Dear Editor

...Into this court as defendants come post-Parker jazzmen, to be accused of "avant-gardism" and eventually found not guilty by reason of black-cultural -nationalist insanity, caused in them by racism, and causing them to innovate out of pure spite...

...Again, the parallel with Pollock is striking...

...Of course, Mensch, human being, also has the secondary meaning of trollop, and, no doubt, what Woyzeck hurls at his faithless' beloved is mostly that secondary meaning...

...Worth Menschioning One hates to spoil the pointe of such a delightful article as John Simon's "Words and the Woman" (NL, April 1...

...Agonizing about Marie, Woyzeck vacillates between unmog-lich (impossible—she can't be cheating) and moglich (possible—she may be cheating...

...Cook writes: "If we still don't feel as comfortable with bop as we do with the music that came before, at least we no longer feel threatened by it...

...The issue?for Buchner at least, if not for his protagonist—is not really who is a whore, but what is a man...

...As for J. R. Taylor, it is difficult to answer his numerous and diffuse objections without reiterating at length what I have already stated in "The Jazz Odyssey...

...Note that Buchner here uses precisely the masculine "Der Mensch...

...In accepting the opinions of a handful who do not consider Charlie Parker a jazz musician, while ignoring an equal number who reject Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, and even Duke Ellington—all supposedly sacred beyond question to "people who appreciate the music"—Cook establishes a musical kangaroo court...

...Rather, he participates in them, although from the point of view of those who used to be called moldy figs...

...Sherman, Conn...

...Because I feel that no matter how exciting this music was, its influence was ultimately negative—that it represented a break with the jazz tradition...

...New York City J. R. Taylor Bruce Cooke replies: To Sam G. Leonard I say that mine was not a casual dismissal of Charlie Parker and the entire bebop phenomenon at all...

...Besides having a masculine gender, its most common form, Mensch also has a neuter, in which case it means a despicable, mean, lewd, debauched woman...

...Vagts' neuter...

...Man is both man and beast (like the horse), and there are certain kinds of morality that poor devils like Woyzeck and Marie cannot afford, for they are, out of social necessity, doch ein Vieh (nevertheless beasts...

...and it is not too much to say, I believe, that Parker paid for his achievement with his life...

...All I can do is respectfully—and I mean that—direct him to what the piece actually says...

...Marie herself wonders whether she is a Mensch, probably in both senses of the word...

...It was a direct attack on a musician and style that I grew up listening to and happen to like a lot...

...However, his German is not quite good enough to get the true meaning of Woyzeck's outcry "Mensch...

...Pittsburgh Sam G. Leonard In "The Jazz Odyssey" Bruce Cook bore witness to the truth of his own comment: "How few people have a firm idea of the history behind jazz...

...conversely, the circus quack touts his educated horse as "a Mensch, a bestial Mensch, and nevertheless a beast...

...Actually, his ideas are firm enough, but they bear little relation to the history of jazz...

...He reinvents the myth of "the jazz critic," speaking out of many bodies in a single voice, and always in the name of "more complex music" and "Serious Art...

...My translation would be "wretch...

...He fails to consider economic motivations: A musician with a "new sound" is more readily identifiable to potential paying customers...

...and not Dr...

...But what resonates for the audience or readers is the primary meaning, which, as I originally stated, "quite inadvertently" makes Woyzeck's accusation existential, universal, immense...

...To the extent that Leonard esteems Parker and bop, our disagreement is just about total...

...Parker was unquestionably one of modern America's creative geniuses, a man who succeeded in setting jazz free of the sterile rules that were threatening to kill it, much as Jackson Pollock, at about the same time, broke the bonds restricting painting...

...Alfred Vagts John Simon replies: Would that Dr...

...And it is soon after that (if Berge-mann's ordering of the scenes is accepted) that Woyzeck utters the exclamation under debate...

...Mensch, in all of its ramifications, is the underlying theme of Woyzeck, whose hero is described by his absurd commanding officer as "a good Mensch, but without morals...

...Immediately upon that he speculates, "Jeder Mensch is' ein Abgrund . . ." (every man is an abyss), where Mensch is again explicitly masculine, not neuter...

...Normally, the practice is merely annoying...

...Vagts' knowledge of German were matched by his understanding of drama...

...To accomplish this demanded enormous courage and integrity because Parker had to venture into totally unknown territory, with nothing but his artistic sense to guide him...

...To bring off this strange view of jazz history, Cook denies all innovations by the white musicians of the past quarter-century, a fashionable but false position...

...Why attack then...

...Worst of all, by denying to jazz musicians the dignity of developing their art through the practice of it (jazz has "taken the avant-garde path" for reasons not "directly a function of the music"), Cook reduces the work of better than a generation of black musicians to merely a reaction to white behavior...

...Critics frequently use the word "we" to excuse their judgments when what they actually mean is "I...

...Easy psychologism and politicization are all too common in writing about jazz, and Cook does nothing to combat these trends...

...Cook flatly ignores the tendency of most younger black jazzmen to follow paths already trodden, whether by Parker or Louis Armstrong or John Col-trane...

...Sometimes, though, it does a serious injustice, and in this case, I wish Cook had made it clear that his opinions about modern jazz belonged to nobody but himself...