NP, but May 1970, in the air, very misc.

[Mark Kohut]

Wayne Booth, English Prof and famously of the Rhetoric of Fiction has
been introduced hereon and worked into arguments. 
Thanks, Alice, if you were first. Gotta read his whole book
soon. 

I picked up at a library discard sale, a copy of a 1970
book of essays of his called "Now Don't Try to Reason with Me"--title essay
written May 1970 [title comes from a New Yorker cartoon. Woman says that to her
husband, of course]

And Booth sez it shows one of our attitudes to reason. Which he wants
to uphold--reason, that is. Wherein he now defends old-fashioned, logical
paper/essay-writing against vapidities and assertions without argument.
["You're gonna want cause-and-effect."]

And cites so many of our plist faves from N. O.Brown, thru McLuhan (esp)
and Susan Sontag as anti-reasonable in this sense[sez Notes on Camp is 
assertions not an argument. I'd say it is observations
of the phenomenon with simple implications and already is immortal while his 
essay ain't] 
.....along with Goldwater's and Time Mag's and the New Left's
vapidities.....

Is irony everywhere?

Historically interesting, as is learning that Booth too considers himself a late 
bloomer. [is slow
learner the phrase for those who finally find their voice and subject in Adams' 
perpetual 
prepared-for-nothing America?] 

He tells the story of the wife of a colleague saying she stopped
reading even the review of his famous book cause' "who would ever buy a book 
with that title?. 

And, in writing of his own education in thinking and writing rationally, we 
learn that Richard Chase
of the most famous literary work on The Romance was a teacher, writing such 
stuff on Booth's papers
as "Everyone believes this, is it true?" 
..........................................