Henke 2022o

Mr. Lundahl’s Vague Writing, Lack of References and Misspellings Don’t Serve the Needs of the General Public

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In yet another email on May 17, 2022 (12:41 PM US Eastern Time, Mr. Lundahl makes the following claims:

My essays are clearly written, to the general public. They are professional, in the format of the essay that started in English around the Tatler and the Rambler. They just do not subscribe to the narrow criteria of clarity that the professionality of an Academic essay imposes. If you like, there was inclarity (unclarity? lack of clarity?) between us from the start. You were speaking of the kind of essays that Academia publishes on your institution and in peer reviewed journals read on it, and I was speaking of essays like those by C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton, and, somewhat less numerous, but supplemented by his letters, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Or by my countryman Frans G. Bengtsson, who, like I, was no fan of the spelling reform in 1906. I am not sure if collections like the "Longhaired Merovingians" or "In Defense of El Cid's Honour" (to use my ad hoc translations) are available in English, but Stephan Borgehammar will know what I am talking about.

Yet, if Mr. Lundahl’s essays “are clearly written, to the general public”, why have others complained about his bad referencing as earlier mentioned in Henke (2022f)? As Mr. Lundahl admits in his May 17, 2022 (12:41 PM Eastern US Time) email to me:

“William Collins, you have a very good point: I would have been better off leaving him out altogether, and he came in bc [because] some have, like you, pestered me about exact references.” [my emphasis]

In Lundahl (2022a), Mr. Lundahl mentions William Collins without stating that this was the name of the publisher of his copy of C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles. Nevertheless, how can Mr. Lundahl be clearly writing to the “general public” when in the same email he condescendingly refers to millions of people that use Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “half-educated”? How is this a professional attitude? Also see Henke (2022m). If Mr. Lundahl is not going to treat this debate in a professional and academic manner, he should quit and write comic books or other works of fiction.