Dear Cyndy, Thank you for your letter, and thank you especially for correcting my mistaken inference that it had been Elliot Pearlman's novel the Street Sweepers which is reviewed on page 69, to which you wanted to draw my attention; the Pop Music article on page 76 "On the Floor" about the irresistible rise of electronic dance music seemed far fetched for both of us. Or am I mistaken? In any event, my bumbling intelligence finally made it to page 70, where under the Rubric "A Critic at Large" I found Adam Gopnik's essay "Inquiring Minds", "The Spanish Inquisition revisited." Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I find it thought- provoking indeed. I suspect I'm repeating myself when I recite the vivid memories of my childhood, of my days in kindergarten under the tutelage of a benign middle-aged lady named Hilde Oelmann who would while away the bordeom of her charges, - and perhaps herself - by reading to us from Grimm's Maerchen, the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, stories that were very vivid to me and so frightening that I prevaricated a "headache" and asked to be excused to escape through the large paired patio doors into what I remember as a sunlit formal garden where I wandered among the neatly trimmed bushes and the blooming flowers, anticipating my own version of Heine's: Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen Mit meinem Gram allein; Da kam das alte Träumen, Und schlich mir ins Herz hinein. (I ambled under the trees, my grief and I apart; then came the ancient dreams and sneaked into my heart.) I've gotten over my fear of the fairy tales, but if anything, with the passing of the years, my fear of the concentration camps, of the CIA's secret prisons, extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo increases. And with these thoughts, I'm also "mit meinem Gram allein," because obviously, the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination and those millions who vote for them couldn't care less, nor does our president who seems prepared to sacrifice any one any any thing to please the public. I've just written a large income tax check to help pay for the mendacity and cruelty of society. Compliance is the precondition for survival. Under the circumstances, I'm not surprised that there should be some who are contemptuous of their own life and of the lives of others, and who dramatize their contempt by their actions. Adam Gopnik's essay reminds me of other scenes of my childhood, when at eleven or twelve years of age, I was taken on field trips into the mountains around Konnarock by a husband and wife team of geologists, George and Anna Stose, prominent in their day, and currently memorialized by Wikipedia. The Stoses went prospecting in logging-railroad cuts that had been carved into the mountainsides, where a single glance could take in eons of sedimentation, metamorphosis, and sometimes volcanic upheaval. I read Gopnik's essay as an exposition and perhaps an unintended exposure of the spiritual geology, - please forgive the semantically perverse metaphor - of the culture on which our society and indeed our individual lives are grounded. It's no accident, and perhaps of some esthetic - and ethical - significance that both introduction and conclusion of Gopnik's essay are comic routines, a la Monty Python. Surely this stylistic technique must have the effect of isolating the reader from the pain and torture, from the intellectual and moral calamity of the Inquisition. Such isolation surely is in the interests of the publishes, Conde Nast, and of the editors of the New Yorker whose ultimate interest if not historical truth - God forbid that one should even mention such a thing a spiritual truth - but the circulation statistics to which the profits from advertisements are coupled. Cullen Murphy's book which Gopnik is reviewing, seems to reflect the author's existential horror of the Inquisition. Gopnik's editorial function is to belittle that horror and to reassure the New Yorker's readers that they are not responsible, that the Inquisition can't happen here, that it hasn't happened here. That is a lie. Ask the blacks, ask the American Indians, ask the victims of Guantanamo. Gopnik's concluding paragraph: _ _ "... After reading Murphy's accounts of so many _ bodies tortured and so many lives ended, one ought, _ I suppose, to feel guilty about laughing at the old _ Python sketch, but it's hard not to feel a little _ giddy watching it. How did we become this free to _ laugh at fanaticism? That for a moment or two the _ humanists seem to have it - that we don't really _ expect the Inquisition to barge into our living rooms - _ is a fragile triumph of a painful ongoing education _ in Enlightenment values. Bloody miracle, really." That paragraph sums up the disagreement between Gopnik and myself. I DO expect the Inquisition to barge into my living room, and I DO feel guilty for the atrocities committed by human beings. Gopnik's concluding quip: "Bloody miracle, really." so obviously insensitive and indifferent to the blood that was shed, seems to me in very poor taste. I'm reminded of Nietzsche's distinction between authors who write with red ink and those who write with their blood. Adam Gopnik's experience is remote from that of Rilke who wrote: Wer jetzt weint irgendwo in der Welt, ohne Grund weint in der Welt, weint über mich. Wer jetzt lacht irgendwo in der Nacht, ohne Grund lacht in der Nacht, lacht mich aus. Wer jetzt geht irgendwo in der Welt, ohne Grund geht in der Welt, geht zu mir. Wer jetzt stirbt irgendwo in der Welt, ohne Grund stirbt in der Welt: sieht mich an. Wer jetzt weint irgendwo in der Welt, Whoever weeps anywhere in the world, ohne Grund weint in der Welt, without cause weeps in the world, weint über mich. weeps over me. Wer jetzt lacht irgendwo in der Nacht, Whoever laughs anywhere in the night, ohne Grund lacht in der Nacht, without cause laughs in the night, lacht mich aus. makes fun of me. Wer jetzt geht irgendwo in der Welt, Whoever journeys in the world, ohne Grund geht in der Welt, without cause in the world, geht zu mir. journeys to me. Wer jetzt stirbt irgendwo in der Welt, Whoever dies anywhere in the world, ohne Grund stirbt in der Welt: dies without cause in the world: sieht mich an. gazes at me. But please don't say that I "hate" the article you asked me to read. I don't hate anything or anyone; and I am in fact grateful for the opportunity to read and to think about the Inquisition. I accept the circumstance that my experience is foolish and that in trying to articulate it, I make a fool of myself. Good night, and give my best to Ned. Jochen