Letters to the Editor
'My Books of the Year' English Spoken Here Zeebrugge
Polio The Golden Nazi
Fluoridation
A. E. Housman The Shock of Innovation Stress Disorders Cicero T. Ritchie I. C. Wells Admiral Sir W. M. James Mrs. Richard Homersley Isabel Quigly, Herbert van Thal Bruce Cardew A. N. Marlow Professor G. C. Allen 'Consultant'
‘1411 BOOKS OF THE YEAR' 8111,--After your contributor Bernard Levin lam- Pooned me in his 'Books of the Year,' I wrote him a Private letter from which he quoted publicly in an April issue of the Spectator: 'Can we meet one day? You must have a warm heart!' He went on to answer : `No, Mr. Ritchie, we couldn't. Not ever. 'The fact is, Mr. Ritchie, I don't like you.' Did my letter hurt his feelings? I'm sorry. I had /le idea he would take it literally. I tried to couch It in his terms, to make it funny, to give him a .,„.'angh in return for the amusement his 'Books of the rear' gave me. But I failed, it now appears. Instead of Making him laugh it sent him into a tantrum, and a0I exactly a schoolboy's tantrum either, for it had all the weight of the Spectator to support it.
• Why didn't he quote the entire letter, which ran as folk's.
'My Books of the Year' in the Spectator of December 27th came to me in photostatic form, and you may guess correctly that it is my most highly treasured reproduction. • Can we meet one day? You must have a warm heart!
I haven't forgotten altogether that my name- sake took hemlock, but while reading your kind words, I pushed my cup to the far edge of my desk. I notice he told his public that I thanked him 'fulsomely and he implied that I was serious, not Joking. Really, Mr. Levin!
In his tantrum he seized upon a deadly weapon In the form of another private letter from Canada. It came to him from the husband of a lady who had reviewed The Willing Maid in Toronto, from a !Ilan who apparently prides himself in a belief that ne was the only one in all Canada who saw through Bernard Levin's literary 'spoof.' He was a perfect stranger to Mr. Levin, yet the latter credited every Word of his letter. His wife, he saw fit to quote, 'Pasted the slats out of The Willing Maid.' But did the? Definitely not. All Canadian reviews were favourable in variable degrees, hers included. To be sure she disliked the hero for remaining a loyal British subject. Is that offensive? Her most serious quarrel was with an insignificant 'flaw' in the plot. Is that `pasting the slats out of it'? Not when you Consider that she had been having a baby at the time and missed a page or two, as she later explained.
Did that distraught husband provoke Mr. Levin into such a blinding rage that he sneered at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation? Tabloid is a respectable show, and it would be difficult to Imagine its producers hoodwinked by an excerpt from Bernard Levin, and equally difficult to believe that hii correspondent missed the twinkle in the inter- viewer's eye. 'Ritchie has indeed gone to the heart of our con- teMporary malaise,' the interviewer quoted, 'His hero is all of us.' Then he asked me, 'What did Bernard Levin mean by that?'
'I don't know what he meant,' I said, emphasising he. Common sense told me to laugh, but laughter does not come easily during the first minute of a television appearance. Hence my sneer. Did the hus- band tell Mr. Levin all about it? Is that what en- raged him? I thought he could take it as well as dish it out. Incidentally, I wonder if he has read The Willing Maid yet?—Yours faithfully,
CICERO T. RITCHIE
[Bernard Levin writes : 'I wish I was dead. Seeing, however, that I am not, I had better go on with this business as long as anybody else wants to. To start with Mr. Ritchie's last point, I have real The Willing Maid and I think it's awful.
'Next, the review in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The husband of the reviewer tells me that she described Mr. Ritchie's book as "an example of the zam-bam-powie, as opposed to the beds-and-bosoms, school of historical fiction." I wouldn't like any book of mine to be described like that, but perhaps Mr. Ritchie has a greater capacity for gratitude than I have. 'Next, why did I not quote his entire letter? Why the blazes should I? Only one point in it was relevant to what I was saying. Anyway, Mr. Ritchie appears to be quite sufficiently annoyed at what I did quote. 'I have re-read my article (oh, how I wish I was dead) several times, but am quite unable to see any sneer at the television programme Tabloid anywhere in it, nor any suggestion that it is anything but a "respectable show." 'But this is all by the way. I have never suggested that the Canadian television people, or anybody else for that matter, were hoodwinked by me. What is more, I tried not to give the impression that they were hoodwinked by Mr. Ritchie; he now compels me to. Not only, I am informed, did he write to the programme's producers quoting excerpts from my article, giving the impression that it was not meant to be a spoof; he also wrote to the Toronto reviewer in the following words : 'Bernard Levin, in the. Spectator of December 27, under "My Books of the Year," listed seven titles, all of them non-fiction except The Willing Maid. I am enc)osing the applicable paragraph in the hope that it might help you to find an excuse for mentioning the novel again. . .
'He then enclosed "the applicable paragraph," once more neatly abstracted., from the article, in carbon- copy form. Mr. Ritchie is now claiming to have seen through my joke from the start. If this is so, he seems to have convicted himself of very sharp practice indeed.'—Editor, Spectator.]
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