Letter from John G. Neihardt to Lucile Aly, January 19, 1966

I've been reading Shapiro's "In Praise of Ignorance", and I find this, which is certainly the gospel on genuine criticism: "I would go so far as to say that we cannot get a true work of criticism which has a coil of negative emotion at the botton of it. A work of criticism can become a work of art only when the critic is in love with his subject (the work, of course, not the author necessarily) and is carried away by it — exactly as the poet is carried away by his."

Naturally I thought of you when I read this, for I believe it has been so with you.