Dying public

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<... for someone who bristles at putting authors in boxes, so to speak, 
comparing any two things, and judging them, is rather a fruitless use of 
time.>>

Really.  How does one go through life without comparison and judgement?  How 
would one recognize a face?  Know beauty?  Tell a dogfish from a shark?

More specifically, I don't imagine I've ever read a book without weighing and 
comparing it to other books I've read.  To read otherwise you'd have to be a 
bit of a dolt, wouldn't you?  It's not comparision and judgement on the 
merits I bristle at, rather vague and meaningless cataloging.  And more than 
that, the idea--which was, at least implicitly, yours--that if a book or 
writer falls outside the favored category, he is by that demerited, other 
considerations notwithstanding.