Though Adrian Searle is correct to say that Jasper Johns’ Flag is not a painting of a flag, it is less of a flag than he suggests (Flagging up conundrum of a complicated painter, 20 September). Johns’ brilliant work, which raises many important questions about art, is no more a flag than Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows is the Wiltshire countryside. It is perhaps more helpful to think of representational paintings as being from things rather than of things.
David Ainley
Matlock, Derbyshire
Amy Fleming’s article on lab-grown meat and fish (Is ‘Frankenfish’ the start of a food revolution?, G2, 21 September) illustrates once again the predictive power of Pohl and Kornbluth’s 1953 SF novel The Space Merchants. They called the non-animal meat plant “Chicken Little”. Their main prediction, of corporations ruling the world, becomes more accurate each year.
John Wilson
London
The literary equivalent of the British pride in not understanding mathematics is the failure to read the whole of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past while freely engaging in received opinions of the author’s works. While Jonathan Franzen’s honesty here is admirable (The books that made me, Review, 23 September), he must know what he is missing, having said in the same interview “every book changes my life at least a little bit”.
Val Mainwood
Wivenhoe, Colchester
I was faced with something of a dilemma when deciding what my dad would wear for his funeral (Dead casual: why corpses are dressing down, 25 September). The socks in his drawer were rather worn, but he had an unopened packet too. Knowing he and his socks were heading for the crematorium, and with him hating waste of any kind, I dressed him in his old socks and donated the new ones to the charity shop, hoping that Dad would agree!
Ann Newell
Thame, Oxfordshire
Surely everyone knows that the best sort of meeting (Letters, passim) is the one of 10 and nine off sick.
Mark Ormiston
Isleworth, Middlesex
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