To the Editor:

Three cheers and three cheers more for Midge Decter’s article, “The Professor and the L-Word” [February]. Clever, insightful, and long-overdue, the article exposes academic cant and chutzpah. It is the sharpest article you have published in years. I’m still chuckling.

Sheldon C. Seller
Queens College
Flushing, New York

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To the Editor:

Midge Decter’s essay is superb, even Jamesian and tragic. When I mention the name of Henry James, what I have in mind is “The Beast in the Jungle” and the tragedy of the wasted self, the self betrayed. Midge Decter’s prose here is wholly equal to her subject, and the piece is unforgettable.

Jeffrey Hart
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire

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To the Editor:

Midge Decter has the ironic tone down pat. Her academic would be laughable if he were not such a pathetic instance of the modern rudderless intellectual. . . .

I must say, though, that I was hoping Miss Decter’s professor would come full circle and get caught in the neoconservative tide; but then it is not exactly a tide yet, and there is little in it that would make him very content with himself. I forget who it was who first said that Catholics go to church because they know they are sinners, and Protestants because they know they are not. Well, liberals know they are saviors; neoconservatives are not so sure.

Thomas Putnam
Amherst, New York

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