Dear Editor
Dear Editor Reuther Thomas R. Brooks, in his review of Victor Reuther's The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the V AW (NL, September 13), describes the death of Walter Reuther as a great loss to...
...I refer myself to a corner where I may ponder the factors-weariness, the distractions of my own ongoing study of a small New England town, and Bicentennial overload-which led me inadvertantly to type "Port Washington" for "Port Jefferson...
...There was, in terms of labor leadership, no Reuther tragedy...
...Port Washington, N. Y. Samuel Kaplan Gloria Levitas replies: Having devoted considerable time to untangling the strands of meaning concealed by Samuel Kaplan's dense and often solecis-tic prose, I am somewhat amused that be should choose the usual refuge of outraged authors and accuse me of not having read his book...
...The only clear point that came through in the review was her ignorance of the subject...
...But Victor Reuther points to the "deep ideological differences" existing, and shuns the view that a clash of personalities was all that was involved...
...The study of the community-how it works, how people gain access to, use and distribute resources-has always been the primary concern of cultural anthropology...
...Dear Editor Reuther Thomas R. Brooks, in his review of Victor Reuther's The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the V AW (NL, September 13), describes the death of Walter Reuther as a great loss to the democratic Left...
...As he himself recognizes, the world of Guys and Dolls is a mythic one...
...Simon is equally misguided in finding it hard to imagine that blacks could so adamantly crave and resist marriage as do Miss Adelaide and Nathan Detroit...
...For additional clarification concerning the impact upon planning of values and theory, I refer Kaplan to the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Landscape Architecture, and to the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, where anthropologists (including myself) and planners have worked together to analyze both the relationships politics, economics and settlement patterns, and the underlying assumption of our various disciplines that so often inhibit creative problem-solving...
...Lloyd Harrington Dudes and Chicks Although I would agree with John Simon ("Dudes and Chicks," NL, September 131 that the reasons for mounting the all-black Guys and Dolls were probably more in the interests of commerce than of art (e.g., cash-ing in on the new black audience on Broadway), and that the "melanosis" adds little to the show, some of his criticisms give me pause...
...skin color is simply not a barrier to the beauty and power of this "fable of Broadway...
...Many of us are glad that he did not...
...Hamilton, Ont...
...And the Reuthers, as he so truly begins his review, will always be of special interest to those who see organized labor as a force for democratic change...
...Not only did she misname the community I focus on throughout, she also accused me of failing to discuss topics that in fact I devoted entire chapters to...
...If further evidence of his theoretical and social myopia were required, Kaplan has unwittingly provided it in his inability to comprehend why an anthropolgist should have been chosen to review his book...
...Longevity and what is right are not correlatives—even if vulgar pragmatists do tend to fall into the trap of thinking it must be so...
...Over the years, Walter Reuther's continuing minority situation on the Executive Council seemed to produce a drying up of his natural resourcefulness...
...In it Tyler wrote: "He never jettisoned the social democracy of his father and grandfather, the belief that evil would not be defeated by guns or counter-tyranny but only by continuing the good fight for the material well-being of the disadvantaged, and for the growth of freedom which the very fight entailed...
...New York City Harold Nicholas Confused Author I read with some difficulty the convoluted review by Gloria Levitas of my book, The Dream Deferred: People, Politics and Planning in Suburbia (NL, September 27...
...But Brooks soon lapses into the widely held view that the merger which produced the AFL-CIO was an unmixed blessing...
...the misfortune of American labor is the continuing lack of social vision...
...I was as confused by the review as I was by your choice of an anthropologist as the reviewer...
...I wonder indeed if she actually read my book...
...Simon writes, for example, "We are...
...He well deserved the accolade of Robert L. Tyler's 1973 essay for the "Great Men of Michigan" series...
...It is an easy mistake to see the unequal and highly frustrating struggle of Walter Reuther on the Executive Council of the merged federation as chiefly a battle for power...
...Of his brother Walter and George Meany, he writes, "they held diametrically opposed views about the mission and purpose of the trade union movement...
...Well, he may not that it exists: There is nothing outlandish about Miss Sarah's social superiority to Sky Masterson...
...Clearly, he could have chosen the easier path of accomodation, as did some of his former CIO colleagues...
...not yet used to a hierarchic black society...
Vol. 59 • October 1976 • No. 21
