Fwd: From Barrett Brown

If you'd like, I can talk to a couple of literary agents I know up here about your upcoming book to gauge their interest and we can start thinking about a book proposal, which I'd be happy to assist you with. I can guarantee that you'll get an agent rather quickly and that a publisher will pick it up shortly afterwards and offer you a pretty nice advance, so it would definitely be worth your time to start jotting down ideas and otherwise putting together notes. It wouldn't take me more than an afternoon to put together a ten-page proposal, and I know of at least one agent that I've worked with before who'd jump at the chance to take a look.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:26 PM
Subject: Re: From Barrett Brown
To: r.s.mccain@att.net

Sir-

The word "offer" does not necessarily entail anything positive at all, much less anything along the lines of "charity" or "generosity." Notice that I have used the term interchangeably with "challenge" and that I originally compared it to a duel, for instance. I am not extending this offer as any sort of good deed, although to the extent that you are actually in the right, such an offer as this would indeed be to your benefit. I am extending it to you for the same reason that you are declining it - because I would win any such exchange.

Regards,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:07 PM, <r.s.mccain@att.net> wrote:

"Offer"? As if you were the soul of generosity, and I in need of your philanthropy. Do your work, do it well, collect your pay and knock it off with the humanitarian posturing. You've never done an unselfish act in your life, and by pretending otherwise, you undermine your own credibility. Better to be honestly selfish than to be falsely charitable.

-- RSM