FROM READERS.

Romantically Revanchist Nattering Nabobs

Wendell Berry says that we live in "an era of sentimental economics, and consequently, of sentimental politics" ("A Return to the Local," September/October).

Oh, yes, indeed, and in spades. Accordingly, we ought, at any cost, to freeze the world forever as we imagined it when we were 17--in every precise recollected detail from gas concentrations to obsolete technology to, somehow, the exact power level of the sun. Afterward, we need never again learn, nor adapt to change, nor even act human, but merely follow unto death whatever pattern just happened to be fossilized into us at such a tender age.

How else could it be that we got an issue of worshipping humanity's passing phase as sessile farm laborers, as inconsequential barnacles glued for life to inconsequential patchlets of inconsequential dirt? That such crabbed, pointless existences can occasion such overwhelming, mindless nostalgia, is nothing short of astounding. That they can be apotheosized as innately suited to a humanity likely evolved as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers--certainly not as barnacles--is beyond belief. Goodbye forever, and good riddance!

How else could it be that we got Berry's horrific "Stay Home," yet another oh-so-fashionable, new-age paean to the most inane nonsenses of Voltaire and Thoreau? Yes, indeed, let's bury ourselves alive right out in the open, antisocial zombies with nothing better to do but watch the rain fall and the grass die for the billionth time in our inconsequential patchlet of dirt.

How else could it be that we are asked to take a Great Leap Backward into the past ("Where Have All the Farmers Gone?")? Oh, right. Everyone knows that once upon a time in days of yore, people lived far longer and more fulfilling lives, edified by interminable hours and months and years of "efficient," stupefying, backbreaking agricultural hand labor (photograph, page 14).

Alas, for most of us, the rain will fall on very small patchlets of dirt and dying grass indeed, once we have outlawed motorized transport ("Road Rage") and then, of necessity, crammed ourselves into disease-ridden walkable cities on the model of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, circa 1900. With luck, perhaps we can each have room enough to watch the rain fall on a pathetic four-inch flowerpot. Except for the government-funded elite. Naturally, they will retain a luxury of time, what with sabbaticals and summers off, so they and they alone will access the newly roadless national lands, romping and playing while the hoi polloi stew in hyperurban prisons.

You have really outdone yourselves this time. It is truly amazing to find such a thoroughgoing hodgepodge of fatuous yuppified inanity and romantically revanchist twaddle anywhere, but most especially in a magazine that most certainly is not produced by "efficient" hand labor with quail pens, oil lamps, green eyeshades, and hand presses. Wow!

PAUL SCHICK

Madison, Wisconsin

The Editor responds: You're not really Spiro Agnew...