An Impotent, Rancorous Pickle

To the Editors:

I have acclaimed the efforts of the Editors of The New York Review to keep a certain standard of English prose style. Evidently your advertising department is not so scrupulous. I refer to the remarkable language which appears in the advertisement on page 29 of your issue dated November 21, for The Public Interest, edited by D. Bell and Irving Kristol. Notice the following sentence by Mr. Bell, “Desperado tactics are…the marks of…the guttering last gasps of a romanticism soured by rancor and impotence.” Is romanticism a candle on a man drowning? Or is it a pickle? But who has ever heard of a rancorous pickle, much less an impotent one?

Morris Blatt

Val D’Or, Quebec