Paris QP th May IOEP 930 1930

The Editor

The New Republic

Sir :

I find Mr R Guthrie's review in yr. issue of 26 March WY th incredible in the sense that Mr Guthrie's statement in the form given is extremely difficult to believe. The exegencies of reviewing make it difficult for Mr Guthrie or anyone else to say anything adequate about Rabelais on a Page and a half let alone contrast two commentaries and a full translation.

The expressed misgivings as to Rabelais' satirical temper will certainly seem ridiculous to any one who has read 1,2 HHH Books Q and W of Gargantua, whether Mr Guthrie agree or disagree with Drs. Knock and Wilson.

The value or or at any rate one very great value and one reason for Rabelais' glory being that he not only threw out a vast deal of the pietistic bunk of his age, but also declined to koz kowtow to dead pagans merely because of their antiquity.

It is however zh when he attacks Mr Putnam that the form of his statement arouses the greater misgiving. There is no presented reason and I doubt if there is a presentable reason for not trying to do better than Urquart. The difficult of the job

is certainly *not* such a reason. Neither is there
any reason for refusing to attempt a translation into
American. If the result show the contemporary speech
speech less rich than that of Urquart that result
wd. be suitable subject for discussion. In the matter
of detail is suspect that b " flip-flap b is as
comprehensible to the normal American reader as b
" braguette ".

The question fo of " slang " versus neologism
has hardly been touched in general discussion.
There are plenty of Professional men , college graduates
boosing
and even professors who wd. consider darn , dern or durn
as good either slang or neologism . If braguette
exist at all in the American language I am inclined
to think it Presists as a bookword or affection
and not as part of the spoken language and that
Mr Putnam was therefore perfectly right in rejecting it

In any case Mr Putnam certainly did not
" coin " the word flipflap and Mr Guthrie's statement th
that Rabelais was indifferent to his subject matter
is b " pernicious and subversive ". By which I mean
that if Mr Guthrie has considered his third paragraph
seriously it has a subjective meaning for himself to
which he fails to give comprehensible
form.

permit me to remain

yr. obt. ( or toherwise ) reader