CULTURAL INDICATOR

Regarding the Feb. 25 review of “Saving Face”: (“The pop-folk singer Loudon Wainwright III has recently promoted a new CD full of songs that recount his many failures as a husband and father, winning applause for his ‘painfully honest’ lyrics. . . .”) As a fan of the cult folk-rock singer, I find it great that he is being used as a cultural indicator of some kind. I thought there were only 10 or 12 of us buying his albums.

Of course, Jackson Lears has it exactly wrong in his review of “Saving Face.” Wainwright’s songs, the personal ones about his failures, often convey a sense of regret too deep to be cheapened by apology, though sometimes he throws that in too. It’s the kind of moral distinction mostly lost on the moralist. A hard, unflinching look at what went wrong bespeaks its own reform, it seem to me.

By the way, the people in 18th century America were not too shameful to build their economic power on human slavery. This sounds like a very stupid book.

GARY WULL, LOS ANGELES