"Wow, that was awesome. Funny and mean and roastastic." 

"I have just finished reading through the latest, greatest eyeshot roasting of NP.  I really enjoy following the links and reading parts of everyone's websites. It is the best most fun of eyeshot."

"Interestingly, when somebody mentioned in an e-mail that your piece sounded mean, I defended yours as being most roastworthy because you maturely attacked his writing, his originality, his creativity, while everybody else was mostly taking cheap shots at the doughy, balding appearance." 

"I thought it was funny, but I also felt for Mr. Pollack. I like the both of you and your forces."

"Anyway, I don't really have that much to say about the roast.  It's too bad that Neal got upset but I guess that just speaks to anybody who puts up a big ego front, they've got something more delicate inside to protect. And of course it's a good lesson to learn that even if you have a book deal and are on the Daily Show and get your book reviewed in the NYT and write for Vanity Fair and on and on that doesn't bring peace of mind.  The thing I don't really get about roasts is that they can be so hard to separate the real criticism from the fond kick in the pants."

"I thought the roast was beyond the pale but not enough to waste time arguing about it."

"You crossed a line with your roast, the baby line (and some other smaller lines, yes, but I can't believe you brought the kid into it), and no matter what Neal says, it's not that easy to tiptoe back across the baby line. I think that's the first rule of Catskills Comedy Stylings: leave the family out of it. Your roast was scary mean, Lee, especially to anyone who doesn't know you as well as I do-- it was strangely even mean to Hodgman, I thought, and accusing someone you admire of being a big Neal Pollack wannabe faker is a weird way to demonstrate that-- and even though I know you well and I > was able to look through all your verbiage and see that deep down you thought you were being cute, I was kind of horrified.  It's just that you are, as always, too smart for your own good, stringing together these words-- and so many of them!-- to put across an idea that seems clear to you, but no one else is going to take the time to read every single word and then read them again (this time for hidden meanings), because it's a website, and people skim, and they see "jew bastard" and game over. Add to that my increasing belief that if you have to explain something you've written in order for it
to be effective, then it's not good writing-- because you can't email or call or stand next to everyone who's ever going to read it, waiting for them to finish so you can say, see, what I MEANT by all that was... So while I could see you smiling to yourself while you wrote the roast, thinking, yes, this is it! and never suspecting parts of it could be hurtful, I unfortunately must concur with the opinion at hand, which is: you went too far, and it is bad."

"oh boy.  it's weird, i think, that you had me read it and i was like yeah, whatever, it's lee doing this online mean thing that he and his online friends like to do, but it just seemed so fluffy to me i guess. it never even crossed my mind that bringing in his kid was going too far -- i don't quite understand why that's such a taboo, i guess. honestly, i just frankly don't get it at all, any of it."

i just don't understand how the fuck your dumb thing is any more offensively dumb than:  "When I heard Neal was a Jew, I was pretty surprised because he sucks his own cock just like a Catholic Mexican." or "However, if your primary source of sustenance is your own disease-ridden semen, you just might be Neal Pollack" or "Neal Pollack is one of the wisest, most beautiful people I've ever met. He knows the meaning of life, you know? He tried to tell me once, but I couldn¹t understand him with his dick in his mouth" or  "When Neal says, "We need to kill all of them fags. We need to kill fat fags, skinny fags, rich fags, handsome fags, misunderstood fags, paraplegic fags, African American fags" or " Neal Pollack, the greatest living American douchebag" or "Do you know how to get a grown man's penis unstuck from any or all orifices of a kitten fetus? If you do, that'd be sweet. I'm kind of in a spot here. Much love, NP" or "Okay, back to bathing in my own diarrhea. Toodle-Loo! NP" or  "I spent all of my money lobbying to make child abuse legal. By the way, you were right! The doctor confirmed that I have the smallest penis on the planet and that I'm gay and that I poop my pants all the time and whatnot" or "If I'm not busy smearing cole slaw all over my butt and masturbating my penis" or "If I'm not trying to have sex with animals, food or other things I shouldn't try to have sex with, I listen to this constantly" or
"Neal Pollack... whose asshole outstretches the distance of Newfoundland, whose gential sores went unchecked for six months all the while serving more women than mcdonald¹s does cheeseburgers" or "I haven't seen a word from him. I guess he has a dick in his mouth" or, or, or . . .  OK, and now that i have looked at all the inanity that was written for this completely inane project in the first place, and wasted this much time even just THINKING about neal pollack and any of the other dumb people who bothered to waste their time thinking and WRITING about neal pollack, i am officially through. and if you insist on being part of any more of this completely juvenile, inane, idiotic "community" of people who have nothing better to do with their time and no better ideas than to spend their time making fun of neal pollack, then i, for one, don't want to hear about it.  AND, probably, if i were you (which clearly i am not) i would take your roast thing off the web entirely because it is dumb, and of no value, literary or otherwise, and put a thing up on eyeshot or send a letter to all your mailing list that says earnestly and honestly that you sincerely apologize for your piece and then devote yourself to writing that, at the very least, tries not to do any more damage in the world than is there already. do something better with your time. please . . .do something better than this with yourself . . ."

After it came down . . .

"Come on, man! You caved! What a wuss that guy is. Anyway, I understand. When people are that sensitive, I can understand not wanting to make more trouble than necessary. Still. It’s a shame; it was a great piece."

"Wow. don't hate yourself TOO much! Now I feel bad for you :( "

"Klein, you sap. I hear you omitted some of your stunning
words for the sake of Mr. Pollack? Terrible. Awful. Tragic. You're bigger and better than that.  Your piece was everything that we could've hoped to write ourselves and you clearly legitimized the whole thing with what you wrote."

"I don't know if you need to flagellate yourself so harshly. The problem for me from the beginning was the impression I had that you had taken the roast opportunity to really air a lot of sincere personal and critical grievances. That and the child/jew-bastard thing, which seemed tasteless to me, but certainly within your rights to use if that's how you felt.  But as much as I didn't like some things you said, I hope you know that I certainly had no problem with your expressing them. Now I realize you meant the piece to be taken with salt (or did you?--I guess I'm still not clear)."

"Well, I'm sorry to see it go, but I sure understand why you did. I hope you've saved the file someplace, though, for the eventual tell-all on VH1's Behind the Roast."

"heh. did he email you again or something? i emailed him and he seemed pretty peeved by the whole roast thing. but he also tried to sourly-toughly downplay it after i told him that the roasters probably didn't mean much harm. couple of interesting things from my perspective: 1) it probably helped him. he'll be back to his old shenanigans in a few months; he can't deny his personality, which is custom-made for seeking attention via the web. and this has served as a sort of bridge 
-- don't forget about neal! there's no such thing as bad press, in other words. that's one reason i thought he was behind it, 2) when you engage in the type of writing he does, you leave yourself open to attack, even if it's tongue-in-cheek. when you boast of a giant ego, even if you're kidding, you leave yourself ripe for potshots to bring you down to size, even if you're already relatively small, and (3) it was quite a good, scathing thing that you wrote -- mean but funny, going a bit too far with the kid thing but not going nearly as far as he's gone in attacking public figures, and turning a "neo-literary feud" into a sort of trash-talking brooklyn thing. i enjoyed the read, mouth agape. i hope you are keeping it somewhere for 
publication at a later date -- your memoirs or something? did someone give you a tough time about this? i just thought it was from left field, that's all. and collectively, with the others, like sort of a web riot, cyber-stoning neal for laughs. but i also think this christmas-spirit move is more along the lines of 
your personality -- being the paramedic of the underground lit community, out to help people and literature in truly good and impressive ways."

"What better way to make ammends than to do an Eyeshot Escort thing on Mr. Pollack. It would be ironic, sort of."