To the Editors:
Roger Kimball’s “Guns and Other ‘Hermeneutical Acts’ at Columbia” (May 1988) was a personal attack on a friend of mine. May I respond?

Mr. Kimball does not know Frank Moretti, does not like him, and would hurt him if he could. I know Frank Moretti well, I have great affection and respect for him and wish him every happiness. So much for the article’s substance as I read it.

Mr. Kimball mentions one genuine issue but does not explore it. A “hermeneutical act” is distinguished from other kinds of acts (aesthetic, celebratory, pragmatic, etc.) by its essential purpose. It aims to uncover the thoughts and feelings which animate people in a given situation. Such thoughts and feelings are often submerged in custom and calculation—in “the usual polite back and forth of academic debate,” for example. If, as I believe, Mr. Kimball’s dominant purpose in writing this article was to threaten Dr. Moretti’s career, his act was not hermeneutical but pragmatic. On the other hand, if I am mistaken and his main intention was to get readers to reflect in illuminating ways on cultural relativism and the Sixties, his article was hermeneutical. Obviously, most acts have several aspects and genuine discussion would permit us to weigh them well.

Passing in the same spirit to the occasion itself, this much is likely to be true: when Dr. Moretti calls the guns-at-Cornell incident a “hermeneutical act” he is claiming that its essential purpose was to expose people