Dear Mr. Bernstein:

    At the request of your publisher and our client, my colleagues and I have now read and discussed the typescript of your book. We are pleased to report that, with the exception of some isolated sections which we will specify, the book is not, in our opinion, actionable and should not expose you to litigation when published. It is a work of scholarly analysis, thoroughly documented, and even though much of it is pungently expressed, it lies well within the area of fair comment. You have obviously “done your homework,” amassed considerable research, and consistently cited “chapter and verse,” so to speak, in tracing the sources of Avery Bream’s work. Your extensive parallel excerpts from his writings and the writings of others, from which you demonstrate his were derived, put you on firm legal, as well as literary, ground.

    These parallels of style and subject matter are most impressive. Your own cleverness is rivalled only by that of Mr. Bream himself. I refer to his technique of borrowing a plot from one writer and retelling it in the style of another, thus achieving an artful act of camouflage undetected until now. I was astonished to learn, for instance, that his most famous best-seller, Evil Star, is practically a carbon copy of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, done in the style (or, as you put it, “filtered through the prism”) of James Branch Cabell. It was likewise illuminating to discover that his acclaimed Midnight Mushrooms is little more than Othello with the races switched, told in the manner of early Saroyan, and with no acknowledgement to Shakespeare (unless we count the title, a quotation from The Tempest); and that his Pristine Christine is none other than the Agatha Christie classic, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, as it might have been written by Burroughs (you should clarify as to whether you have reference to William or to Edgar Rice) and with the Christine of the title (a play on Christie?) taking the place of the original victim. We suggest a title change, however, for Chapter III, in which the bulk of these and other parallels are cited. Even though The Thieving Magpie is the title of a famous opera, words like “thief” should be avoided...

... Are you sure of your facts (p. 201) when you describe Bream “running from bookstore to bookstore, spending his entire advance check buying up copies of his novel to get it on the [bestseller] list...”? What proof of this could you provide, if challenged? On the same page, how can you possibly know that he “not only wined and dined” but also “tickled more than the fancy” of the “aging female critic” who, according to you, “bears a startling resemblance to Samuel Johnson”? Moreover, if we understand what you are suggesting in the “tickled” line, does this not contradict the allegation in your p. 492 footnote (see below)? Please think about these points carefully.