How About the Word?

Was it not the ultimate comment on the ‘80s that your compendium of the major taste makers of the decade did not include a single novelist, poet or literary critic?

I was hoping you would find room among the studio executives, performance artists and restaurateurs to mention someone who still resorts to the written word as a method of communication. Can we say of American literature in the ‘80s, then, that there simply was none? Or, even more disparagingly, that it had less impact on our culture than Jay Leno or the Chinese Chicken Salad?

PETER LEFCOURT

Los Angeles