ONE MORE TIME . . .

Sir: I now see Mr Poole's point (PNR 44). It would not be enough to print his review of Re-Reading English. What is needed is a full-dress edition, with variants, marginalia, deletions, emendations and a full history of previous non-publication. An Appendix might reprint all previous correspondence from Mr Easthope's friends, including Mr Poole. A second Appendix would include all Mr Easthope's own replies, saying he wasn't replying and telling us where he came in, with dates, etc.

This would make up at least one Special Number of PNR, and might succeed in not containing a single example of irony. It would sell forever, with Supplements. And no one need ever talk about anything else again. You must know it's a winner, Sir.

University of Warwick CLAUDE RAWSON

Sir: Mr Rupert Murdoch, we know, takes a close interest in all his publications. He is no doubt especially interested in the Times Literary Supplement. When he picked up from his local bookshop Re-Reading English and settled down that evening to read it, after dinner, he was staggered to see the entire foundation of English studies-which are, we know from his product, dear to him-threatened by a critical conspiracy the magnitude of which he had not previously recognized. And so he commanded open war on all fronts, and Mr Poole was the first victim.

How much more space can you afford to devote to this conspiracy?
Geneva WALTER BAUM

JAMES MERRILL

Sir: Dennis Keene's dismissal of Judith Moffett's Introduction to James Merrill's poetry (PNR 44) includes this attempt at sneering certitude: 'Thus the main function of the book is to give idle people information about things they have not read . . .'. But a little later he himself confesses to having 'fallen asleep on the three occasions' he tried to finish Merrill's trilogy The Changing Light at Sandover. I think Keene is the real idler here, not only because he confuses polemic with criticism (you could discover 'megalomania', 'fascist ideas' and 'Star Wars' in the Divine Comedy if you were naive enough to look for them) but also because he assumes that an egregious moral arrogance plus cloth ears equals unimpeachable critical acumen. Nothing he says about Merrill's poetry is either just or considered. Perhaps he hopes a cloak of generalization (see for example that ridiculous conjunction 'boringly well made') will somehow conceal his carelessness. Unfortunately the quotation from From the Cupola gives the game away. For all its brevity this is so patently good that you almost laugh aloud at Keene's ponderous disapproval. Can't the man hear that thin and eerie assonantal music? Can't he sense the hint of synaesthesia in 'Din of shimmerings'? Or feel the delicate dissolution behind the enjambment (it is 'stilled' by the way, not 'still')? But no, he has fallen asleep again, lulled by the twin sirens of 'bad taste' and 'sub-academia'. Meanwhile the rest of us can get on with giving Merrill's poetry the careful attention he deserves.
Cowfold, Sussex D. W. HARTNETT

The General Editor writes: Dennis Keene is not alone in his reading of the passage of Merrill alluded to. 'The rest of us' in D.W.Hartnett's letter will have to exclude me. The misquotation in Dennis Keene's review was, incidentally, not his carelessness but my own, and I regret it.