Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR BLACK POWER I think the key sentence in Steven Roberts' article ("Black and White," NL, May 20) was the comment by a white student: "Some of those black guys were willing to die. . ....
...In addition, the percentage of students whose fathers are intellectuals or professional people is at present much smaller...
...New York City Frederick M. Stern SIMON I am not a Godard fan...
...yes, one of the students shoots the wrong victim and then casually returns to right her error by shooting the correct one...
...McCarthy —Hubert repeats, "What an opportunist...
...tical studies would be interrupted by—or interspersed with—participation in practical work, be it even unpaid...
...New York City Marvin Bates...
...Murray Kempton, reporting on the Black Panthers' headquarters in Oakland, described the white students who came to visit in sympathy with the blacks when they were mourning the death of one leader and the wounding and imprisonment of two others...
...In former times, this condition was more bearable...
...he does not approach his subjects with a sledgehammer...
...An indication of its merit is that it adds measurably to our understanding of that situation...
...As a result, students are now less content with remaining at the receiving end...
...This is the spirit I found in Israel, a spirit directly related to the constant memory of the concentration camps and of world indifference...
...I don't particularly want to criticize Updike, for he is only one of a numerous breed who travel from the New Yorker to the Atlantic to Esquire, with some variation...
...It is rather the cynical maneuvering of a politician on the threshold of tremendous power...
...I.BJ surveys the other possible candidates: Kennedy—Hubert exclaims, "What an opportunist...
...To capture a period such as ours, with all we have been through and are now confronting, requires a thrust forward on the part of the writer, not a retreat to novels that "entertain" with descriptions of the sex life of a bored middle-class suburbia, or short stories that are little more than sketches...
...Other students may have such opportunities during their long summer vacation, but most of them do some irrelevant work to make a little money, such as serving as waiters, elevator boys, or taxi drivers...
...Even though the atmosphere among the Panthers was one of desolation and mourning, the white students, Kempton noted, were eager to talk about Che Guevera and other New Left heroes...
...before he talked war...
...This does nothing to bring a person's future professional tasks to life...
...This desperation is what separates white and black, and I think it is important to understanding the reasons for black power...
...Nowadays, many colleges and universities have 10 times the number of students they had 50 years ago, and everything has become more impersonal...
...New York City John Kahn STUDENT UNREST While the unrest among college students in the United States can be explained, at least partially, by the grim prospect of having to die in a war which few can regard as their cause, there must be still another reason...
...I remember the dreariness .md unhappiness that often befell me for having to consume buckets full of the theory in law and economics without ever being able to taste the reality of these disciplines, without even acquiring some experience as a humble apprentice in a court, law office, bank, or other business...
...Hubert's role of court jester, cheerfully ignoring the human suffering and the political disaster of the Administration's Vietnam policy, does not stem from his friendliness or "famous cheery optimism...
...I therefore believe that much could be won for both the students and the community at large, and much psychological and social unrest avoided, if from time to time the theoreThe New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Most classes and the universities themselves were smaller...
...Then Johnson mentions Humphrey?Whai an opportunity...
...as simple as it is, Simon failed to see it...
...But this madness is precisely the point of the film...
...Now that things have changed, he claims he was saying the same things all along...
...To the whites, Kempton said, the death and imprisonments was a matter of "high romance...
...Yet today he talks peace...
...I wasn't surprised to see Updike's topic, for sex is usually the subject when the writer doesn't know what to write about but, while writing anyway, wants to make a bundle...
...the insistence on positive thinking, and the ignoring of disturbing realities...
...As a Jew, I found that spirit very moving and liberating...
...I suppose you can somehow consider this synthetic optimism real, but it really seems more like the old politics—the waving of the f!a...
...The film takes on a new relevance with the current situation in France...
...On Screen," NL, May 6) Simon writes of "Comic-strip versions of Marxism Leninism . . . Maoist rock 'n' roll...
...But in La Chinoise Godard has made his first good film since Breathless, and Simon hasn't realized it...
...It was another matter to the blacks...
...I envied the students of engineering whose program included—after, I believe, two years of theory—several months of practical work in a factory...
...After Johnson tells Humphrey he doesn't intend to run again...
...Simon lists all the absurdities of the film, and there is no point in refuting his list...
...You can say for Lyndon Johnson that he was caught in a bind...
...It is all utterly juvenile...
...Yes, the students in the film do push-ups in the morning while chanting Maoist maxims...
...New York City Harvey Lewis UPDIKE As refreshing as it was to read another Stanley Edgar Hyman review, I was sorry to see him waste two pages on John Updike's new novel ("Couplings," NL, May 20...
...What he has failed to see is that Godard has drawn a deadly accurate, satiric portrait of the childish, unreal character of what passes for the "left" among youth today...
...Jeanson opposes the girl gently and sympathetically...
...he asks, after you close down your school, what else do you have in the way of a constructive program...
...For similar student unrest is reported from countries like Germany, France, Italy, and Poland, where no such reason exists...
...The ratio of students who continue their education beyond the formerly almost universal four years is now much higher, with an MA often demanded where formerly a BA was quite sufficient...
...At the recent Madison Square Garden rally for Eugene McCarthy, there was a comedy sketch about Humphrey and Johnson by Neil Simon...
...It results from the realization that although there is very little others will do to save you, there is an enormous amount you can do to save yourself...
...Robert Johnson HUMPHREY It doesn't seem to me that to characterize Hubert Humphrey as a "genuinely friendly and openhearted man," as Roger Kingsbury does in his article ("Humphrey's Strategy of Optimism," NL, May 6), is very accurate...
...Now that the rug has been pulled from under him, Humphrey pretends that nothing has happened...
...This, as Pauline Kael pointed out in the New Yorker, is the point of the film...
...I regret that Hyman takes any example of this breed seriously, even though Updike has considerable skill and ability...
...but I do seek the sense of urgency (see Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man) in writing that seeks to deal with what is really on the artist's mind...
...I have generally agreed with John Simon's ravenous denunciations of him...
...Remembering my student days at German universities many years back, I think students are restless because, having been at the receiving end at grade school and high school for 12 years, they are expected to remain pupils for another four to eight years...
...Rochester, N.Y...
...Hubert shouts...
...I do not plead for significance, God knows, in creative work...
...I was very glad to see a Godard film that had a coherent point of view, without the "mindlessness" Simon (sometimes accurately) ascribes to him...
...The attitude of Godard toward all this is gently satiric...
...Having outgrown infancy, they still feel treated like infants and lack adequate participation in politics and in the economic and cultural life of the nation...
...This, I think, is the underlying meaning of black power...
...Their subjects: the high school or college football game in winter, crunchy autumn leaves and adolescent love, domestic discord, the death of a beloved cat or dog, a nutty old aunt, and God is Dead...
...The absurdity of this condition becomes apparent if one considers that most of the men who until graduation are treated like overgrown children are immediately afterward called upon to perform highly responsible work...
...but I don't know how you can excuse Humphrey's joyous platitudes, his fervent recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings as his answer to Vietnam critics, his constant excessive piety and patriotic rhetoric right up until Johnson's announcement of withdrawal...
...Some colleges, like Antioch and Bennington, have long recognized this need and have their students alternate between studies and practical work...
...I am beginning to think that beneath the hysteria and violence that has accompanied the beginnings of the black power movement, there is the kind of logic and spirit that comes (in Bob Dylan's words) when "too many people have died": the determination not to place your fate in the hands of those who do not share your suffering...
...No matter how hard a person may try to put himself in the place of the sufferer?whether it is someone grieving, someone who is poor, or blind, or sick—there is an ineradicable distance...
...The closest he comes to inserting his own, or at least a responsible, point of view, is in the encounter between the girl student advocating terrorism and an actual person (not an actor), the radical writer Francis Jeanson...
Vol. 51 • June 1968 • No. 12
