LETTERS

National Review, July 28, 1997

Lengthy Disputes

Cheers to James Gardner for his review [June 30] of Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon--surely one of this century's most overrated writers. As an undergraduate, I had an English professor who included Gravity's Rainbow on the syllabus. After fifty bizarre and largely incomprehensible pages, I gave up. The book's preoccupation with bodily functions alone made it difficult: Should I wait until after dinner to read, or read first and risk eating with all those earthy images in mind?

Outside of literary circles and academia, I have met no one who reads Pynchon. His notoriety must be the result of the same pretense to artistic sensibility that lets art galleries get away with selling rubbish for $25,000 simply because it's signed by an alleged artist. The Tacitus aphorism Omne ignotum pro magnifico (Whatever is obscure is highly held) reminds me of Anna Russell's line, "For the singer who is tone deaf, contemporary music is the thing; the more off-key you become, the more contemporary you sound."

Warren T. Taylor Atlanta, Ga.

Mr. Gardner's "review," in which he admits to reading a mere fifty pages, is a disservice to your readers, and should diminish whatever reputation as a critic he has heretofore enjoyed. Not content with merely dodging the assignment, he compounds his crime by questioning the sincerity of critics who praised the book, as most did. You should demand the return of whatever fee you paid for Mr. Gardner's sham.

Richard Cassola Pinellas Park, Fla.

Thanks so much for Mr. Gardner's luminous review. How many other reviewers would have the good sense to stop after the first fifty pages of a ponderous and boring book? There are people who love books, and people who say, "I'm trying to get through such-and-such." The I'm-trying-to-get-through crowd do not love books, they love bragging about' endurance of pain. A good novel usually runs 200 to 275 pages. If it runs to, say, 315, the reader can usually sense an excess of plot sidetracks and landscape descriptions. Chris Offutt's 317-page The Good Brother is a good novel. It would have been an excellent one had someone trimmed fifty or so pages of Montana-countryside descriptions. Streamlining always improves a novel.

Ralph Vitale Jr. Arlington, Va.

Secondhand Facts?

As a longtime NATIONAL REVIEW fan I am disappointed by "Smoke Rings" ["The Week," June 16], concerning the Harvard University study on the cardiovascular effects of secondhand smoke. First, you say it is unclear how many of the nurses in the study were themselves smokers or ex-smokers. Only nurses who had never smoked, and who were free of diagnosed coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cancer, were included, so this should be very clear indeed. The secondhand-smoke study is part of a twenty-year ongoing study of female nurses. The relationship between passive smoking and CHD has been examined since 1982 in nurses who had never smoked and had no CHD. The study also controlled for a broad range of behavioral and dietary factors.

Second, you state that secondhand smoke was such a minor aspect of the study that the amount of exposure to it was inadequately assessed. Yet, beginning in 1982, Harvard scientists specifically focused on the effects of secondhand smoke. The questionnaire did not ask only whether the nurses had "never," "occasionally," or "regularly" been exposed to smoke; rather, it asked for details about exposure to smoke both at work and at home, as well as the number of years lived with a smoker.

Third, suggesting that the timing of the study's publication may have been intended to coincide with jury selection for a class-action suit is, at best, far-fetched. Drs. Ichiro Kowachi and Graham A. Colditz, study researchers, say it's almost impossible that anyone involved in the study could have known of the pending suit while the paper was being revised for publication. The seven respected scientists of the study concluded that the data consistently suggest increased risk of CHD for non-smoking women regularly exposed to secondhand smoke.

There is also a remarkable similarity between "Smoke Rings" and "Secondhand Smoke-and-Mirrors," found on Steven J. Milloy's "Junk Science" web page (www.junkscience.com). NR should be wary of relying on a source that considers the New England Journal of Medicine a purveyor of junk science. In labeling the Harvard study "junk science," you may be inadvertently junking all science.

Elizabeth Whelan, President American Council on Science and Health New York, N.Y.

We are glad that Dr. Whelan is also a follower of the "Junk Science" page, but disappointed that she is incapable of grasping the distinction between the real risks of smoking and silly claims about the dangers of inhaling tiny amounts of secondhand smoke. We respect Dr. Whelan's work on many subjects, but when it comes to tobacco she loses her grip on reality. The Harvard researchers themselves report that "exposure to passive smoking was assessed by self-report and only at baseline" (p. 2,378). This, in a study which re-examined the health condition of the subjects at two-year intervals from 1982 onward. The researchers relied on a single self-report of exposure to secondhand smoke with no effort to follow up or to check the original self-report. It may have been a serious study on many matters, but not on secondhand smoke. Equally preposterous is Dr. Whelan's claim that the researchers controlled for confounding factors. They had the data on four sets of established risk factors--trans-fatty-acid levels, weight change, night-shift work, and height--and made no attempt to control for any of those when making the secondhand-smoke estimate. The study has no data on sociability, the lack of which, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported recently, poses a risk "comparable in magnitude" to that of smoking. That's real smoking, not getting whiffs of others' smoke. We never said that those who did the study influenced the timing of the publication, just that the publisher, the American Heart Association, timed it to coincide with the court case. After quickly accepting the article for publication, the editors let ten issues of their journal go to print before they published it. And the AHA is, after all, one of the funders of the state attorneys' general litigation.