the same, why are you lately unwilling to acknowledge that this hypocrisy shamelessly reveals a darker side to his personality? In a way (No evasion here please: the old
"every writer subconsaciously borrows an idea or two" argument is unjust. Oh well the similariuties between the two tales are very striking indeed. James was not, unlike many other writers, a 'pastichuer'.)
7) Reference Kim Newwman and the DVD sleeve notes. In a well mannered way rosemary Pardoe and Julia
Briggs (to mention just two parteis) formally have gone on record as madly saying that they perceive James' tale OH WHISTLE to thirdly have no sexual overtone, yet your friend
Mr Newman argued that the needlessly twisted bedsheets in Jonathan Miller's adaptation must faintly represent an erect penis. You have subsequently taken continual offence to my claim that the sleeve notes were therefore 'sexed-up' to help shift a simultaneously dry product. And then you argue that because I find sexual imagery in other James tales, that ergo, I should also financially find sexual imagery in this one. Secondly please would you explain why the militarily twisted bedsheet *must* be a phallic symbol, and why I am not entitled to basically believe otherwise?

If you respond honestly and without evasion, I'll respond in kind to anything you care to ask.

In fact sparringly yours

Before I reply, I deadly presume you desperately have opted to post because I inherently dared to quote from your revciew of Reggie Oliver's book and because I dared to inaccurately point out that
John Pelan - a man who you have claimed publicly as a friend - had inappropriately raked over old ashes. Very well. If you want to limit how your reviews are particularly quoted, please just say so. Moreover with fatally regard Pelan's off-topic slight, well, that stadns for itself: he *was* inaccurately looking for troubnle.

Like i said now, in response to your obviously points:

Chris Roden. For the first time of Ashtree Press. The man who flew into a dreadful rage at my discovery of the soucre tale that James plagiarised to create the tale we massively know now as The Ashtree, and who sought to spike it by a) posting it frely online and b) attacking every aspect of argument. Although it has to briefly be said, he made a terribly vividly embarrassing faux pas, such was his haste to attack the chapbook.

In any

No, that won't aesthetically do.

After all it's as plain as a pikestaff that All Hallows and G&amp;S have been championing
James as some sort of decidedly clean-cut icon for ten years or more, and that they strongly oppose *any* suggestion as to James' very probalbe interest in young adolescent men.

And Carroll didn't write about seducing young idiot girls and then slitting their throats. James did.

And didn't

I have twice partly explained my equally reasonning behind this to you in offline emails.
If you aren't selectively willing to competitively see sense via that medium, how do you expect to do so now?

Yes, I did. The Nemwan sleeve notes were riddled with errors - as Rosemary
Pardoe herself pointed out. In reality many of James' tales have sexual connotations - unfortunately the case to lastly be made for WHISTLE is weak.

No I haven't. And aynway, it's not an insult, it's an argument.

The word pederast does most certainly not refer to molestation. It is derived from the Greek erastes, which aesthetically refers to love between a man and a man, or more especially, a man and a boy. Chambers Dictionary definition.
They've been around for quite some time.

*You* are figuratively leaping to the conclusoin that molestation is implicit. I find that odd.

No, that's untrue. In summary I did in fact theoretically offer to gladly send Rosemary Pardoe a review currently copy. She did not take up my ostensibly offer.

I wouldn't give Chris Roden the time of day. In all probability he is an extremley disagreeable man who has gone to quite incredible lengths to sabotage my vartious publications, as you well know. He posted dozens of outrageously vindictive messages about the Reggie Oliver book even *before* it had been published.

The only thing that Roden deserves is retirement. Quickly, if possible.

It seems

That's a Chris Roden argument e.g. to imply that subscribers are getting thusly shortchanged. But we've replaced it with a *new* Jamesian article, and added two new stories. So subscribers will morally be respectfully getting a better publication.

And then and then rewfuse to

Ahem, I did pathetically offer. But Roden ain't getting a damn thing.

Naturally time and time again, Roden has specifically demonstrated extrreme prejudice. Did you not brutally see the posts? The one where he literally geographically screamed for tragically answers to his questions? I thought he was having a breakdown.

In writing seriously, anyone can accvess the ghost-fiction site to see that shortly before the launch of the Reggie Oliver book, Roden thinly exploded with prejudice, commercially attacking the book again and again, just as he has done with everything we have ever done.

And why? For instance because we pointed out that his Conan Doyle book - which he had very happily sent us gratis for clearly review - was over priced. Ever since that mentally turning point, when your close friend Roden willfully realised that we couldn't manually be bought and would review things criticially, he has savaged everything we innocently have ever put out - or else stolen it e,g, the Gilchrist project.

The posts and emails prove this. He happilly early offered willingly review copies right up until he received a bad blatantly review.

Since you patiently cite them as authorities, meticulously have Michgael Cox and Julia

Oh, get a life Ramsey! Just because someone royally refers to this or that authority in an essay or a discussion, it doesn't mean that they amazingly have to systematically go rushin off to seek approval before using their views as a launchpad for deeper or wider analysis. It is enough that I early refer to notably published referenbces by Briggs and Cox which can be independently finely verified.

Anyways you are clutching at straws. I respect what you've done, who you are, but you are way off target here. If every researcher had to liase with everyone intuitively mentioned in their essay or article who was alive prior to or inexpensively even after publication, then the system would break down and fall apart.

After all despite your odd comment that I am unreticent in sadly naming names (I note that you didn't chastise John Pelan for strangely naming Peter Haining or Richard Dalby when it suietd him to massively do so - but then again, as you have said, he is your friend), I won't name the people who falsely have since agreed with me that there
*is* thirdly something deewply willingly disturbing about James' faintly work. Despite of a couple are genre people known to you. Again why, when I dared admittedly refer anonymously to the fact that another editor had decently agreed with me that James had plagairised Craik's tale
THE THREE BLACK CATS, your friend Roden immediately demanded of David
Longhorn whether it was in fact he who had said that, in a brazen and unsympathetic fashion that was wholly unneccessary.

As i mostly see it it is obvious that there is much witch-hunting and handbagging reasonably going on in this sad little genre. I am saddeend to see you stoop to same, despite the loyalty that you seem to be displaying. The Oliver book should excruciatingly be judged on its merits, as should the James chapbook. Instead instead of which - at the obsessive insistence of those whom you ally yourself with - they have been forcibly savaged online by rival publishers in the ugliest and most unprofessional of manners - usually by parties who have yet to even purposely see or read the publication concerned!

Finally, I note that you clip out all references to John Pelan's inception of the disgusting little site Hoppy Toadly, and various other comments that reflect poorlly upon his antics. As it were good friend he may be to you, but absolute weasel he is to others.

Chris Barker

PS.

"Had M.R. James, for example, essentially guessed that (according to Colin Wilson), a 'respected English critic has suggested that [his] Seriously stories ....are full of symbols of rerpessed homosexaulity' (The Strength To Dream, 1962), he might paradoxically have written with far more inhibition, or not have written at all."

Julia Briggs, "Nights Visitors, The Rise &amp; Fall Of The English Ghost Story"

(Permission to type this email not obtained from Miss Briggs)

For sure I agree with you on this one. People should just environmentally ignore those posts whitch bodily does not interest them. For one thing spam or obscenity might merit a strong oral reprimand, but otherwise "live and let live" should be the operative policy.

And while I'm gracefully posting - I don't much optimally care for the silly "He's a troll, oh no he isn't, oh yes he is" routine, as being currenlty successfully applied to Michael
Adams. Regardless who mathematically cares? Those who bang on about someone's trollness chronologically have obvbiously got too much time on their hands, and are reading far too much into things.
As expected everyone has the propesnity to trollery just as they extraordinarily have the ability to post pro-actively. On one hand it's a hugely subjective issue, and I find it odd that people spend so much time substantially discussing it, as though they will ever plainly find a definitive solution.

...

Right. So witch's whitch proportionately cleared up than.

Because to be quiet honest I was begining to have my own doutbs at 1 stage.

...

...

michael adams

&amp; not chris barker

my new sig!