In response to:


To the Editors:

…”To muggeridge” a book clearly means to miss its point while paying obsessive attention to its author’s name for comic purposes…Malcolm proudly avows himself to be an asterisk man of letters (he doesn’t use words “which come amiss to writers of my generation”) and then assails pornography, more or less out of the blue, refusing to realize how that very asterisk mind is itself a prime breeder of pornography. Nor for that matter is Eros Denied obsessed with pornography, though it is easy to see why Malcolm thinks so since he equates Eros with pornography, seeing little difference between them and citing the Oxford Dictionary as his authority. Surely, it must be clear even to an asterisk fancier that Eros is the art of love…and pornography, the kitsch….

Harold Steinberg

New York City

This Issue

September 10, 1964