To the Editor:

I must take exception to your designation of my story as “A Discovery” (see “To Be a Jew,” by Dachine Rainer, June). This subtitle implies a faithful portrait of reality, particularly since the core of the story appears to be based on personal memoir. Actually, except for critical writing, I have never written prose that wasn’t fiction. I think it is the nature of art, or rather, the obligation of art, to take grave liberties with reality. It takes a tremendous energy to reform or exaggerate truth in the interests of a heightened perception of it. And if it is not one’s intention to make it realer than real, why bother with art at all? … To be perfectly truthful, I have . . . considerable difficulty in appreciating reality even when I am not deliberately at work transforming it. Sometimes feeling, consequently, that my perceptions are dim, I even find myself tampering with those being recorded for my own edification in a notebook.

I write this because … I have received . . . hurt, outraged, indignant letters from individuals who fancy themselves bearing the brunt of my malevolent literary spirit, and while truth does bear an uncomfortable relation to invention, I want to state that there are no actual, living people in this story. I conceived of “Milton” as a generic term . . . [to typify] men of a certain geographic predilection, definite status, set of habits, etc., etc. Similarly, liberties have been taken with “Dudley,” “John,” the “cleaning woman” and “I.” “I” comes closer than the others, but is a long way off from “me” … if they ever become identical, I’ll close up shop.

While we’re on this subject of subtle distinctions, I also wish to question the alteration of my title from “On Being a Jew” to “To Be a Jew”; this last suggests something positive, almost a state of being, while my original title implied, I believe, a conditional, even a questionable state, which represents my own, alas.

Dachine Rainer
Bearsville, N. Y.

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