To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

I don't latch on to this long-hair schmaltz myself, and I think Paul Mandel did a swell job of showing up the Advocate for using the word Zeitgeist in an article. It's time these literary characters found out that not everybody knows Latin.

But Mandle ought to get wise to himself too. Listen to this:

...occasionally lapses into technical obscurity. ("Zeitgeist," incidentally, a word which Hall tosses around with aplomb, "the spirit of the time"--this reviewer had to look it up and you might have to too.)

Well, just what the hell is a plomb? I couldn't find it in the dictionary at all.

And it gets worse. Ralson d'etre is one one he tosses off, and it's not in the dictionary. Mandel should learn how to write plain English himself before he tells other people how to do it.

Evocative, humid, esoteric, synoptic anecdote-where does Mandel get this stuff? It sounds like he's been sitting up all night with Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, by Dr. Wilfred Funk.

In one place it says.

... no matter how effective Hall's case, it will appeal only to people who have the necessary literary equipment to appreciate it. This writer, for one, doesn't.

I string along 100 percent. Name witheld by request.