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ARTFORUM
667 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10021

MESSAGE
TO Dan Flavin
Valley View Drive
Lake Valhalla
Cold Spring, New York 10516

DATE

REPLY
DATE
7/23/68

Dear Dan, 

Came back to deskful of miseries, not the least of which was your last letter. The last letters section, devoted entirely to D.F. was not a selection - it was all the mail I got on your article. One does not, except in the extreme cases, either edit [[strikethrough]] o [[/strikethrough]] or apply the smae criteria to letters as one does to the rest of the copy - for the most part, your publish what you get, and, in fact, for several years, having gotten so few, I used to publish what I wrote - i.e., I wrote the letters. If the letters are stupid they are stupid, that's all. Here the only point, for two successive issues, was to indicate the variety of responses[[strikethrough]] . [[/strikethrough]] which your article got.
The Boyd Mefferd letter was set for May; it was two lines, the first of which was something like, "Well, if a man is looking for a fight he can find it anywhere." As I recall we had to pull one [[strikethrough]] a [[/strikethrough]] letter from the May column and the Maffered one was just the right size, so it was pulled; then I simply forgot about it, or it would have been in June. But the point is that it was no better than the rest.
I cant reassure your qualms [[strikethrough]] " [[/strikethrough]] (political critical reciprocity") in the manner in which you suggest: i.e., I cant make a [[strikethrough]] [[?]] [[/strikethrough]] request for it in the Letters column or anywhere else, save here, in my letter to you. Nor can I go any further than what I would have assumed you already knew: that I very much enjoy publishing your material, look forward to having it as among the better things that appear in the magazine, and am terribly sorry that

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