LETTERS
A Protest and Reply Editors: The Congress for Cultural Freedom protests an implication in Paul Goodman's interesting article, "The Devolution of Democracy." It denies the implication of...
...But these are not issues of the same order or dimension...
...Nabokov brings it up, however, I think it would be a service to the intellectual community if the Congress would describe the financing of its many activities, publications, conferences, travel, etc., over the many years...
...I had described how a Mad take-off on baseball, or drive-in sex, etc., would be so unspontaneous and cagey in funnying-up the material as to blur any of that quality—" class" if you will—that you sense at once at any level of entertainment (or art) when its play is relatively free...
...In reply: Dr...
...It is hardly proper or possible, in so brief a communication, to question Plastrik's apparent linking of the Goan action with the problem of Kashmir and the looming presence of China on India's borders...
...they cannot be reduced to a single principle of morality...
...Food for China Editors: I read with interest your plea to feed the starving Red Chinese masses...
...It knows that a lot of what we feed upon is garbage and tells us so, giving us a chuckle, something to think about, but not the answer...
...I was surprised that Asoka Mehta did not bother to make this point, since it seems a patent cause for his country's behavior...
...Obviously, classic colonialism is being obliterated in Africa, and Portugal, which has been a notorious offender, is now being pushed out—bloody, tragic inch by inch...
...Editors: It must take a lot of class to be able to "see through" Mad magazine as T. J. Ross did (Autumn 1961, DISSENT...
...his logic is impeccable...
...Yet we may assume that an underwriter, also has his purposes...
...they must be seen in their specific historic contexts—always bearing in mind that the only overriding moral concern is to build barriers against nuclear war...
...Being in this sense inevitable, the famine today performs a progressive function...
...India's minor military move on Goa had, then, the major political function and the effect of validating the position of neutralist leadership which it is essential to all of us that she maintain...
...In the case of Congress—and in this I agree with Dwight Macdonald, who worked a spell for Encounter— a frank public statement of financing by Mr...
...instead he chose to emphasize the particularistic history of Goan-India negotiations and, moreover, he reaffirmed the friendship of his country, not only with the Portuguese people, which is necessary and commendable, but with their govern ment, which is neither...
...It seems clear that if India had tolerated a Portuguese enclave on her coast— at precisely the moment in history when Portugal's African policy was finally being exposed to public view after years of arrogant obfuscation, the new Africans could hardly have maintained their respect and comradeship with ex-colonial India...
...17) made, interestingly enough, for the House Un-American Activities Committee...
...Ross, who seems to instinctively shy away from things popular...
...Shute would lump together with baseball as popular "pastimes" of the sort which might be described as "invidious...
...l lie view that so tong as it's "fun-nec" it's somehow sacrosanct--above or beneath criticism--is typical of the current cult of cotnicality...
...Some of the rest of us do too...
...Or compare Ichikawa's movies to Preminger's, etc...
...Through more awareness Shute may figure for himself what attitude, if any, he wants to take with his Mom...
...and he agrees that the light offers all glare and no vision for its beams shine nowhere except back on the reader—shine through hirer, in fact...
...It is puzzling that remarks about free expression or about mind or about the qualities of art should be resented as unfair ideology...
...It denies the implication of being anybody's "instrument...
...It is hardly necessary to discuss the situation in Angola, where the genocide of educated Africans has been under way for some time...
...Mad is valuable precisely because it laughs at itself, and makes people laugh at themselves and their own institutions...
...I take it that the allusion was, in significant part, to Krishna Menon, but whether we like Menon or not, the fact is that he represents the left pillar of Indian neutralism —and if that crumbles, a radical, or reactionary, totalitarian wave is likely to inundate the country, or provincial separatism may prevail—in any case, there will be no significant third force remaining in the world, no rallying point for the younger nations...
...One makes distinctions, and one doesn't automatically suppose that any entertainment for—or forms of address to—a broad audience must be lacking in "class...
...Schwartz convinces me...
...the characterization of marriage and children—all emphasize a reproach to ersatz culture...
...Of course, nothing would logically follow from such an accounting...
...Nabokov's letter...
...Ross may think he knows all the political answers...
...Compulsive notions about the baseball pseudo-orgy, or about the "popular," in general, can be invidious and are therefore worth examining...
...S. P. Another Perspective on Goa Editors: I have usually found myself in agreement with the spirit, if not always with the conclusions, of Stanley Plastrik's observations on Asian affairs...
...But since he was inspired to mention a couple of real writers, may I point out that a chief impulse of the best modern writing has been to remind the reader of the reality of his own nature...
...These particular remarks, as you may possibly have guessed from the language, are attributable to Lenin and are to be found in a study by David Dallin, "The Soviet Union, From Lenin to Khrushchev" (p...
...I'm sure that the author of this editorial realizes that the present famine in China is not a temporary accident due to backward methods of agriculture, but is simply the result of too many people relative to the amount of arable land, and that given the regime's abandonment of popu lation control policy several years ago, this situation can only grow worse as time goes on...
...Would that be about—say-75 million fewer, Doctor...
...NIcoLAs NABOBOV, Secretary-General PAUL GOODMAN replies: I am surprised at Mr...
...Nabokov would enable the intellectual world similarly to size up the situation for itself...
...STANLEY DIAMOND Who's "Mad...
...There is a grave need for a serious and ideological political literature which does know some of the an swers...
...they only have sympathy pains) but, fortunately, there is always the sentimentalist intelligentsia to think otherwise, if only to avoid Leninist realpolitik...
...STANLEY DIAMOND [Stanley Diamond is correct.—H...
...Yet, in their exchange on Goa, one indispensable point was conspicuously missing in the arguments of each...
...It makes no claim to ideology, nor to be a counterposition to official values...
...MICHAEL SHUTE: T. J. Ross replies: No, I don't like our national bore, baseball: it is a pity that youngsters are now so vulnerable to the influence of this mind-reducing activity too: it is a pity that—for fear of losing their standing as super-patriots—they dare not say they'd as soon leave baseball alone...
...and Asoka Mehta is certainly one of the world's distinguished socialists...
...Therefore, the only result of shipping in food from the outside would be to worsen the demographic situation by keeping alive more malnourished people for next year's famine...
...And rock and roll and hot dogs and cheering crowds and those varieties of sex experience which Mr...
...In any case the effort will be a commend...
...A bit of self-awareness is especially valuable when one lives in a culture so much of which may be characterized as emotionally retarded...
...It merely claims to tickle the funnybone by exposure to social realities, and that it does in large numbers, excepting such savants as the knowing Mr...
...I'm glad Shute agrees with me that my samplings from Mad showed it in its sharpest light...
...It is quite something that Ross of all people, should accuse Mad of "once-oversnottily" commentary, but the instance he selects (Mad's advice to nations to adopt Madison Avenue techniques—"Red Star Insurance," etc...
...But Mad does not make that its claim to fame...
...Would the author please explain the merits of a policy leading to a larger and more underfed China...
...In my sentence on the CIA, I spoke in capital-letter generalities about Cultural Freedom and the Encounter of ideas, because I could not be more particular without embarrassing friends of the Farfield Foundation, etc...
...On the other hand, Plastrik emphasized India's juridical position, and also internal political pressures—which surely existed but were directly revelant to India's need to maintain a viable balance of forces within the country itself...
...the tweedle dum-tweedle dee satire on Kennedy-Nixon...
...GENE CHAVKIN Editors: I'm distressed at finding your superb issue [Winter 1962] marred by a stupid editorial advocating "help" for Red China in the form of huge shipments of food...
...In Henry Pachter's review of Erich Fromm's book on Marx, he (yachter) credits Unamuno with the authorship of "Urn einen Goethe von innen bittend...
...able gesture...
...It is, however, funnyl Ross scorns the defeatism of Alfred E. Neuman, he chides Mad for failing to at least adopt beat (fortunately Mad does not employ Ross for advice...
...This could have meant a further fracturing of those neutralist Afro-Asian peoples who will, if they possibly can, retain political integrity, and may yet save us from world war, in the face of ideological assaults from the dominant power blocs...
...relative to the amount of arable land...
...the glum ritualizing of resentments, something else...
...Psychologically this talk of feeding the starving, etc., is nothing but the expression of the usual sugary sentimentality so characteristic of the intelligentsia...
...It is easy to find comments such as these: .. the famine is the direct consequence of a particular social order...
...Goodman admires...
...But in such a case it is clear to the readers that the ads sustain the magazine, for they are in bright colors...
...If the prose describing such matters is scintillating enough to make for clear reading, so much the better...
...Following this advice, it would be best to allow the Chinese Marxist-Leninists to eat their gospel (the elite, however, never starves along with their charges...
...Although I concur, for apolitical humanitarian reasons, there are people who will see the aid as shoring up this oppressive regime...
...Moreover, as is well known, the labor policy of Portugal, both in Angola and Mozambique— in the latter territory tied in with the wholesale shipment of workers to the mines of South Africa—has probably been the most calloused of any colonial power in modern history...
...is enough to justify Mad's existence...
...RICHARD SCHWARTZ, M.D...
...Actually, Ortega y Gasset is the author and the piece first appeared in German, in 1932, in Die Neue Rundschau, and, in English, in the Partisan Review, in December 1949...
...Perhaps Mr...
...There is also a serious need for Mad, which shows us up for what we are...
...DISSENT might profitably retain Ross to write scintillating indictments of such pastimes as rock and roll, baseball, sex and hot dogs, which are well known for their invidious capacity for popular enjoyment...
...A Protest and Reply Editors: The Congress for Cultural Freedom protests an implication in Paul Goodman's interesting article, "The Devolution of Democracy...
...This concerns the role of Portugal in Africa, that is, in Angola and Mozambique...
...Mad's humor per se is not subtle and not to be ranked with Shaw and Wilde...
...It was most recently published as "In Search of Goethe from Within" (Tine Dehumanization of Art, etc., Doubleday Anchor Books, no date...
...Therefore the efforts of the well-to-do to mitigate the effect of the famine are quite natural...
...Every example cited by Ross: the reshaping of the German-Japanese personality in the Hollywood set...
...Let the population of China be reduced to the point where it has the correct amount of people...
...y Gusset, Not Unamuno Editors: This is just a pedantic point, but since it concerns what is probably the most penetrating essay written in our time, I am moved to make it...
...Its activities (and publications) are the result of precisely the kind of free exchange of ideas and free decisions by small groups, "experimental, self-improving units," which Mr...
...Ross is correct: Mad does not resist per se, it does not engage in "intellectual skirmishing" but does criticize, and sharply so, the fickleness of modern political principle, the fraud of social persuasion and family ideals in our world...
...Which is not the same as "showing up" the obvious, or "seeing through" or smiling through, or blinking into a glare...
...the "How We Retired at the Age 11" bit...
...Perhaps he will write DISSENT another letter to this effect...
...The Goan action, by strengthening India's neutralist position internally and externally, particularly in the view of emergent Africa, accomplished precisely that, and did it with dispatch, and though the word has been dirtied in our day, with justice...
...Ross could attain distinction by writing a piece on why we should not love our mothers...
...Staring overlong in his Mad mirror won't add to anything but his spleen...
...Yes, they might...
...Comedy—in which a lively demand on the world is always implicit-is one thing...
...Hopefully, this aid will actually be passed on to the starving people and not turned to profit for the party's coffers...
...Since Mr...
...One cannot judge the truth of propositions by their underwriting...
...Compare, for example, anything by Offenbach to coy mush like Guys and Dolls, etc...
...For instance, Esquire magazine has used me as an "instrument," a kind of jester to manufacture conversation-pieces, while I was nevertheless expressing my "free" ideas and decisions and hoping that a few of the many hundred thousand readers would take them seriously...
...so long as this order exists, such famines are inevitable...
...The famine threatens to create serious disturbances and possibly the destruction of the entire order...
...Yet without the free play of wit and implication one's enjoyments are bound to be awfully diminished...
...What a funny way of seeing any "realities" along one's path—including a sense of oneself in relation to them...
...In crying that "Mad shows us up for what we are" Shute introduces a regrettable note of self-hatred which, I trust is not warranted...
Vol. 9 • July 1962 • No. 3
