Re: We can all do a little better, Jan. 1

As a graduate student, I feel your attacks on Mary Lou Zahalan’s area of study — she got a master’s degree in Beatles Ssudies — are mean-spirited and unfounded.

On a practical front, what cultural organization has had a greater effect on our society, let alone music, in the past 50 years than the Beatles? It is an area worth studying from a musical, sociological, technological, and economic viewpoint.

From a philosophical viewpoint, I know from experience that sometimes, a topic picks you. You go forward with your research not to get a piece of paper, but because you have to know.

Ms Zahalan is a rock musician. She has insights into music and commerce that lay people do not, and the intellectual curiosity to follow them up. When you ridicule Ms Zahalan, you ridicule all scholarship.

Lloyd Gray, Toronto