Dear TMN,

I should, to begin with, admit that I am in the minority who feels that English, August deserved better than it got at Colin Meloy's hands. I will, rhetoric-fashion, tell you that I won't mention the arguably provincial privileging of parceled observations of What It Is To Be American over less-parceled-and-perhaps-then-subtler observations of What It Is To Be Indian, or that I imagine Mr. Meloy meant to say that he couldn't care less about New Jersey real estate, or that many of the winning points he wards to Mr. Ford's novel could as easily be given to Mr. Chatterjee—I am an admirer of Mr. Meloy's music, and so I know that he is fond of the Victorians, who were after all not terribly interested in India beyond not having to stay there too long while in the civil service. However, I do wish he had given just a bit more attention to the jacket-blurbs he mentions in his description of the match. If he had read them, he would have known that English, August is not a translation, new or otherwise; it was written in English, and has only now been published in America.

With some sorrow that Chatterjee is not likely to rise in the zombie round,
S. Weiss