What Would Hawthorne Say to Aaron Barlow and Scott McLemee?

Aaron, sorry for what I said about your ancestor in "P's Correspondence"--I was trying to do a Poe send-up, and, well, it took on a life of its own. Actually, I was just trying to answer Scott's question about 9/11 novels by reference to the impossibility of treating the Mexican War in epic poetry. Things happened. No hard feelings?