To the Editors:

When I heard from a friend that The Heath Anthology of American Literature was the subject of an editorial in The New Criterion (Notes & Comments, October 1990), I looked forward to being engaged by a challenging, perhaps provoking, conservative view. Alas, what I found instead was shrill and trite rant about “affirmative-action thinking.”

I challenge any reader of the anthology to show me one single work chosen on the basis of whatever your editorialist means by “affirmative-action thinking.” I would not claim that all the hundreds of texts in the anthology are masterpieces. No museum—and anthologies are, among other things, literary museums—hangs nothing but masterpieces. On the contrary, works are included in any collection because they are historically interesting, because they represent significant artistic trends, because they have done well commercially —and for...

 

A Message from the Editors

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