Spring 2000
Volume 26, Number 3

I think it would be more telling and more useful to the readers of Critical Inquiry (and they are good readers) if I simply said what was in my heart, which is that Terry Caesar and Tania Modleski deserve one another, are too dim to see the traps they flail about in, and are animated by nothing grander than hurt feelings and pique. Not that any of that's true, but it gives me a better one-two-three-go.

The fact is that I probably shouldn't be responding at all. What can I respond to? Both Tania and Terry are friends of mine, and, perhaps for that reason, treat me as a very minor annoyance, like bad music at a KKK rally. Such friendliness is, I can say with some heat, misplaced. Terry Caesar, when he recalls that I am part of all this, which isn't often, tries to spare me by suggesting that I'm probably trying for something worthy, but who knows? Tania Modleski, who is not only a friend but has an office about four feet from mine, gives me a little more attention, but mostly to say I'm a silly person and, what's more, a male. It would have been nice to have some material to work with.

James R. Kincaid is Aerol Arnold Professor of English at the University of Southern California and author, most recently, of Child-Loving (1992), Annoying the Victorians (1995), and Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (1998).