Strong opinions

11 TO JOHN LEONARD, EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

published March 5, 1972

Puzzled queries from correspondents oblige me to react, with some delay, to the tasteless parody posing as letters (New York Times Book Review, Jan. 16, IV72) from «Diron Frieders» and «Mark Hamburg» which I take to be the phony names of one or two facetious undergraduates judging by the style and the piffle. I think, Sir, you would do a service to Mr. Wilson as well as to truth if you were to point out in your next issue that neither he nor 1 composed those letters.

I might add that I detected in them only one nice point, namely the suggestion that Schadenfreude, as used by Mr. Wilson in regard to a special characteristic of mine, really means «hatred of Freud» — but that is poetic justice, not wit.