Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR PRO-CASTRO MYTH I welcome the question raised by Elliot Carlson ("Dear Editor," NL, August 28) because it gives me an opportunity to set the record straight with respect to a myth...
...Purdy's characters are a very special breed that are not easily identified by words, homosexuality having as many faces as heterosexuality...
...New York City Theodore Draper UNFAIR TO PURDY...
...If our Lagos friend knew his history, he would realize that human slavery retarded rather than accelerated America's economic development...
...They have come to this admiration circuitously, for he long suffered the neglect of both editors and critics...
...At various times, during the trip, he repeated this warning...
...they tend to inflate...
...Flushing, N. Y. David Haber...
...If James Purdy is a real writer, the fact that I don't like his work won't demolish him...
...Those who profited most were the Negro kings, such as those in Lagos, whose families now compose the upper economic class in Africa...
...But he and the other leaders of his regime have never complained about going to Washington to ask for U. S. government aid and leaving angrily with empty hands...
...According to the recollections of Dr...
...Let's face it: A faggot is a faggot...
...One of them, then Finance Minister Rufo Lopez Fresquet, has recently recalled: "When I accompanied Fidel to this country in April 1959, the Prime Minister warned me as we left Havana not to take up Cuban economic matters with the authorities, bankers or investors of the North...
...As for atom bomb tests, we have been working for an end to such testing for longer than Nigeria has had its independence...
...Many of these writers go down because men like Sundel are so busy knocking them down...
...Alfred Sundel's review of James Purdy's Color of Darkness ("The Limp-Wrist School," NL, June 19) was one of the most malicious and poorly argued diatribes I have ever read...
...You meet the same people going down that you meet coming up," Sundel quotes in his review...
...Because Purdy is probably sensitive to this kind of criticism—which is meant, after all, to destroy—I want to register my dissent...
...If Sundel wants to write a diatribe against homosexuals, why doesn't he do that and leave objective critics to deal with Purdy's work...
...When we consider that African manpower was bought for cash paid to sundry chiefs and kings on the West Coast of Africa from the 15th to the 19th century, we realize that America owes no debt to Africa...
...When Anunobi finds a spot in the sun on the face of this earth where people live only to do good for others, will he please tell me where this wonderful society is...
...Carlson refers to the three financial experts whom he brought with him...
...Writers don't improve with praise...
...Yet, for our laws, industry, religion, arts and sciences, we took very little from Africa, or from slave labor...
...The term was derogatory before I ever used it...
...Finally, Anunobi says that if Asia and Africa do not find the U. S. a "true lover of mankind," they will look elsewhere...
...Yet this charge has become one of the staples of pro-Castro propaganda outside Cuba, especially in the United States...
...He clearly refers to Castro's visit to the United States in April 1959...
...I was more interested in public opinion than in money...
...Ithaca, N. Y. David Ray Alfred Sundel Replies: Buck up, David Ray, things aren't that bad...
...Let us not be so tolerant as to be afraid to use words...
...Adlai Stevenson has made very clear the United States position on Angola at the United Nations...
...It ruined the South and handicapped the North...
...Ernesto Betancourt, has gone on record to the same effect...
...This argument, which one hears from other Africans as well, is both wearisome and dishonest...
...Owing to Castro's instructions, the Cubans could only reply that they had no crucial problems and had no requests to make of the United States government...
...It would take too much space and time to go beyond what I have already written, and I hope to return to the subject on another occasion...
...And I was not agreed that the aim of the travel be confused" (Problems of Journalism, Proceedings of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1959, p. 82...
...I am intrigued by one aspect of this myth about Castro's allegedly intense desire for American government aid and his reluctant turn to the Soviet Union as a result of his frustration...
...It is a strong descriptive term, preferable to a generic, semi-medical one (that is used very loosely) for the cases in point...
...Also for that reason, during our stay in Washington, when I exchanged views with the Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Roy Rubottom, I feigned polite aloofness to his concrete statement that the U. S. government wished to know how and in what form it could cooperate with the Cuban government in the solution of the most pressing Cuban economic needs" (The Times of Havana, Miami, September 15-17, 1961, P. 1...
...Carlson states the myth as follows: "An examination of the revolution's first four months makes clear that Castro not only wanted, but actively sought economic aid from the American government...
...Castro was as good as his word...
...The third financial expert, Dr...
...To begin with, it is true that African manpower contributed to the growth of the Southeastern seaboard of the United States prior to 1861, as slave labor on large farms...
...The slave trade was the crassest sort of economic enterprise, and would have been impossible without the wholehearted cooperation of the African ruling class...
...He writes: "Please count me as one of those whom a whole library of facts cannot persuade that the U. S. is pursuing a progressive policy in international affairs...
...Pazos, the Americans asked pointedly whether the U. S. might be helpful with respect to any particular Cuban financial problems...
...DEBT TO AFRICA...
...it is not a reviewer's requisite to advance the career of a bad writer...
...The meeting with Rubottom has been described by another of the Cuban financial experts, then President of the Cuban National Bank, Felipe Pazos...
...This group had a continual source of slave manpower because of interminable tribal wars...
...More reviewers should only cry havoc when they think the reader is being bamboozled...
...York City George S. Schuyler Nlewedim Anunobi's letter from Nigeria is a prize example of the motto: "Don't show me the facts, I've already made up my mind...
...But a few facts must be put before him, nonetheless...
...In another respect, Carlson seriously fails to do justice to my own views...
...Now that he has finally achieved his deserved recognition, why not encourage his talent instead of trying to destroy it, to produce yet another of the embittered and abortive talents...
...Anunobi would do well to judge us by our actions rather than his own preconceptions., He might examine recent Supreme Court decisions as examples of our sincere attitudes about "apartheid...
...On April 17, 1959, in his speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, he stated (in English): "I wish to explain that we did not come here for money...
...On April 17, 1959, the same day that Castro spoke at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Rubottom, assisted by officers of both the Department of State and Department of the Treasury, met with Lopez Fresquet, Pazos and the Cuban Minister of Economy, Regino Bot...
...In fact, I think that American foreign policy was very much a factor, but I do not believe that it was the operative, causative, crucial factor...
...My use of language includes the best words I could find to describe what I saw...
...Fidel Castro has assailed the United States for many reasons, and he has never been inhibited by the lack of concrete evidence, as in the case of the "Coubre" incident...
...DEAR EDITOR PRO-CASTRO MYTH I welcome the question raised by Elliot Carlson ("Dear Editor," NL, August 28) because it gives me an opportunity to set the record straight with respect to a myth that turns up regularly in Pro-Castro propaganda...
...I know many people who admire Purdy's work...
...Nlewedim Anunobi of Lagos, Nigeria, argues ("Dear Editor," NL, August 28) that "the United States is morally indebted to Africa because African manpower made America what it is today...
...But it seems necessary to point out that there is quite a distance between everything and nothing...
...Believe me, back slapping can be more injurious...
...He interprets me as thinking that "American foreign policy was not a factor in the process that carried Cuba into Communism...
...New...
...Purdy seems to agree that homosexuality is a pathetic retreat into infantilism, but what that has to do with the provocation of the reader's "contempt" instead of "pity" eludes me...
...The meeting soon came to an end...
...That is why, when I visited the then Secretary of the Treasury, Robert B. Anderson, I did not respond to the American official's indications that the United States was favorably disposed toward aiding our country...
...It happens that Castro himself went to some pains during his visit to deny any such desire or search...
...It is possible that many other governments have come here for money and many people believe that every time some government comes here it is coming for money...
...His preoccupation with the tainted homosexual concern, echoed in the repetitive and accusatory use of the words "faggot," "limp-wrist" and "gay," is surely no fault of Purdy's...
...Sundel makes use of every unfair rhetorical device known to reviewers—distorted encapsulation, confusion of the writer with his subject matter, etc...
...Stop pitying Purdy and think of the poor reader...
Vol. 44 • October 1961 • No. 34
