April 6, 2007

Politics and Precision in Writing

To the Editor:

Russell Jacoby's essay on the right's lucidity and the left's turgidity is misplaced ("Excellent Writers, Facile Thinkers," The Chronicle Review, February 2). Jacoby ignores the many fine essayists of the left (such as his colleague at the University of California at Los Angeles, Perry Anderson).

If the left's style is rough, that has something to do with a context that Jacoby elides. As the Italian American anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti wrote, "Our friends must