Herzog
sik._, am writing to protest at the review of Herzog in your issue of January 29. I freely admit that I have not read the book, but I think that you
and your reviewer would agree that the review is intended primarily as a guide for potential readers of the book rather than as a piece of literary criticism for those who have read it, so that there is no reason why this should prevent me from holding views on the review.
My complaint is that it gives no hint of what the book is fundamentally about. Mr. Richter spends some time telling us that he likes the book very much—and this is of course a valid point in a review which must be to a considerable extent sub- jective, but I don't think it merits a whole paragraph of thirty lines, even if it does share that paragraph With an almost completely irrelevant swipe at the New Statesman's book reviewer—and we arc then given a factual account of some of the events in the hook, interspersed, it must be admitted, with a fey. comments, the essence of which would appear to he that the book is an extremely perceptive account of the character and emotional and personal struggles of an epitome of a modern intellectual
with some excellent descriptions of America today.
But the reviewer does not begin to tell us what sort of things the writer does perceive in Herzog. and, although the two quotations from the book have certainly made me interested in it, a review should not be effective only because of the quota- tions, but should give an illuminating insight into what sort of answers to the problems he is faced with the hero reaches, if he reaches any at all, and, if he doesn't, at any rate why and how his life leads him towards whatever position he finds himself in at the end of the hook. I expect a re- viewer to tell me what he thinks a book is about, and not to be content with throwing out empty phrases such as 'the man becomes real for us,' and 'His struggles enrich literature. More important. they enrich us.' If the book is such a masterpiece then why, oh why, can't the reviewer give us some hint of what Herzog really is like and how literature (and we) can be enriched?
New College. Oxford
MICHAEL LEDLIE
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