Dear Editor
Dear Editor For the Record John Simon's comments on the revival of The Night of the Iguana ("On Stage," NL, January 3) were, as always, acute, but they included this observation: "Nor would these...
...Speedboat's generic claims are justified...
...It is, however, a book—alternately exasperating and hilarious, mystifying and affecting—that is unlike any novel I have ever read...
...Harry McCullouch Defending Kong Robert Asahina's review of King Kong ("Stillborn Again," NL, Tanuary 17) points up a dilemma that all film critics will soon have to face...
...Most important, Speedboat calls itself a novel...
...Kong is a film that has no pretentions: It is good clean fun...
...These telling little triumphs of poetry and wit over entrenched and official bigotry should not go unnoticed...
...Richard Hanser Missing the Boat I enjoyed Charles Deemer's review of Renata Adler's Speedboat ("A Fleshless Comedy," NL, December 20...
...It seems to me that the first order of business should be a discussion of whether or not, and why...
...quite literally, squashed...
...Despite some weak special effects, Kong, like many popular but "thin" movies, succeeds in entertaining its audience...
...In fact the popularity of Heine's "Lorelei" was such that Goebbels could not stem it and gave up trying to suppress it...
...Mamaroneck, N.Y...
...Agreed, some films of this type (Earthquake...
...It was ascribed to "Author Unknown" when its source had to be referred to...
...1976...
...Neither, it should be noted, did the multitudes who heaped lavish praises on the book, singling out its crystal-clear portraits of urban life...
...they put on a pretty good show...
...his point about the book being essentially a New York one, aimed at a New York audience, was particularly well taken...
...Deemer says he had trouble, for example, finding the main character's name...
...Hitler issued a special decree permitting the performance of Lehar operettas, on which he doted...
...unifying principle, and although Deemer makes sensible suggestions as to what her scheme might have been—an invocation of the inherent randomness of modern life, a recognition of the importance of laughing-to-keep-from-crying, a self-conscious statement about "the crisis in contemporary fiction"— he never really comes to terms with the formal problems of the book...
...But that audience must come the theater in a "frame" of mind suited to having fun, not one of critical aloofness or moral superiority...
...Ad-ler was obviously shooting for some kind of The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Yet by emphasizing that a reader's reaction to the book is primarily a matter of taste, and by making his ultimate objection a moral rather than esthetic one, Deemer was, I think, abdicating at least some part of the critic's responsibility...
...But give De Laurentiis and his ape credit...
...Both the detractors and the adulators have—like children whose reaction to a book or TV show is based on their reaction to the characters—neglected questions that remain, at least for me, very much unresolved...
...New York City Richard Katzman...
...Its moral line is simple...
...In a similar instance...
...Dear Editor For the Record John Simon's comments on the revival of The Night of the Iguana ("On Stage," NL, January 3) were, as always, acute, but they included this observation: "Nor would these Nazis [characters in the play] be singing 'The Lorelei,' proscribed by Goebbels as non-Aryan...
...Movies fitting these descriptions have been the bane of the critics and the delight of the masses for the past five years, and the cause of a widening gap between the two groups...
...Rochester, N.Y...
...I was not reading the book for review, and never noticed that she had one...
...The ravaged ape is martyred, the good guys live, and the bad guys get...
...This is the age of the disaster epic, the big-budget superextravaganza and the back-to-nature wilderness film...
...Midway) are failures at every level...
Vol. 60 • January 1977 • No. 3
