Correspondence

...Although dealing with them is more fun in the country than in the city, we both know that they have no right to exist so I believe you really ought to stick to that theme rather than slough them off on us...

...Lukacs is entitled to say that he disagrees with the conclusion drawn by Smith and those "many historians," but it seems to me that he is not entitled to call Smith's book "third-rate" unless he furnishes his evidence, a procedure which plainly would have been out of place in his article...

...I would also be vastly surprised...

...Much of the merit of the book centers on the irony of two of the three surviving artifacts of the world being so bad, and the third (the account of the physical end of the world) not being much better...

...The article by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter on "Polling the Future" (TAS, August 1983) was said to be part of a larger study of "elites and social change" sponsored by Smith College, Columbia, and George Washington U. The conclusion, based on surveys comparing journalism students and businessmen, is that the "current revival of traditional attitudes will prove to be even more shallow than the modest revival of the 1950s...

...Like abandoned housedogs once they get into the wild, they romp and weave (look, no hands...

...How can an article bottomed in large part on a sampling of two schools in New York City purport to reflect the "Nation's Pulse," your department in which it was published...

...down narrow blacktops, at 22mph in 45mph zones...

...But since I'm writing you anyhow -thanks for publishing my favorite magazine...

...His statement therefore becomes what the young people call a cheap shot...

...J.C...

...There are other schools "out there," you know, such as the top journalism schools at Northwestern, Missouri, and Stanford, and a host of business administration schools in the South, West, and Midwest, including the one in your own backyard...

...They often move in packs, especially the deadly serious exercise quacks (who can be spotted by the little water bottle on their frames) who know that bounty hunters like me will roar down on lone cyclists, horn blasting and the cross hairs of my Oldsmobile hood ornament centered exactly 8 inches left of their left pedal...

...That is good writing...

...Vernon W. Glasser Palo Alto, California...

...The irony would be lost if the cultural remains of the world were masterpieces...

...I have learned to hate them because I drive country lanes...

...I don't know what sampling technique was used for the journalists and businessmen surveyed, but its randomness is questioned by the fact that the students were those at Columbia School of Journalism and NYU Business School...

...Ohio In Praise of Bad Writing Mr...

...See Hugh Kenner's "Uncle Charles Principal" in his Joyce's Voices...

...In The End of the World News, Burgess has written of bad stuff in appropriately bad language...

...Lukacs is not as supercilious as he sounds...

...CORRESPONDENCE Whose Future...

...In his review of Anthony Burgess's The End of the World News (TAS, August 1983) he failed to recognize the basic structure of the book...

...The end of the world is as culturally complete as it is physical...

...As any Joycean knows, the stereotypical should be spoken of stereotypically, the clumsy clumsily, the inelegant inelegantly...

...Two mediocre dramatic productions (a musical about Trotsky's 1917 visit to New York and a popular biography of Freud) are framed within a third story which is revealed to be actually a third artifact of the end of the world...

...Reid Buckley may be a novelist, but he is certainly not a reader...

...Watson McLean, Virginia Unsafe at Any Speed I really hate to create a schism in the ranks of bicycle haters but I must take exception to your suggestion that they be shunted to country lanes ("Pedalphilia," TAS, August 1983...

...The world would not have ended culturally...

...If you wonder at their gall when city cycling, you would be amazed to see them in the country...

...If soundings of such schools followed the pattern of the New York schools, I would be convinced...

...To accuse Burgess of presenting "bad stuff' and of "bad writing" is to miss most of the book...

...Dennis Perkinson Tulsa, Oklahoma Denis Mack Smith In the article called "Happy Birthday, Benito" by John Lukacs (TAS, August 1983) there appears the statement "contrary to the asseverations of many historians (as in the recent third-rate biography by Denis Mack Smith...

...Foster C. Smith Staff Vice President Corporate Communications The BF Goodrich Co., Akron...

...I would like to believe that Mr...