Literary Deconstruction

After J. Hillis Miller “deconstructs,” who’s going to reconstruct the English language at UC Irvine?

Your story on this Yale professor of English and comparative literature only proves that if one builds a bit of mystique about an esoteric subject, and does it with style, it becomes quite salable.

As a taxpayer, I can only hope there is some practical benefit to the students that enriches our future society by learning from Miller. After all, for a salary of $91,000, plus a low-interest housing loan, one should receive more than “glazed eyes,” and students saying, “I don’t think anybody understands it.”

From my reading of your story, deconstruction is a new word for double-entendre, and trying to understand what it is the writer had in mind and intended to project when he used the word.

Lewis Carroll said it best when Humpty Dumpty said: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.”

HYMAN H. HAVES

Pacific Palisades