An acquaintance of mine works as the lead violinist in the Radio Eireann string quartet. In the early days of our friendship, I was trying in my usual phoney way to give the impression of being a very sensitive lover of music but - not wishing to get out of my depth in chamber music (joaque) - one who felt handicapped by a very wobbly understanding of the `structure' of pieces. I was never sure what was the first statement, second statement, recapitulation & so on. I really only responded to the toons. This was actually more honest than it must have sounded. With an extremely derisive look, Gregory told me to stop being so `intellectual' about the whole thing. I was spoiling it for myself. Certainly, he said, what he himself was primarily interested in was the *emotional* content of the music. Coming out of his particular mouth, that remark left me speechless. It was particularly ironic, though, because Greg's position on music was more or less identical with mine on writing. In the recent exchanges on Salinger criticism, there seems to be a general feeling that, while a very great deal of it is garbage there are some absolute gems that can only deepen & enrich one's enjoyment of the original. Anyone who shuns these is simply choosing the dumb, empoverished option. What's the point of a Salinger list except to exchange views & introduce new insights into the reading of the man ? When, once on the Hemingway list, I questioned the whole critical process I was told that what I seemed to be advocating was the `point & grunt' school of literary appreciation, analagous - I presume - to a gorilla surveying a pile of bananas. But isn't it possible that there is, indeed, something to be said for this approach ? Perhaps there *is* something basically destructive in any analytical process. When a writer has a technique that I wish to emulate or steal from - like old man Hem, or Graham Greene, for example - I can't stop myself getting out the microscope. But immediately, something is lost forever. The willing suspension of disbelief is no longer possible. Just as too many films about the life & machinery backstage have destroyed any enjoyment I might have had in the `living theatre', so I can't really ever again get that tingle up my spine when I read about Pilar's young days in Valencia, or Jake Barnes walk down a street in Paris on a spring morning - because I now understand rather too well how it's done. Critics & scholars must eat, of course. But I wonder if they could possibly be kept in reservations where they can work away & talk to each other in a protected environment & where members of the general public would be allowed admission only after careful screening as to their motives & where the appropriate inoculations had been completed. Or maybe we already have such places ? Scottie B.