"This is the e-mail autoreply that, until recently, one got within minutes when trying to get in touch with Professor Rash at Western Carolina University--a bouncing message that apparently experienced little change over time.
[...]
Over the past fifteen years or so, Ron Rash has, indeed, mostly been either writing or editing a book, or touring both the United States and the world--obviously not his favorite aspect of his job as a writer, as implied by the comparison with comatose Edgar Allan Poe. He obviously enjoys cultivating the myth of his being a mountain man who is more familiar with the company of bats, frogs, or bears, for that matter, than with modern technology. What this sketchy self-portrait also reveals is that the writer has a particularly keen ear for sounds; it seems he cannot help producing assonance and alliteration (erase, displace, replace, deface): when receiving this message, there is no doubt one was being bounced back, but at least it was in music"--
