Scott Peck and The Road Less Traveled

4/28/93
M. Scott Peck
New Preston, CT 06777

Dear Dr. Peck,

I just read a paperback edition of your book, "The Road Less Traveled." I enjoyed the book but was troubled to find no acknowledgment of Robert Frost for your title. I assume it’s there somewhere. Am I right?

Sincerely,


Jake Daehler

WGA Registered 2010

7/5/93
Ms. Logan
c/o M. Scott Peck
New Preston, CT 06777

Dear Ms. Logan,

This is a response to your response to my letter to your “semi-retired” boss, Dr. Peck, about the absence of any acknowledgment to Robert Frost for helping him come up with a title that could sell books. Your answer that Dr. Peck “recognized the title THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED had a ‘Frostian’ ring, looked it up and realized that it was indeed close,” citing as evidence the fact that the line from Frost’s poem reads, “the one less traveled,” is insulting. “Close,” you say? Clearly “one” refers to “road.” While I’m sure this sort of literary borrowing is done with equal success time-and-again (and no one from the dead poet’s estate is likely to sue), when an author writes a book about grace and integrity and doesn’t seem the least bit grateful or beholden to a fellow writer for a very familiar -- if not exact -- million-seller title, it just seems hypocritical and unctuous, particularly when the original title, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALITY AND GROWTH, would surely have been a long shot for a publisher eager to make back his investment. Your final statement that Frost “leaves it unclear if the difference was good or bad,” was confusing to me for a variety of reasons. First, it isn’t at all unclear if you are a sentient adult with even rudimentary command of language; and second, Peck knows that and is capitalizing on the fact that everyone else does, too, when they buy his book. The content of Dr. Peck’s work further supports the obvious conclusion that the difference was positive.

In the end, all I ask is that when -- as with Hemingway or Salinger -- the search for a catchy phrase leads you to the writings of John Donne, Ecclesiastes, or Sappho, just give a little nod where credit is due.

Sincerely,

Jake Daehler

WGA Registered 2010