DEFENDING LAURA KALPAKIAN

It seems to me that if you’re going to fire off a sarcastic letter of criticism, you ought to at least get your facts straight, to wit, David E. Ross taking Laura Kalpakian to task (“so distracted . . . I could not finish the review,” Book Review, Letters, Oct. 17) for her use of “mathematical terminology she obviously does not understand” in her review of Michael Drinkard’s novel “Disobedience.” I believe she understands perfectly.

Ross cynically derides her use of the term hyperbolically dysfunctional, informing us that she might as well have used triangularly or quadratically. But she was not referring to a mathematical hyperbola; the root of the word is hyperbole, meaning exaggeration for effect, thus rendering her phrase not only compact, elegant and expressive, but quite right.

As to a “salary escalating logarithmically,” Ross tells us that this means in progressively smaller increments. That is true only if you use the actual logarithm as the index of increase. But the term logarithmically is a generality that refers to the topic of logarithms, which has exponents at its very core, and therefore is synonymous with exponentially in common parlance.

As for meld being proper only as a card-playing term, the most hyperbolically meager Webster’s will show the definition to be “to blend, merge; unite,” as in a melding of minds or wills.

I trust Ross can now go back and finish the review in peace.

LEE GRUENFELD, SANTA MONICA