Sir, - Like most readers of The Irish Times, I suspect, I am unlikely ever to read the hefty tome on single-sex unions which has been exercising the minds of some of your correspondents in recent days. However, I have followed the debate with real interest. While Rev Peter O'Callaghan's letter (August 13th) might have been more clearly expressed, it did have the merit of demonstrating that academic opinion is sceptical of many of the claims made in John Boswell's book. Little can be said in favour of Senator David Norris's contribution (August 25th) on the subject.
It ill becomes our public representative to accuse Fr O'Callaghan of churlishness and spitefulness and then proceed to use the very same tactics in his own letter. One may not agree with the extract from Brent D. Shaw's review of the book quoted by Fr O'Callaghan, but Senator Norris's attempt to ridicule the Canadian professor because he teaches at the University of Lethbridge is a cheap shot.
Indeed, Senator Norris is so keen to discredit Prof Shaw that he describes Lethbridge as situated in the "Arctic wastes of north-western Canada". It is in fact in southern Alberta, just 65 miles from the US border. But even if Prof Shaw did live in the snowy wastes of Canada's far north rather than the leafy groves of Trinity College, why should that affect the quality of his scholarship? Senator Norris also classes him among those he calls "persons of relative academic obscurity". Such a comment tells us more about Senator Norris's lack of knowledge of the academic world than it does about Prof Shaw. Five minutes spent in the bibliographical section of the National Library would have revealed that Prof Shaw has published extensively in international journals in the field of classical studies and thus was admirably suited to review the Boswell book.
The concluding advice which Senator Norris is so keen to offer to Fr O'Callaghan in the field of intellectual endeavour seems to be on this occasion conspicuously misdirected. - Yours, etc., Jim Jackson,
Department of French, Trinity College, Dublin.