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.