Dear Editor
Dear Editor Equality Walter Goodman's superb column on equality, in which he discussed the statist effects of most egalitarian schemes ("Fair Game," NL, July 9), neglected one very important...
...Today, we profess bewilderment at the Medieval monks who spent their lifetimes obsessively illustrating a few letters of an illuminated manuscript...
...may have ended his discussion of Richard Boyer's The Legend of John Brown ("Disinterring John Brown," NL, July 23) assuring us that he awaits the second volume "with good appetite," but I suspect his true reaction to the book was much more ambivalent than that...
...Even when I disagree with his opinions-for example, his pan of O Lucky Man...
...John Brown accomplished absolutely nothing of historical importance before leaving for Kansas (the point at which The Legend of John Brown stops) and yet it takes his latest biographer 627 pages to relate that nonstory-no doubt because he was striving to produce what the history profession calls a "definitive account...
...Unfortunately, they were broken...
...An antidiscrimina-tory program is likely to favor college graduates and torpid long-term employes over the man or woman who does the job well...
...Atlanta Tony Morris...
...For a strong current of exasperation courses through his review, subverting his gracious appraisals and making a mockery of his politely ravenous conclusion...
...This may explain the God-awful ballet inserted into that movie...
...For the motivation leading Richard Boyer to write an overlong biography of John Brown is precisely the same as that which led Richard Nixon to tape his Oval Office conversations...
...Of course, any misgivings on Williamson's part would be entirely understandable...
...1 am certain that his excess of insignificance will remain the standard work on Brown's early burps and gurgles until the next Richard Boyer uncovers an additional revelation or two-That the abolitionist fanatic owned 27 cows in 1845...
...Thank you for printing it...
...Dear Editor Equality Walter Goodman's superb column on equality, in which he discussed the statist effects of most egalitarian schemes ("Fair Game," NL, July 9), neglected one very important issue: the extent to which increasing government powers over employment and income practices inevitably lead to an overemphasis on test scores and other credentials that are themselves inequitable...
...Recent studies, however, show virtually no relationship between increasing education and real worker productivity...
...Therefore the bureaucrat has to rely on quantifiable values and credentials...
...In that, Boyer has surely succeeded...
...At least the argument can be made that real progress toward integration in the southern United States began only when whites recognized that it was in their economic self-interest...
...And, as we have recently (earned, (he impulse to preserve every known fact, no matter how trivial, infects not only the nation's campuses and publishing houses...
...In this context, one might mention, too, the name of Jean-Paul Sartre: Having already published 2,000 pages on Flaubert, he is only now beginning his discussion of Madame Bovarx and claims he will need at least two more volumes to say everything he has to say...
...I feel Ross should have stuck to that profession, but he was probably a failure there, too...
...Hopefully, he detested it as much as I did...
...not the subject...
...What makes Sartre's biography somewhat different, however, is the fact that anyone who actually plows his way through the French philosopher's dense production will be doing so out of an interest in the author...
...Now South Africa offers us another proof, as if one were needed, that the struggle for human justice is condemned to straggle behind the eternal scramble for the almighty dollar...
...New York City Richard S. Stanton Kudos I would like to comment on two things in the July 9 issue of your super magazine...
...Milwaukee Dorothy Masters Apartheid Lorna Harm's report on the newly developing "Cracks in South Africa's Apartheid Wall" (NL...
...Since the same can be said for the other recent studies of John Brown, a famous lode may at last be petering out...
...Second, John Simon is a genius...
...In response to his suggestion that we improve our campaign laws to prevent future Watergates, however, I must point out that we already have strict laws on the books...
...Once again, upper-class credentials prevail over lower-class virtues that are actually more valuable to the employer...
...Nobody, cn the other hand, is going to read six volumes on Madison in order to learn about Irving Brant...
...in the future, generations will wonder at the labors of Boyer-or Irving Brant, the author of a six-volume biography of James Madison, or Douglas Freeman (seven volumes on George Washington) or Leon Edel (five volumes on Henry James...
...I certainly wish I had known about him and The New Leader at the time Funny Girl was released, so that I might have had the privilege of reading his remarks on that film...
...Santa Monica, Calif...
...When it is completed, the study will be longer than Flaubert's total corpus...
...First, the letter from Professor Carl Lan-dauer was excellent...
...The fact that the current liberalization there is the result of economic necessity seems to parallel the American experience...
...July 9) is as encouraging as it was unexpected...
...Inflation being a disease of history as well as economics, that magnum opus can be expected to run to 1.000 pages...
...In case Simon was unaware of the fact, Herbert Ross, who directed The Last of Sheila, was once a ballet dancer...
...I wish there were more earthlings like him around...
...On Screen," NL, July 9)-i have to concede that he scores good points...
...B. Cadden A Question of Values Chilton Williamson Jr...
...The result of this egalitarian program is thus to reduce opportunities for the ambitious and hard-working but little-educated poor...
...This is not exactly the compliment one anticipates after a satiating repast...
...perhaps, or preferred Masticator's Delight over every other brand of chewing tobacco-And proceeds to inflict his own massive tome on an indifferent world...
...Certainly some kind of distortion of values, some eccentricity of misdirected concentration, is at work here...
...Probably the clearest indication of Williamson's conflicted feelings is this passage: "But save for a few biographical details, [the book] is not new history...
...No government bureaucrat can well appraise the qualities that are really important in job performance: motivation, loyalty, aggressiveness, ambition, practicality...
Vol. 56 • August 1973 • No. 16
