-----Original Message----- From: Scottie Bowman <bowman@mail.indigo.ie> To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu> Date: Saturday, July 25, 1998 2:50 AM Subject: pashun 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. Yes, of course it is. However, we all certainly cannot do that. Your points above are well taken. Indeed, my thoughts concerning reading were greatly influenced by teachers that I respected and hoped to some day come close to their level of experience and thought. Patrick