In response to:

‘All One’s Capacities’ from the October 21, 2021 issue

To the Editors:

Giles Harvey writes that Shirley Hazzard “loved to embroider her sumptuous prose with stock phrases and received ideas” [“‘All One’s Capacities,’” NYR, October 21, 2021]. Once, at an event honoring someone, she said, “He always goes whole hog, which [pause] is the only kind of hog to go.”

Edward Mendelson
New York City