6 S UNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021
sia, that has descended on a poet
once widely celebrated.”
On the contrary, a Barrett
Browning revival has flourished
in academia for several decades.
In the 1990s, in the respected
Dictionary of Literary Biography
series, Beverly Taylor devoted
almost 30 pages to her. In 1995,
Angela Leighton and Margaret
Reynolds published their anthol-
ogy of “Victorian Women Poets,”
whose 66 pages of Barrett
Browning’s poetry pretty much
demand a place in relevant
course syllabuses. Also in the
’90s, publishers of the good old
Norton anthologies put out a
critical edition of her long but
brilliant “Aurora Leigh.”
Plotz’s hope that “Two-Way
Mirror” will “inspire a new gen-
eration of readers” neglects the
past 25 years, during which
students of Victorian poetry
would have needed an especially
stubborn amnesia to avoid the
possibility of finding inspiration
in Barrett Browning’s poetry.
KATHLEEN MCCORMACK
WAYNE, PA.
Greenwich on Trump
TO THE EDITOR:
In his review of Evan Osnos’s
“Wildland” (Nov. 7), Angus
Deaton describes Greenwich,
Conn., and its “transition from
the Greenwich of Prescott and
George H. W. Bush to one that
largely favors Trump.”
The data reflect no such transi-
tion, however. After supporting
Republican presidential nomi-
nees in 11 of the 12 previous
presidential elections, including
Mitt Romney in 2012, Greenwich
voters preferred the Democrats
Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe
Biden in 2020 over Trump, each
time by a decisive margin. Simi-
larly, Greenwich’s Republican
voters showed less enthusiasm
for Trump than other Connecti-
cut Republicans in 2016; while
Trump won the statewide G.O.P.
primary with over 58 percent of
the vote, a majority of Greenwich
Republicans cast ballots for other
Republican presidential candi-
dates.
BRICE H. PEYRE
NEW YORK
Lose the Plot
TO THE EDITOR:
Each Sunday, the first section I
reach for is the Book Review.
And on most Sundays I squirm in
frustration with more than half of
the fiction reviews because they
are littered with detailed plot
descriptions. As this is a consis-
tent practice, I must conclude
that it is an editorial decision
coupled with sheer laziness on
the part of many reviewers.
What happened to sticking
with a book’s theme, style, con-
text and quality (in the review-
er’s mind)? A primary joy in
reading fiction is to turn a page
not knowing what’s going to
happen next. Why spoil that?
PETE WARSHAW
CHAPEL HILL, N.C.
A Variable Walks Into a Bar
TO THE EDITOR:
I have often decided to read
books based on reviews in the
Book Review, but never before
because of a single sentence.
I was inclined to skip Steven
Pinker’s 400-page “Rationality,”
having long ago read Daniel
Kahneman and Amos Tversky,
until one line in Anthony Gott-
lieb’s review (Oct. 31) changed
my mind: “His deployment of
perhaps the finest of Jewish sex
jokes as a tool to explain the
concept of ‘confounding vari-
ables’ may deserve some sort of
prize.”
I have ordered the book.
STEVEN LUBET
CHICAGO
[email protected]
Letters
Listen in, wherever you
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A true story about
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Universally Accepted
TO THE EDITOR:
In his recent review of Amor
Towles’s wonderful “The Lincoln
Highway” (Nov. 7), Chris
Bachelder says, “The book lacks
a prominent female traveler and
readers might wish... ”
If readers wish that, they
should read a different book. In
high school English class, most
of us were introduced to the
concept of “universality,” which
holds that the job of an author is
to create characters with whom
all readers, regardless of race
and gender, can identify.
As a woman, I am far more
concerned about the treatment of
women and minorities in deci-
sions about which books should
be published and reviewed than I
am about their inclusion in books
where they really don’t belong. I
can’t count the novels written by
men that I’ve read where I felt
that had they been written by
women, we wouldn’t even be
hearing about them.
It is depressing to realize that
the creative process and literary
criticism are now falling victim
to political correctness.
LUPI ROBINSON
NORTH HAVEN, CONN.
Barrett Browning’s Legacy
TO THE EDITOR:
John Plotz’s review of Fiona
Sampson’s “Two-Way Mirror”
(Oct. 31) praises how the book, a
biography of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, “pushes back against
the neglect, bordering on amne-
NOLAN PELLETIER
