Note

Note October 19, 1984 To the Editor: Unable or unwilling to follow my argument in Radical Discontinuities (I actually suspect both deficiencies), Professor Shurr chose to distort the argument, attribute the distortion to me, and then proceed like some old-stone savage to hurl his sticks and stones — and call that reviewing (see WA L, August 1984). After doing what damage he could, he then slouched toward me, darkly dragging his primitive arsenal. Strange indeed that ideas should release in a reviewer such outlandish meanness and brutalization against someone whom, over a Friday afternoon dram of malt whiskey, he might discover to be a fairly decent chap. To argue, as I do, for a distinction between a religious outlook that sees providences and an aesthetic outlook that creates symbols hardly qualifies as “religious criticism with a vengeance,” as Shurr exhorts; and hardly trans­ forms the author into an “Inquisitor” whose “only valid religion is that codi­ fied in rigid Calvinism.” But such is Shurr’s bludgeon. (I’d order some civilizing Auchentoschen or Glenmorangie but Chivas Regal would do.) I might mention that certain sections of my book first appeared in Andover Newton Quarterly, Western American Literature, Scandinavian Studies, and Texas Quarterly — journals that hardly smell of brimstone. Perhaps it’s not surprising that occasionally a book reviewer sneaks into a journal through the back door even though the front door stands wide open, asking only fairness of those who enter. HAROLD P. SIMONSON University of Washington Editor’s Note: Professor Shurr has declined WAL’s invitation to respond to the above. ...