To the Editor:

One wonders what has become of your standards of journalism, hiring a free-lance writer of dubious reputation to write an obituary of Jacques Derrida, one of the renowned philosophers of our time. Not only has Jonathan Kandell's honesty as a reporter been questioned, his own book on Mexico City has been reviewed as "one-sided and ill-informed," and his obituary (also in your pages) of Lawrence
Tisch deemed "long and foul." A slash and burn approach might be appropriate for Carmine de Sapio (whose obituary he also wrote), but not for Jacques Derrida. Even if you had chosen a critic of Derrida's to write the review, he should have been better informed. Kandell is embarrassingly illiterate in the history of philosophy.
His obituary is also terribly one sided. I thought the Times was committed to balance. Where are the appreciative quotes from American philosophers and literary critics? From those (and there are many) who have used his work to great effect and taught whole generations of students how to read differently? This article cites only debunkers; it is full of innuendo and nasty asides. Readers of the Times deserve better than an anti-intellectual rant and Jacques Derrida deserves a better last word than a biased and inaccurate account of his life and work.

Joan W. Scott