Getting the word out

I’ve been publishing books for 30 years, but it still amazes me that there are people like Lou Mathews with such an astoundingly underwhelming sense of what literature is all about (Letters, Dec. 7).

One has to marvel at how Mr. Mathews so eagerly leaps in to damn years worth of careful translating -- praised, by the way, for its music by Harold Bloom (“Grossman might be called the Glenn Gould of translators ...”) and Carlos Fuentes (“Truly masterly ... a major literary achievement”) -- based only on a few lines quoted in a newspaper profile.

Let me suggest the obvious to Mr. Mathews, that he turn to the thing itself, the text, and actually attempt to read what Edith Grossman has accomplished before jumping onto the page with both feet in his mouth -- and ears, evidently.

Daniel Halpern

New York City

Daniel Halpern, editorial director of the Ecco Press, has written seven books of poetry and is a translator of Dante.