Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR ? MODEL OF THE FORM' I couldn't be less interested in the subject, being a strictly urban type, but may I say that William E. Bohn's little essay on weeds in your May 28 issue...
...The events I refer to concern the struggle which has come out into the open between the "Old Guard" Communists of the Popular Socialist party (see the case of Anibal Escalante) and the young Fidelista Communists...
...Mexico Daniel James Daniel M. Friedenberg replies: I believe my review stands on its own legs and I do not want to take up too much of your space in responding...
...One would never know it from Friedenberg's review, but in that chapter I produced a mass of detail which demonstrated that the United States did, in fact, offer Castro economic aid but he turned it down: I cited as my main sources of information the men who comprised Castro's "highest economic staff," in the phrase of the head of that staff, Dr...
...Your reviewers write with style, incision and, above all, a sense of literary and social responsibility...
...If that is the "weakest point" of my book, then the schism in Cuban Communist simply does not exist—in Friedenberg's mind, at any rate...
...What they and others told me, all of which is printed in the chapter, constitutes, I believe, the first complete first-hand account of what really happened on that trip...
...What I did write is that "Fidel Castro was intellectually attracted to the Communist cause while at the University...
...Of a piece with his whole review is Friedenberg's mean little statement that "James and Nikita Khrushchev, for inverse reasons, both seem to share a belief in the inevitable triumph of Communism...
...The bank, it is pertinent to note, was Cuba's, overall planning agency...
...Friedenberg, as a reviewer, owed it to his readers to read thoroughly the details of that account and then summarize them...
...These facts, which I gathered from persons who knew Castro in his student and immediate poststudent days, are quite different from the statement Friedenberg attributes to me...
...It should be reprinted in sortie anthology of prose to show students how to write—admirably brief, full of information, crisply and charmingly written, and with a most moving appeal to our conscience on behalf of four oppressed minorities...
...In the light of the facts which fill an entire chapter, how can Friedenberg plead ignorance of what really happened during Castro's first Washington visit...
...How would Friedenberg have known Pardo Llada's views, for example, if he had not read them in my book...
...And I further added that Pardo Llada informed me that he had given Castro an eight-volume collection of Mussolini's speeches to read in 1946...
...Had he read the Preface he would have seen this disclaimer: "The writer has deliberately refrained from discussing such matters as . . the problems posed for the United States by Castro's Cuba.' I went on to say that I was confining myself to the sole task of exposing the strategy and technique of the Communist takeover of Cuba...
...Pazos, and another leading member of the "highest economic staff" whom I cited...
...I particularly enjoyed Stanley Edgar Hyman's review of Youngblood Hawke (the final "e" kills me) in the Spring Book issue...
...Having secret discussions is not creating "a secret Communist group...
...I also pointed out that while its stated program was nationalist, the Castro brothers and "Che" Guevara, in its early period, "were already exhibiting a strong predilection for Communist ideas and discussing, secretly, plans for building a Communist and not a nationalist Cuba...
...He does not intimate that what passes for his analysis is actually mine...
...The pieces on theater and film by Alan Schneider and Mike Herr were excellent...
...I reported that a boyhood friend of Castro's, Jose Ignacio Rasco, had told me that Castro was an admirer of Hitler (and Mein Kampf), Primo de Rivera (the founder of Spanish Falangism) and Mussolini—whose name crops up (accidentally...
...DEAR EDITOR ? MODEL OF THE FORM' I couldn't be less interested in the subject, being a strictly urban type, but may I say that William E. Bohn's little essay on weeds in your May 28 issue ["There Are No Weeds"] is a model of the form...
...Why, in view of such detailed information given in my book, must Friedenberg try to give the impression that I was ignorant of Castro's "dictatorial" or "Fascist" tendencies...
...Rufo Lopez Fresquet, Minister of Finance at the time, both accompanied Castro to Washington on his first visit in April 1959...
...Washington, D.C...
...Ross Russell A letter from Sidney Koretz in your excellent May 14 issue quotes Edwin L. Dale, writing "for the New York Times," on the subject of deficit spending...
...Friedenberg not only attributes to me statements I did not make, but also appropriates my research material in an effort to use it against me...
...This conveys the impression that James, the author, has missed a basic aspect of Castro's political mentality, and that it remains for Friedenberg, the reviewer, to reveal it to the world...
...New York City Ernest van den Haag KENNEDY & ADENAUER Knowing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, may I confirm Elie Abel's conclusions in his article, "Adenauer and the President," in the May 28 issue...
...The quotations are not from the Times, but from an article by Dale in the New Republic of April 9, 1962...
...I devoted an entire chapter to that issue— the very issue Friedenberg says I "ignored or minimized...
...Since my book on Cuba is clear enough answer to that one, I shall only say that if a great many more people come to share Friedenberg's murky notions and his disregard for realities, then the triumph of Communism will indeed be inevitable...
...Further on, Friedenberg asserts that "the weakest point in James' analysis is his creation of two Communist parties...
...I am rather surprised that James takes offense at my using material mentioned in his book...
...In the book I wrote: "To the question, 'Was Castro a Communist in those days?' one must first answer, 'He was capable of being either a Communist or a Fascist.'" I then proceeded to quote Raul Chibas as having said to me he believed that 25 years ago Castro could have ben a Nazi or Fascist...
...And, as a jazz specialist, I can say that your music critic, Albert Goldman, knows exactly what he is talking about...
...Furthermore, it is rather silly for a grown-up man to make such remarks as a "mean little statement...
...In another passage, Friedenberg writes, "Much of the earlier 'Communist' activity [of Castro] was simply dictatorial in character...
...Fundamentally, I believe that the Cuban case is important because, as much on our side as on the side of the Cuban radical leaders, it is a classic example of policy errors...
...sympathy for the Cuban Revolution, in the beginning, as contrasted with a sustained anti-American campaign on Castro's part starting on January 23, 1959, how can Friedenberg say that we refused aid because we were out "to destroy the Cuban Revolution...
...There I termed the Movement "a species of The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, bat letters should not exceed 300 words...
...I suppose that the "secret Communist group" Friedenberg vaguely talks about concerns my chapter on the July 26th Movement...
...Sidney, Ohio Paul M. Steinle Stanley Edgar Hyman's marvellously just critical essays have made me an avid fan of his...
...My response to charges made by others referring to this review has already been published [NL, April 16], and I see no value in going over that ground again...
...New York City Gerhart ?. Seger CUBA Daniel M. Friedenberg's review (NL, March 19) makes so many untrue and misleading statements about my book, Cuba: The First Soviet Satellite in the Americas, that I am compelled to make an effort to set the record straight insofar as possible within this space...
...New York City Dwight Macdonald MORE ON SPRING BOOKS The May 14 issue of The New Leader is so good and, I suspect, the number of people who take the trouble to write when they are pleased so few, that a letter to the editor has become a duty...
...Popular Front which the Communists have created in many countries...
...If the Eisenhower-Kennedy position is what he considers clear thinking, I plead guilty to the charge...
...A difference of opinion was the basic issue involved...
...I added that when he later entered the Ortodoxo party he joined its pro-Communist wing...
...He writes, for example, that "James must state that Fidel Castro was always a Communist and that, to conceal this fact, he created a secret Communist group...
...And I believe the causal relations must be stressed if we are to deal effectively with the much larger problems facing us in the entire Latin American continent...
...Witness his piece on the Modern lazz Quartet last winter ("The New lazz Fantasy," NL, December 25, 1961...
...He writes with style and competence...
...Why is he so intent upon giving the reader the false impression that I was anxious to portray Castro as "always a Communist...
...Nevertheless, U.S...
...in the days of Mussolini it would have been labelled Fascist...
...Hang on to these fellows...
...Stanley Edgar Hyman's "Some Questions About Herman Wouk" is a particularly fine piece of work...
...The New Leader has revived a few hopes...
...Felipe Pazos, then President of the National Bank of Cuba...
...policy toward Cuba was not within the scope of my book...
...Please keep up the wonderful work...
...And in the face of ample evidence in several chapters demonstrating beyond doubt U.S...
...He should consider it a compliment that I read the work so carefully...
...What I did in the chapter mentioned above was to trace that struggle back to its origins—to Moncada in 1953, when Bias Roca and the entire PSP were attacking Castro as "Putschist"—and to supply what is in effect essential background to understanding the present in-fighting in Cuba...
...So far as I know, I am the only American writer to have interviewed Pardo Llada at length since he broke with Castro in March 1961...
...It is critical writing of this kind that we are going to have to have if American fiction is to survive—mordant and angry, yet clear, functional criticism on the best level...
...In fact, some of Adenauer's misgivings about the President's having received both Willy Brandt and Fritz Erler of the Social Democratic party can be traced to an earlier, decisive remark of Kennedy's...
...I know James will consider this muddy-headed thinking...
...The Spring Book coverage is better than anything in any publication, to my knowledge...
...in Friedenberg's second-hand research...
...It would be impossible to put in quotation marks every statement made in the review, but a good deal of what he said was valuable and I did not use it to misquote him and give an impression, as he seems to state, that it is original with me...
...Now this struggle between the two wings—or "parties" (my word)—of Cuban Communism was brought to light for the first time, as far as I know, in my book...
...policy inevitably came into my discussion, particularly when it dealt with Castro's propaganda that the United States refused aid to the Cuban Revolution...
...Friedenberg is downright unfair when he charges that I "ignored or minimized" American mistakes in Cuba...
...As a one-time reader of the Saturday Review, the New York Times Book Review and the New York Herald Tribune Book Section, etc., I have become progressively disillusioned with the stuff that passes for criticism in them and in our TV society...
...What's more, he is about the only jazz writer in America who's not afraid of the usual pressures (they operate even in this restricted field) and says what he thinks...
...Thus he declares that "the views expressed by men like R. Chibas, Luis Cónte Aguero and Pardo Llada are more relevant" —than mine, presumably—when my analysis of Castro is based in large part upon the information which precisely those men and other Cubans supplied me...
...Escondito, Calif...
...No such statement appears anywhere in my book...
...In a speech before the Senate on August 21, 1957, the then Senator from Massachusetts said: "But I do think that the United States, in assessing this achievement [i.e., the new German Democracy], has in its public statements and in the more informal workings of its diplomacy unduly neglected the contribution of the democratic opposition, the German Socialists, whose resistance to Communism has been stalwart and who may someday become a part of a German government with whom we shall be allies...
...I received a subscription to The New Leader as a birthday gift, and I am indebted to the donor for her taste...
...Unfortunately for Friedenberg, events unfolding in Cuba at the very time his review appeared fully sustained the thesis in my chapter on "The Two Communist Parties...
...Especially in Eastern Europe, it has not been to our interest to make pariahs of the German Social Democrats...
...Gilbert A. Harrison Editor & Publisher I enjoy your magazine very much...
...Friedenberg is so busy tilting at windmills of his own discovery that he misses the really important point of my discussion of Castro's political evolution, which is that ultimately Castro turned to Communism, not Fascism, and that he did so because he realized the latter was a lost cause and believed the former was the new "wave of the future...
...Instead, he wrote as if it did not exist and continued to insist, in your April 16 "Dear Editor" column, that "The exact story has never been clearly defined...
...I am grateful to The New Leader for instigating them...
Vol. 45 • June 1962 • No. 12
