I was so thrilled to discover today that a reader and correspondent has his own website and that he has volunteered to proof some of my work.

Just finished America in Chains. Your epilogue to America in Chains was powerful. Had me exclaiming ‘Hell, yeah!’

Taken me a while to read it as I am also still pursuing the Great Books track – went back to Gilgamesh and Shihjing. Now on Greek lyric poetry – Archilochos, Alcman and Sappho – pretty racy stuff. Next stop is Aesop. Managed to do all of Aeschylus, too. Started the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but gave up on it. Herodotus and Thucydides aren’t so far away, so I hope to catch you up with the Myth of the 20th Century dudes. One of my quarantine ‘sperg projects is to take the various Great Books lists (including Harold Bloom’s 1000+ list) and organising them in chronological order. I should hope to publish it eventually on my blog:

BTW, your recent appearance on The Third Rail was excellent. You are definitely up at the top of the list of people I would have a beer with if I could. I might even buy you a round. 😊

Also, if you need proof reading and the like, let me know. Happy to fix your typos as I’m a pretty good Grammar Nazi.

All the best,

-American by upbringing, British by birth, Southern by the grace of God, living in the South of England, wedged between the sea and the South Downs.

If I recall correctly, Archilochos means Squad-leader, he dated Sappho, and Aesop lived as a slave on Lesbos at about the same time as they.

I'm thrilled to have so many fellow readers of the ancients now and also volunteer proof readers and editors.

I recall from Beowulf that who would have a beer with you was a measure of warrior status among our ancient kin.

I am really looking forward to the great book chronology and am thrilled that you liked America in Chains. I forget prologues and epilogues I write for books, but do recall that I was facing the very real specter of intergenerational guilt when I completed that book in hopes of making it the second and last of the series, even as it was dawning on me that the subject matter was going to demand more of me than I wanted to give. It's like writing fantasy to escape the hateful world had been a cruel ruse that was just looping me back around to chronicle the crimes of the system that had spawned me as a crooked peg ill-fitted to occupy a hole in its board. I was getting over the depressing fact that writing Plantation America was, in terms of being a writer, my duty and my doom woven together on that wicked whore Civilization's frightful loom.