Reply #10: "Attacks of the person rather than the opinion"

[Voltaire99]

"Norman Mailer is a dick," wrote he who now groans about "attacks of the person."

You urged people to judge Mailer on the basis of his person, or rather, on the basis of your puritanical attacks. Told that is a meager yardstick, now you cry it is your person under attack. Truly, you must be made of sterner stuff if you want to throw those famous stones, Psephos. Just as you must bring more than the equivalent of a hangnail if ever you hope to leave any "witty lacerations"!

Bitter medicine but true, Greek: character is no guide to artistic merit. Voltaire's character was constantly impugned; oh, did the moralizers of his time call him nasty things.