In a message dated 12/17/2008 1:04:54 PM Pacific Standard Time, snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes: In fact, I would bet you that if I were to find the one of my colleagues with whom I most disagree on every point of literary theory and criticism, and pick at random a Derrida essay neither of us had read, we could hammer out a summary of it that we both agreed with. And I would further bet that this would not be possible if I were to pick two random people out of the aisles of my supermarket.>> ---------------------------- As expert editors, we are allowed to summarize our sources. A summary is a description of the source. A summary *of the source* is not a criticism of the source, nor an interpretation of the source vis-a-vis some other source such as "Here he makes an obvious allusion to the Iliad although in a post-modern Kakaesque melange...." Your opinion of what the source is saying is a summary, your opinion of *why* the source is saying what it's saying is not a summary of that source. It's an evaluation of the source. I can give a good summary of an episode of Bewitched. If I then go on to give detailed critiques and understanding, and interpretations, evaluations, additional references to other things, etc etc that is not a summary of the source. If in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" D.H. Lawrence does not state that "this is a send-up of middle class values" then we cannot, in a summary say "this is a send-up of middle class values". We can summarize what the source is saying. Additional layers, must be left to existing reviewers, not us as editors. *We* are not experts because we can add additional layers, *we* are experts because we can find sources which (they) add those layers for us. Will Johnson **************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaol…)