Mean to Gene.

I first began reading Commonweal in 1947 when I was a student at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. A young instructor named Eugene McCarthy recommended it to me. Ever since, I have been loyal to McCarthy and to your journal. I've long been pleased to be thought of as a "Commonweal Catholic" and honored to be a friend of this farsighted and courageous prophet. So I was displeased when his reputation was diminished--even disparaged--by John McGreevy in his review of Dominic Sandbrook's biography of McCarthy ("One of a Kind," August 13).

The man who stood up to two of the most intimidating bullies of his time (Joe McCarthy and Lyndon Johnson) deserves more enlightened and fair treatment in your pages. I'm not advocating adulation but I do believe McCarthy should be recognized as an extraordinarily insightful political personage, a genuine luminary of our era. The book under discussion strikes me as a distorted piece of flak work funded by the LBJ Foundation and authored by an obscure British hit man. How could your reviewer let the writer's stilted portrayal go unnoted?

McGreevy's commentary falls in line with Sandbrook's slanted presentation. Both repeat and make much of demeaning shibboleths, such as the story about Gene being so absorbed in writing a poem about a wolverine that he declined a onetime opportunity to be interviewed by Scotty Reston of the New York Times. The fact is that McCarthy, to his credit, chose not to break away from his dinner with world-class poet and cherished soul mate, Robert Lowell. Why deride this classic example of grace under pressure? Why not celebrate the candidate's character and sense of priority? I've also checked and learned that the former senator avers never to have undertaken to write about the fearsome wolverine.

TOM WESTBROOK 

Spokane, Wash.

The author replies:

My apologies to both Mr. Westbrook and Mr. McCarthy if the anecdote about fearsome wolverines, repeated by author Dominic Sandbrook, is myth. As I noted in the review, I think that McCarthy's courageous decision to run for president in 1968 reflected very well on both McCarthy and the tradition of Catholic social thought that shaped him. It's just that McCarthy's career since that year, a period longer than his career as an officeholder, seems to me more complex, even eccentric, than Westbrook's admiration--"farsighted and courageous," "genuine luminary," "extraordinarily insightful"--might suggest.

JOHN T. MCGREEVY