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To Mr. The New York Observer says... I get backlash: it's easy, de rigeur. But you say: "the triangle of who the author is, what he is writing about, and what the end result is-- and, as the Observer puts it-- the unreality and tackiness of that end result. The author is in a priveleged place in society-- a Princeton grad; lives well; lives in a great neighborhood; has an adoring following at so young an age; has money; hasn't lived through a war; hasn't lived through poverty; hasn't experienced the downfalls and disappointments that come in later years and from struggle,etc. What he is writing about is all that is opposite to his world and experience." Is J S Foer not a Jewish American whose grandfather survived the Ukrainian pogroms but lost his family? Does he not have a relationship to the events of 9-11 living in Brooklyn in its aftermath? Since when do we police the credentials of our fiction writers? Unreality? Which version of reality do you authenticate? Respond to the writing, sirs. After all, was Shakespeare properly credentialed, with only his smattering of Greek & Latin? J S Foer, it strikes me, is writing some great fiction, and he's being treated -- to the dismay of literary quid nuncs -- like a rawk star. Once popular, well remunerated, the backlash says: No longer anguished, No longer literary. The bigger question in the art lover's emotional economy is, I s'pose, whether a rich person can think a profound thought.