The “National Review”
To the Editor:
I am astonished that “Letters from Readers” in your June issue contains only one letter about Dwight Macdonald’s “Scrambled Eggheads on the Right” (April) and that one denunciatory! Surely you must have received many letters lauding a critique which was, in my opinion, one of his most brilliant and penetrating pieces.
I do not always, nowadays, agree with Mr. Macdonald’s views. But I have never been more in agreement with him than when he calls National Review dull, inept, crude, unprincipled, etc., etc.—unless it is when, in his reply to Mr. Rothbard, he taxes him with confusing the solemn with the profound.
I read National Review with fair regularity for somewhat the same reason as one exacerbates an aching tooth with a probing tongue, and, for the most part, it either bores me (Mr. Clark on the New Yorker, for instance, seemed to me boring to excruciation) or shocks me by its materialism and lack of human compassion. I think Mr. Macdonald’s points were extremely well taken. May Commentary long continue to print such brilliant barbs against the National Reviews in our civilization!
Corinna Marsh
New York City
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