Reasoning Together

ReasoningTogether 251 Reasoning Together M.Gilbert Porter (University of Missouri-Columbia) writes: "I have just received a copy of the bitchy little piece of deconstructionist drivel by StanleyFogel that is supposed to be a review of my book The Art of Grit [see ''Gobble, Gobble, Gobble: Critical Appetites," 15/4 ]. Gentlefolk, thiswill never do. I can abide a negative review if it bears some relation to mywork and if it is carefully reasoned. This 'review,' however, has nothing to do with my treatment of Ken Kesey's fiction and even less to do with responsible literary criticism. It is unorganized, distorted, pretentious, self indulgent,badly written, and silly. In short, Fogel is as fullof shit as a Christmas turkey,and you are guilty of egregious editorial misjudgment to publish such effete nonsense as serious literary commentary. I know nothing of your journal, but I think I can predict with confidence that it will be short lived ifit continues to include superficial simpery of the Fogel stripe." StanleyFogel (University of St. Jerome's College) replies: "A more perverse reviewermight have set M. Gilbert Porter's letter to verse (as he did a portion ofKesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). I, however, will only comment that if he had displayed such verve in writing The Art of Grit he would have produced a less jejune, less cliched book." Notes on Contributors LeroyV. Eid is Professor of History at the University of Dayton. He has published numerous essays in such journals as Illinois Quarterly, Northeast Ohio Quarterly, Eire-Ireland, Irish American Review, Military Review, AfidwestQuarterly and Ethnohistory. David D. Harvey, after completing a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature and teaching English at Vassar, the University of Washington and SUNYat Albany for ten years, is now a free-lance editor and writer who makes his home in Ottawa. In addition to his wide-ranging editorial work, he is the author of Ford Madox Ford, 1873-1939: A Bibliography of Works andCriticism(1963; 1972).He has forthcoming an article entitled "Americans" tobeincluded in the ethnic studies section of the New Canadian Encyclopedia. The present essay is related to a continuing book-length project tentatively titled"Americans in Canada: Migration and Settlement Since 1850"for which hewasawarded a Canada Council Explorations Grant. Lewis Horne is Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan. Besideshaving published fiction and poetry in a number of North American periodicals, he has published essays on American and British literature in Studiesin the Novel, American Transcendental Quarterly, Texas Studies in Language and Literature, South Atlantic Quarterly, Etudes Anglaises, DalhousieReview and Ariel. ...