One disadvantage to being a writer, as compared to a musician, or an actor, is the delay between writing something and hearing back from a reader is so long that, by the time a book is published, sold, and read, you can't even remember writing it. You're several books beyond what is being commented on.

But writing and publishing online, in real time, means you get feedback online, in real time, too.

I just posted the picture of me and Balder watching my books burn, then the critical appraisal of Evil Genius and Open Book, and after I posted "Evil Genius and Open Book," I saw that I had email, and read, from a reader,

Hey Jack,

Just a quick note to say the picture you published in the latest chapter of the latest book is extraordinary. I don't know why, but it moved me. I can just imagine your ambivalence at the sight of your own books burning.

I tried to remember the famous artist who burned his paintings, but when I Googled it, I came up with so many I gave up the search.

Anyway, glad to hear that Balder and Owen salvaged some of the books from the fire.

I continue to be an avid reader. No day would be complete without its morning dose of coffee and diatribe. Enema Verite is just what the doctor ordered for a good soul cleansing! I hope you got some "gratisfaction" from the book dealer who wrote about buying out your inventory on Amazon.com. I think that was a high compliment.

Then, after some personal information, bringing me up to date on what he is up to, he wrote,

But enough about all that. Will conclude by saying I think your latest work is very solid; a well-constructed revue of all the themes you have been working at the last few years, as well as some new insights into what it was all about. Insightful and makes for some very good reading.

Thanks for all your hard work.

In other words, he gets it.

He sees what I am doing.

I am not just repeating myself, and playing old licks. I am restating themes, and seeing new relations among existing elements as I add new elements to the structure.

Everything I add changes the relation of existing elements to each other, and the whole, and I add to it every day, like Kurt Schwitters adding to his Schwitters-column, or merzbau, destroyed my Allied bombing during World War II.

You don't write a book in a vacuum.

You write it in the context of what happened to the last 273 books you wrote, and your hopes for the book that you are in, as tempered by the annealing flame of experience, which is a damper on optimism and unchecked hope. The bombs over Hanover, raining down.

Everybody ought to have a book-burning every now and then.

It reminds you what kind of a world you're writing in.

A world of Rush Limbaugh listeners. George Bush voters.

Book-burners. Scopes Trial people.

But with a few real readers scattered here and there.

Thanks for your support.

It means a lot.