Dear Editor
Dear Editor Simon Was it really necessary to print John Simon's three pages of. mastication on the negligible merits of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls ("Meyer's Blue Heaven," NL, July 20),...
...I think, moreover, that, compared with heterosexuality, homosexuality is esthetically deficient...
...So the pendulum seems rather weighted to the Right...
...Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the voters prefer to take their conservatism from the Conservatives...
...In Gen...
...Hyman wrote: "In other places in Genesis the neb makes mysterious [italics mine] changes which have no precedent in any of the other English translations that I consulted...
...Wilson adopted the Conservative party's racial immigration program, after Labor had for years denounced it as immoral and un-English...
...Rabbi Eugene A. Wernick Congregation Brith Israel Britain I was distressed to see John Mander resurrect the old "swing of the pendulum" theory to explain Harold Wilson's defeat on June 18 ("Britain Changes the Guard," NL July 6...
...They have allowed themselve, to be intimidated by the Conservative record of success: they believe that Labor can be made into a "natural" governing party only if it adopts the views of the "natural" governing class...
...and I do consider their sneaky besmirching—as opposed to a forthright attack—a homosexual tactic of a neurotic and artistically suspect sort...
...I do not...
...New York City T. A. Stone...
...I consequently also believe in the existence of abnormality, of which homosexuality is a type...
...as a matter of fact, the Conservative party has governed England for nearly 60 of the last 85 years...
...I would consider the opposite "a special interest," but it would not, if openly expressed, elicit from me the kind of rage and denigration that my article did from him...
...This sort of thing is not really criticism at all, just arrogant and obnoxious solipsism...
...He converted the bal-ance-of-payments index into the cornerstone of his finance policy because the balance-of-payments situation could be communicated in politically useful statistics...
...In most respects, Wilson seemed remarkably crypto-Conservative...
...The idea rested, essentially, on the calculation that the two parties are approximately equal in strength...
...NEB Translation I do not wish to appear pedantic, especially after the unfortunate death of Stanley Edgar Hyman, but there is a statement in his article, "Illumination for the Unchurched" (NL, August 17), that must be challenged...
...Still, 1 fear that the psephologists' rejection of the "swing of the pendulum"—according to which the English voter could be depended on, at intervals of five-six years, to sicken of the governing party—indicates more than a mere professional blunder...
...Many neb translations have no English precedent because they are based upon the most recent and accurate information scholars have assembled through comparative linguistics and extensive research...
...Harold Martin I have not seen the movie Something for Everyone and so I cannot offer any opinion of it...
...in the 1960s, Labor's historic inability to shake itself free of orthodox finance and imperialistic hallucinations...
...that beauty is a reconciling and blending of opposites...
...Unfashionable as it may sound, I do believe that there is such a thing as normality, even though it is a concept hard to delimit and define...
...40.2 and 40.7, it was not the neb translators who castrated Pharaoh's butler and baker, as Hyman suggests...
...But I do not consider the ap-petizingness of heterosexual relations "a questionable assumption...
...Also, earlier translators of Gen...
...I mean that the film turns moral values upside down...
...But since the Bible is a more earthy work than theologians generally care to admit, chances are that the author of Gen...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...24.63 actually intended this verb to mean what the neb footnote states—"to relieve himself...
...the rabbis traced the afternoon service to Isaac...
...Finally, in Gen...
...or socio-economic discriminations against, homosexuals, but I do believe that for both biological and psychological reasons, homosexuality is considerably less conducive than heterosexuality to individual happiness and societal equilibrium, and that this will prove so even after the present unjust laws are revoked...
...Otherwise he would have noticed that it was not unsympathetic to homosexuals, and certainly contained nothing about homosexual relations being inherently revolting...
...Wilson is certainly an effective parliamentary performer, and will establish himself as a formidable Leader of the Opposition...
...In denying the artist the freedom of his own taste and sensibility, and in demanding that he share his special interest in glorifying femininity and heterosexuality, John Simon is demonstrating his kinship with such other "critics" as the Marxist who rejects a work on political grounds or the clergyman who disapproves of films in which good does not triumph over evil—or with anyone else who is not really interested in art, only in its practical uses...
...Certainly they are a part of Labor's problem, but not the whole of it...
...To fulminate against a film for "making heterosexual relations unappetizing" and "turning moral values upside down" is to operate under the questionable assumption that heterosexual relations are inherently appetizing, homosexual relations inherently revolting, and therefore such relationships must be portrayed correspondingly on the screen or else arouse the critic's indignation...
...But John Simon's review ("Taste and Tastelessness," NL, August 17) strikes me as having no interest or value whatever for anyone not engaged in his own particular crusade for the moral health of society...
...Wilson's Administration was not without its social welfare achievements...
...The party's "realists"—those who wish to convert it into "one of the two 'natural' governing parties of the country"—have also contributed to the mess...
...There have always been, as Mander notes, many Laborites happier in opposition than in office...
...that the piano would be a poor instrument if it had only black or only white keys...
...And he and his government often seemed to believe that the whole of Britain's postwar rut would disappear if only people would be a little more patriotic, if only they "thought English...
...mastication on the negligible merits of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls ("Meyer's Blue Heaven," NL, July 20), particularly after his excellent piece on the genre in the previous issue ("Dirty Movies," NL, July 6...
...Of course this is true...
...24.63 had Isaac going out to pray before Rebecca's party arrived because they interpreted the verb la-shuach (which they really did not know what to make of) according to an ancient rabbinic gloss from the Mid-rash Rabbah quoted in Rashi's commentary...
...Whatever the merits of its literary style, the neb certainly cannot be faulted for trying to present the English-reading public with the original intended meaning of the text, no matter how much this may disconcert those who are accustomed to the old translations...
...Yet a Conservative government would no doubt have had something to show in this sphere as well...
...But he has symbolized...
...Or was it simply that Simon found Russ Meyer an accessible punching bag, an easy vehicle for his farmer's-daughter-type humor...
...It is surely a comfort to learn that psepholo-gy, as the English call poll-taking, has not yet made elections irrelevant...
...I do not believe in legal harassment of...
...they gave the currently favored literal rendition of the Hebrew loan-word saris...
...The more fundamental problems of the dilapidated and overcapitalized state of British industry did not lend themselves to political exploitation, and therefore did not receive the same attention...
...He clung to the last, pathetic, diseased remnants of the British East Asian empire...
...Austin, Tex...
...And I find it curious that Hermann should consider my appreciation of femininity and heterosexuality "a special interest"—as in special pleading, I presume...
...21.16 Hagar does sit down two bowshots away, and not one, for that is exactly what the Hebrew plural construct implies...
...Hermann thinks that when I write of moral values being turned upside down, I equate this with reversal of sexual values...
...New York City Kenneth Hermann John Simon replies: Just as Kenneth Hermann has not troubled to check out Something for Everyone, so he has not bothered to read my review carefully...
Vol. 53 • September 1970 • No. 18
