Editor’s note: “The long, shining table: writers in Eastern Europe” by Hortense Calisher appeared in the January issue of The New Criterion. What follows is one of four observations on some of the issues raised in Miss Calisher’s essay.

As someone who comes from Poland and knows a little about Polish literary life, I can only regret that Miss Calisher didn’t brush against my country while traveling through Eastern Europe. She would have seen a couple of things which don’t quite fit into the questionable scheme of alternatives which form the standpoint of her otherwise excellently narrated story. First of all, in Warsaw she wouldn’t have been entertained by any writers union. The Polish Writers Union has been suspended by the military regime, as a retaliation for being too independent and having a democratically elected administration. (So perhaps in Eastern Europe one can be “unionized” not by the government but against it?) Second, even if she was at the Union’s headquarters, the scenery might well have looked quite different from what she found in Bucharest or East Berlin. There would have probably been another “long, shining table,” but underneath it the hand of a Polish writer would most certainly have passed to Miss Calisher a copy of some recent samizdat. (So perhaps in Eastern Europe censorship is not always “cozily suffered”?) Third, in Poland she couldn’t have avoided meetings with numerous well-known and admired writers just returning from prisons and internment camps. (So perhaps it’s not