In response to:

Catch-31 from the January 18, 1968 issue

To the Editors:

How many budding novelists, analyzing the first paragraph of John O’Hara’s The Instrument in their fiction-writing courses, will recognize what your reviewer didn’t [NYR, Jan. 18], that you can’t make water boil over? Coffee yes, water no.

Aileen Ward

Cambridge, Massachusetts

This Issue

March 28, 1968