Dear Editor
theNEWLEADERB Lattar From Ba-mlncfiam Crty tail DEAR EDITOR LIBERALS ON CRIME It may be true, as Robert Sandoz states in your January 29 issue ("When a Great Ship Cuts Through the Sea. . ."),...
...Nor is Kissin correct in his apparent belief that North Vietnam blocked the implementation of the Geneva Agreements...
...Whether the self-proclaimed Marxist Weiss experiences any perplexity at the fact that, after writing two uncommitted plays, his new political work reveals a strained attempt to sympathize with masses of people, is an interesting question...
...The New York Times recently reported that in the first 10 months of 1967 there were an average of two murders and five forcible rapes in New York City each day...
...By the statistics presented in the Appendices to the State Department's White Paper of February 1965, the proportion of Vietcong armaments manufactured in North Vietnam...
...No amount of official obfuscation can conceal the fact that when President Johnson decided to intervene in Vietnam, he intervened in a civil war...
...New York City Albert Z Soi ftskv BONNIE AND CLYDE Glenn G. Morgan ("Dear Editor...
...Which of the two attitudes is more organic is plainly evident when one views this artificial, Marxist textbook effort...
...Thus, your readers get something tangible to grapple with, not merely a string of words signifying nothing...
...As the ice reported in 1956: "While the Commission has experienced difficulties in North Vietnam, the major part of its difficulties has arisen in South Vietnam...
...Ft was Diem who proclaimed from the start his determination to ignore the Agreement...
...is a biological as well as a rational being...
...not a war of outside aggression...
...And that process, in our day, is already far too much advanced for comfort...
...But on the whole, most do not...
...Some writers, of course, like Mellow, Harold Rosenberg and others, do transcend this myopic kind of vision...
...Rego Park, N.Y...
...I submit that in far too much of contemporary movie criticism there is an over-abundance of self-conscious cerebralization at the expense of purely human emotion...
...Thus...
...3) that cuteness is often interpreted as a sign of being with it...
...The fact that the improvements in social justice in the past 30 years have coincided with an increase in the crime rale, is conveniently forgotten...
...If you are one of those who now buy The New Leader at the newsstand, why not save yourself $5.00, as well as possible disappointment, by acting on our special introductory offer...
...Satire and parody serve important functions in the journalistic fields...
...This will bring you a full year of the magazine at $5.00, one-halt the newstand price ($10.00) and $3.00 below the regular subscription price...
...What he has actually succeeded in doing this time is write the most unrevolu-tionary play of all...
...The fact is that crime is a major problem, and that voters are going to demand that something be done about it...
...Furthermore, the majority of crimes occur in ghetto areas where the victims are Negroes and Puerto Ricans, so it is difficult to see how an interest in reducing crime can be called racist...
...Mellow is always coherent and pertinent, informative and interesting, and just a joy to read...
...2) that much of the writing turns out vague and esoteric, not because of great insight, but rather from want of coming to terms with the real issues...
...I would suggest that Katzner apply himself to the acquisition of such understanding before he blesses us with another article in your magazine...
...Describing the various characteristics of current art modes, he points out how much of this art can be understood and interpreted only in terms of a very restricted and antecedent "in-ness...
...Peter Weiss' new play...
...It is somewhat of an irony that as a subscriber to four respectable art magazines, three American and one Canadian, I must turn to The New Leader for any comprehensive report of what is happening in art and in the art world...
...January 29) and others who criticize Bonnie and Clyde, cr any art object for that matter, because of historical inaccuracies should restrict their comments to such things as news-reels and leave art to critics who comprehend something about the dynamics of metaphor...
...New York City Mitchell Goldman MELLOW As a painter and devotee of the art scene, I was most impressed by James R. Mellow's excellent article "The Means Becomes the Subject," in the January 15 issue...
...Norman, Okla...
...The problem with the average art writer is: 1 ) that he (or she) tends to lean too heavily on jargon...
...In contrast, it is curious to note that (according to R. R. Palmer's History of the Modern World) the Revolutionary Army at Saratoga was 90 per cent armed with French guns...
...In fact, Secretary McNamara wrote in the Department of State Bulletin of May 17, 1965, that the North Vietnamese unit whose existence in the South was official Washington's proof that Hanoi had embarked on a campaign of "open invasion," actually comprised "on the order of 400 to 500 men...
...English history would read differently if our only source were Shakespeare...
...And the response to the peasant uprisings in 1955 surely violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1954 Agreements...
...who obstructed the activities of the International Control Commission (ice), established to supervise enforcement...
...Diem abrogated the Geneva Agreements, and in doing so he precipitated the present conflict...
...Edwvrd Wittfn It makes dollars and sense to become a regular subscriber In fact, it makes five dollars worth of sense to subscribe regularly to The New Leader—if you take advantage of the special offer we are making to new subscribers only for a limited time...
...Carolyn M. Leigh LOVING THE MASSES As Albert Bermel notes ("'On Stage...
...He seems to have a talent for recognizing what is significant and presenting it in such a way as to focus on the very essence of the matter—and he comes to terms with issues head-on...
...The Pentagon promptly confirmed the Senator's estimate (Washington Daily News, June 28, 1966...
...I think one should feel reassured by Simon's reaction—which, after all...
...Song of the Lusitaniun Bogey, is Ihe result of "hard literalism...
...Indeed, Simon himself, by a sophomoric obsession for inflated language, has demonstrated this overeerebrali-zation...
...that the Congressmen who so vigorously cheered President Johnson's remarks about crime in the streets are interested only in proving that they can "best get the blacks back in line...
...Simply fill out the coupon below and send it off today...
...Weiss wrote one of the finest plays of the decade, Marat/ Sade, which was incidentally as counterrevolutionary as it was brilliant...
...January 1 ) that as late as June 1965, when the United Stales military build-up was quite advanced, there were but 400 North Vietnamese troops in the South...
...There were, even the most doctrinaire partisan will admit, violations of the Agreement on the part of North Vietnam: repression against collaborators with the French, disruption in the flow of refugees to the South...
...Sometimes they tell us that we make too much fuss about an unimportant problem, apparently in the belief that a reluctance to be hit on the head is a middle-class prejudice we should try to rise above...
...But the bulk of the responsibility for the collapse of the Agreements remains with Ngo Dinh Diem and the United States...
...SIMON Regarding George Siege]'s criticism ("Dear Editor...
...The first two plays were the product of his feeling, the third of a dogmatic political stance...
...By any definition such statistics indicate a major crime problem...
...theNEWLEADERB Lattar From Ba-mlncfiam Crty tail DEAR EDITOR LIBERALS ON CRIME It may be true, as Robert Sandoz states in your January 29 issue ("When a Great Ship Cuts Through the Sea...
...January 29) challenges my assertion in a previous letter ('"Dear Editor...
...Portland, Ore...
...NL, February 12...
...Although he is writing about the oppressed people of Angola, his characterization of them is so perfunctory, statistical and wooden, that the audience cares less about the realities of Angola at the end of the play than at the beginning...
...In contrast...
...who blocked re-unification, prevented the nationwide free elections that were scheduled for July 1956, and refused even to hold consultations with Hanoi and the ice to determine the conditions under which such elections could be held in an atmosphere of free choice...
...Liberals had better understand this and realize that if they don't develop intelligent programs aimed at reducing crime they will leave the field to the demagogues and Neanderthals...
...Liberals have generally taken one of two attitudes toward the problem of crime...
...At other times they tell us that crime will disappear when we achieve a better measure of social justice...
...Then he wrote a very fine documentary of Nazism, The Investigation, whose central point was that inhumanity knows no ideological bounds...
...Two pages of Mellow are worth more than a whole volume of most current art magazines...
...Under the tutelage of John Foster Dulles, who was determined to resurrect a pro-Western bastion from the ashes of the French Empire...
...is only that of a normal man—and not condemn him for being forthrightly honest...
...Baltimore, hid...
...What is the evidence'1 Senator Mansfield told an audience at Yeshiva University on June 16, 1966: "When the sharp increase in the American military effort began in early 1965...
...Diem, elected President in a blatantly rigged election in which he allegedly won 97 per cent of the vote, knew quite well what his chances would be in an open election...
...Yet so far as 1 know Kissin has not condemned the American Revolution as an instrument of French colonialism...
...Winnipeg, Canada Edith Yenal The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...To be successful in the use of such techniques, however, a writer needs to have some basic understanding of the society about which he is writing...
...And again in I960: "In North Vietnam the Commission continued to receive, in general, the necessary cooperation...
...Russia, or China wa^ less than one-tenth...
...Mellow's article on "The Means Becomes the Subject" is superb...
...Michael Trombetta THE USE OF SATIRE Kenneth Katzner's "Vietnam Through the Looking Glass" (NL, January 29) should be nominated for an award to go to the most inane article to appear in print in The New Leader...
...as Ortega y Gasset (in The Theme of Our Time) pointed out many years ago...
...That doesn't alter the fact that rising crime rates are a major problem in our cities...
...Mellow himself stands outside this special "in" world and thus can offer a far wider point of view than critics who have confined their point of reference to the limited values which they themselves have helped to establish...
...To deny him legitimate feelings—and 1 feel Simon's feelings are legitimate—is to dehumanize him...
...It was inevitable that Weiss would attempt to square his avowed political conscience by writing a Communist propaganda play...
...it was estimated that only about 400 North Vietnamese soldiers were among the enemy force in the South which totalled 140.-000 at that time...
...Charles Deemer VIETNAM John Kissin ("Dear Editor," NL...
...NL, February 12) of John Simon's appreciation of Anna Karina's bosomy charms as displayed in The Stranger, I must point out that at least Simon shows he is a movie critic still capable of human feeling...
...While I in no way wish to disparage the intellect, it is important to recall that Man...
Vol. 51 • February 1968 • No. 5
