DECONSTRUCTION

I read Jack Smith to shake me out of my earnestness and to learn about all the little things in life that escape me: shopping with old men, living on Mt. Washington, holidays with my in-laws. I even went through heart surgery with him, and he made it tolerable.

However, without having read Paul de Man, Smith cites 200 pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic articles that the Belgian supposedly wrote (actually there is one article that is germane to the problem). And without having read a readable statement about deconstruction (either from its critics or its proponents), he takes the usual cheap jabs at the American university world.

At the end of this foolish piece of badinage, Smith says: “I have no doubt that our Southern California institutions of higher learning have been heavily infiltrated by the high priests of this bizarre movement.”

Funny, Southern Californians are usually accused of not having read anything--which is certainly true of Smith in this case. And where does he get his puns from? He once wrote of winning a “pullet surprise”; does that mean he is too chicken to read what he criticizes, or is he just another turkey?

WILLIAM CUTTER

HEBREW UNION COLLEGE

Los Angeles