Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR FOUR-DAY WEEK Ernest DeCicco's article, "The Four Day Week" (NL, July 29), ignores one point of major significance. If the trend toward extra employment continues, it may vitiate the...
...But moonlighting shows that some of them would rather have more money than shorter hours...
...Two examples at random: "Repression bars impulses from awareness without satisfying them...
...But I alone am responsible for ascribing the score of the musical comedy My Fair Lady to Alan Jay Lerner...
...I feel I should also inform the readers that just in these last few days I have seen My Fair Lady for a second time in a performance so inferior to the Actors Club benefit which I was privileged to see the first time I went that I could not possibly have written about it with such rapture...
...Eluctable, schmeluctable, as long as you've got the space...
...Ridgefield, Conn...
...Indeed, if any one theme emerges, it is what might better have been titled, "A Homogenized Plea for Immaturity...
...This time it was an ordinary summer audience, and the cast, especially Rex Harrison, capitulated to its natural weariness, producing a show that was indeed charming but certainly not of the superlative quality I had previously reported...
...Lerner, of course, wrote the book...
...Washington, D. C. J. T. Hunter MASS MEDIA What is popular art...
...Theorists have emphasized the advantages to the workman of more time for leisure, health and personal improvement...
...Diana Trilling...
...And after a particularly purple tirade against popular movies: "Once fundamental impulses are thwarted beyond retrieving...
...But what is especially puzzling to this reader is why the mass media and popular tastes have to be Freudianized for some 3,000 words to reach the rather inane conclusion: "But whether 'the mass of men' felt better or worse without the mass-production techniques of which popular culture is an ineluctable part, we shall never know...
...Westport, Conn...
...Don Colen I am writing to express my appreciation for two brilliant articles in the July 29 New Leader which are the best of their kind I've read: Diana Trilling's review of Long Day's Journey into Night and My Fair Lady, and Ernest van den Haag's article on mass media...
...I believe that moonlighting shows up a fundamental feature of the American way of life: People like to work, believe it or not...
...Minneapolis Emily G. White 'FAIR LADY' In my July 29 "Here and Now" column, I am made to seem guilty of various illiteracies for which I am afraid your printers must bear the responsibility...
...My husband is already an avid and enthusiastic reader of The New Leader...
...Possibly a limit to shortening the work week is near...
...If a man, in addition to his regular employment, is going to do extra work at lower wages without the established employment benefits because he wants more money, the purpose of the shorter week is lost...
...Henceforth, he will have to fight for his chance at it...
...The latter covered the menace so well that I believe I'll send it to my friends who teach communications and psychology...
...Nowhere in Ernest van den Haag's "The Menace of the Mass Media" (NL, July 29) are there any definitions of the phenomena that he obviously deplores...
...the music was by Frederick Loewe, to whom I hereby make my apology...
...I suppose it is safe to assume that Van den Haag is not suggesting that all fundamental impulses ought to be satisfied, although he never says so...
...If the trend toward extra employment continues, it may vitiate the standard arguments about the shorter work week...
...Popular culture...
...The mass media...
Vol. 40 • August 1957 • No. 33
