It wasn’t criticism it was praise. My mother used to say you know an idea is brilliant when you say, ‘That’s so obvious, why didn’t I ever see it before’... What you wrote was beautifully crafted.
pundit - like a joke with a great punch line that you didn’t see coming until it’s said and then you see all the hints that make it obvious...
Guys like H. L. Mencken did that for a living.
Now maybe, in our age of DEI, literary criticism is viewed as unholy and criminal prejudice against authors who are just trying to make a living... or some such nonsense.
Suffice it to say: I treated your gracious comments for what they are -- honest praise -- and I'm happy my words worked for you.
And given that we have a 12 hour time lag between my visits to FR in Japan and yours in America, it may take a long time to get responses back and forth.
But let's keep our candid dialogs going...