pashun

Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Sat, 25 Jul 1998 07:50:00 +0000

	I for one find it hard to ignore a cry from the heart such as 
	Patrick has just sent us.

	All my instincts are on his side.  I doubt if anyone on this list 
	has been more dismissive of academic critics than I have.  
	And I certainly share his weariness as the next load of fatuity 
	arrives from the constructionists or demolitionists or whomever.

	Where I begin to have a problem is his suggestion that it's all 
	much of a muchness & that his taste or my taste merits just 
	the same respect as anyone else's.  There were certainly people 
	in my life - even one or two teachers - who had read more, 
	lived more, & exposed their sensibilities to a wider range 
	of experiences than I had.  And whose judgments (of books, writers, 
	perhaps life in general) I came to see were `sounder' than my own 
	had originally been.

	I can think of quite a number of books which seemed initially 
	unreadable but which later became some of my richest possessions. 
	(Marcel Proust & Thomas Mann to name just four.)  I only persisted 
	with them because I thought they would be good for me.

	Patrick implies that reading with 'passion' is the thing to do.  
	I'm not so sure.  A great many people can do that.  Is there any 
	special merit in it ?  I'd have thought, in a way, this list is 
	packed with Toms, Dicks & Harriets who read Salinger with passion.

	What's much rarer & much more valuable in my mind is writing 
	with the stuff.

	Scottie B.