Dear Editor
Dear Editor Empty Sarcasm I don't know Annie Dillard and I've barely dipped into Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but even if she is guilty of the gross lapses noted in Charles Deemer's review (NL, June...
...considered silence in the face of blatant anti-Semitism is probably even a more widespread symptom of the problem they are discussing...
...However, my exception to Goodman is not that he has pointed out the book's deficiencies or imperfections...
...a callous indifference to Jewish concerns expressed by respectable institutions and persons here and abroad people who would be shocked to think themselves, or to have others think them, anti-Semites...
...That is all too typical of Goodman's superficiality, as are his oversimplifications of the book's sections on such individuals and organizations as Robert Pier-point, Nicholas Von Hoffman, the American Friends Service Committee, the Christian Science Monitor, and Senator William J. Ful bright...
...One is tempted to respond with the query Harold Ross used to write on the margins of New Yorker manuscripts: "Who he...
...2) his stand on pollution...
...Dear Editor Empty Sarcasm I don't know Annie Dillard and I've barely dipped into Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but even if she is guilty of the gross lapses noted in Charles Deemer's review (NL, June 24), no book deserves the flippant tone of male superiority by which he attempts to demolish it...
...Without it, what possible excuse is there for this sarcasm and ridicule in your literary columns, where one has learned to look for serious criticism...
...The wit, at least, gives pleasure to others...
...and it makes small difference whether the charge is blatantly made in a Gerald Smith passion play or implied or hinted at in a Father Berrigan tirade or a sermon by Dean Sayre...
...Almost 2,000 years of being persecuted and killed as "Christ-killers" has given the word deicide a very special meaning for Jews...
...Their purpose is in alerting us to the sad fact that this anti-Semitism is at least tacitly accepted left unchallenged by far too many people, if not by the majority...
...When the charge is renewed, and most non-Jews seem to react as though they could not care less, Jews have sound reason to be troubled...
...they are far too* many...
...Anyone interested in serious criticism must take objection to the glib tone with which Goodman seems to dismiss most of a study whose findings are of genuine concern to the non-Jewish as well as Jewish community...
...The New Anti-Semitism has its faults...
...it is, in fact, the major point of the book...
...But it is not only expressed indifference to Jewish rights that concerns the authors...
...Weston, Conn...
...New York City Harold Flender Walter Goodman replies...
...As for the Vice President's "internationalism," this seems to derive less from a global perspective than from a tacit desire to turn the world into one big Grand Rapids, Michigan...
...A more serious charge is that Goodman misses what the book is all about...
...I cannot possibly cover all the specific errors in Goodman's piece...
...Still, his letter does convey the spirit of The New Anti-Semitism...
...Surely, though, it is a trait honorable men should presume in others, not seek after, and only because of the current wretched circumstances does the tendency now exist to praise a man for possessing it...
...Ford I was disappointed in Joseph Albright's piece on Gerald Ford, "The Ford Model," (NL, May 13) because I really expected The New Leader to come down harder on a man who in his 25 years in Congress has distinguished himself primarily by providing the American people with a lasting prototype for the political hack...
...Tt seems to me that the Forster-Epstein-Flender show of acute group "sensitivity," which today may be observed among other groups besides Jews, signals a backward drift in Americans' way of dealing with one another and with "sensitive" issues...
...A simple reading should be adequate to understand the point Forster and Epstein are making in the chapter on Smith...
...Albright strains to find favorable things to say about Ford, and comes up with: (1) his honesty...
...Surely, Goodman owes the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which conducted the study, and the book's authors, Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, more than such snide remarks as ". . . unless ADL is careful, it's going to give anti-Semitism a good name...
...Gratuitous cruelty, one-upmanship, open delight in a telling putdown, are common among intellectuals, even the most brilliant, who use their wit as pain-giving weapons...
...The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Honesty, it goes without saying, is a fine quality, to be valued equally in politicians and in used-car salesmen...
...Instead, he has taken a serious and, on the whole, excellent and enlightening work on an important subject and treated it with a shabby and ludicrous combination of mockery and misinterpretation...
...Suffice to say that the book's response to Truman Capote's charge about a "Jewish mafia in American letters" is far more than an admonition . . that he shouldn't say such things...
...All concerned deserve better...
...New York City Ethel Stafford...
...incidentally, chiefly by ADL...
...If Harold Flender had devoted less space to advertising his collected works, he might have been able to provide at least one example of the "far too many" "specifics of error" in my review...
...That job was done a long time ago, and...
...His review is a grave disservice not only to the book and its authors, but to your magazine and its readers...
...Similarly, one needs no great courage or vision to oppose pollution yet even here Ford quickly got "back on the team" when he heard his master's voice...
...and (3) his "internationalism...
...This he has not done...
...At the beginning of his review, for example, he totally misinterprets what Forster and Epstein wrote in the chapter on Gerald Smith...
...Contrary to Goodman's view, the authors were not concerned with Smith per se, but with the documented fact that so many "responsible" people and organizations, including officials of the United States government, were willing to give vast financial and other support to projects undertaken by this notorious bigot...
...For instance, they are not, as Goodman implies, interested in exposing as anti-Semites the Black Panthers, Black Muslims, Afro-American Teachers Association, or a LeRoi Jones...
...Then, too, Goodman should know that Jews have more than good reason to be sensitive about deicide...
...They describe it in Chapter One as...
...Hope Hale Davis Anti-Anti-Semitism As the author of several books (Paris Blues, Rescue in Denmark, The Kids Who Went to Israel) and many articles dealing with human rights, including one award-winning article on human rights in Cuba for The New Leader, I wish to take strong exception to Walter Goodman's outrageous review of The New Anti-Semitism ("Fair Game," NL, May 27...
...Deemer closes his opening attack with the magisterial announcement: "Still, there is enough fun and good will in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that I cannot dismiss it altogether...
Vol. 57 • July 1974 • No. 14
