;IWaugh bashing
Air: What does Mr Stokes (Letters, eanuary 1) mean by the ' greats ' in lolitical journalism? Intelligent oh lervation and an acerbic
Iv manner
eake entertaining gossip (see HP auce) but depth of political eon.ent is not Mr Waugh's strong uit and if Mr Stoke; supposes ere facility to be great journalism e is reading the wrong paper. is is not to denigrate Mr Waugh's erception as a literary critic but
put into proper
co perspective the "talue of the estimable Mr Macphernon to your paper's serious political purpose Mr Stoke's inverted scale
vo be
f excellence does not gin to _peke sense. As to his vision of Mr uWaugh as a giant, nothing can disturb its profound ineffability. One ),Can only regret that publishers' 'MYPerbole should spill over into ;elyour corre3pondence columns. "New Acre House, Farnham CornE. J. Hooper Farnham /3ucks _lb!sir: It was a delight to read Mr avid Vincent's erudite letter (January 1). How I love to hear the old teashop resounding to 11) the e!clash of cold steel on cold plastic: it tones up the system, sparkles ro)t the eyes, and takes me back to Paris again and those long long exchanges with Gide and Joyce and Camus while snow patterned 11 the no light and Mimi died in, 'y the next room. Ah youth, youth! 'You remember, David. Stepping over the J bodies of PA critics sleeping it off on the stairs, let us take the early morning air 6 this New Year, David. Let me take Your arm: it can be slippery and old bones are notoriously fragile. The point of my
, letter, David written in the schoolboy style of Mr Thomas no less, with an off, the-road Rolls to illuminate the
commercial needs of full-frontal publishing — actually, I drive a hopped-up Bugatti with a concealed Winchester in the off-side headlamp), was a plea for a more sincere, deeply felt and less bitchy criticism, and an acknowledgement that hack-writing is still hack, writing, no matter how large the advance. I'm not saying I'm innocent: we all have to pay the baker and the taxman; and the New Yorker and Encounter and the Sunday supplements and the odd request for a thousand words on ' How I Spent Christmas 1925' help pay for the cork-lined study. But it's a question of values, David. Look on any station bookstall, particularly the New English Library titles. Doesn't your old Hardyesque heart heave with terror? Love of the craft, David. That's what it's all about. Ah, here's Sam Beckett. He's always good for a cup of coffee, if you can bear his silences. Doff your cap, David.
Christopher Leach Far Yew Tree House, Over Tabley, Knutsford, Cheshire
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