Volume 28, Number 1 · February 5, 1981
The Lights Go Down
By Erhard K. Dortmund, Reply by Renata Adler
In response to The Perils of Pauline
(August 14, 1980)
To the Editors:
…I must take exception to Adler's description of Kael's loyal readers. She sees them as victims of Kael's unholy hectoring. According to Adler, they form a cult of thoughtless masochists who thrill to Kael's fortnightly whip-cracking. Worse, they are lousy readers with a taste so debased they think Kael's stuff is "lively."
Well, I'm one of Kael's loyal readers, and Ms. Adler has no cause to treat me so condescendingly. I want to assure one and all of the obvious: I'm a grown-up and Pauline Kael's reviews don't bully me. She's often wrong in what she says and how she says it—and I've told her so, with glee. I read her precisely because her columns are both reviews and confessionals.
You see, I like the beat-up, hard-working old bawd. I'm sorry that Ms. Adler failed to remember that if Ms. Kael is unduly raunchy and a bit bonkers from the strain of it all, that's hardly the same thing as a fall from grace.
Erhard K. Dortmund
Monmouth, Oregon
Renata Adler replies:
I intend some day to write a piece about letters in letters columns, not, however, these. There is just not much in them. I don't think I share Ms. Dunning's notion of what a fracas is or what livens up a summer. Ms. Dunning might be less indignant about "shameless disclaimers!" if she read more accurately. Where she quotes "statement," for instance, I wrote "argument." Not at all the same thing. And I genuinely don't understand "But one may not balk," as to who may not balk, or at what, or why not. Freely balk. For the rest, Ms. Dunning is warmly entitled to her views.
Having twice raised the issue of length, Mr. Cox, I take it, thinks his letter is a short one. It is too dull to go, line by line, through my paragraph and his to show that his gloss, in each case, either supports a point of mine or is altogether unresponsive to it. Where counting seems to him rebuttal, I would point out that Mr. Cox's "second paragraph" (italics his) of the Slap Shot review is equally its forty-ninth line (italics mine), and also "so obscure a place that I could hardly find it when I looked for it again." A writer may, of course, put any point anywhere, in a footnote, an appendix, a marginal annotation if he likes. Considerations of structure. As for speeches about The New Yorker, on the West Coast or elsewhere, I never heard of them.
With any luck, Mr. Wilder is not really thirteen. I'm glad the matter closes with Mr. Dortmund's assurance that he is grown-up.
