Dear Editor
Dear Editor White I would like to register a dissenting voice in the current clamor to apotheosize E. B. White—exemplified by Gil Muller calling White "America's master of contemporary prose" in...
...Is it a consequence of our ethic of upward mobility that one day every 21-year-old will do anything to become a doctor, lawyer or accountant...
...That might not please the "medical establishment"—in other words, the AMA—but the nation does not have to suffer because doctors are selfishly trying to limit their numbers...
...The questions have to do with the premed dream itself...
...Since this country cannot supply enough doctors in poverty and rural areas, it would seem the demand to get into medical school could somehow be taken advantage of to rectify the situation...
...I would suggest, rather, that while White can no doubt enjoy the satisfaction of not having been wrong, his career in the pages of the New Yorker reflects a certain isolation, lack of commitment and avoidance of the larger things...
...That being the case, rhetoric like Margolis' is of little value...
...But, as a writing teacher of mine once enjoined, "Flaubert me no Flauberts...
...How far can one trust, after all, a writer the bulk of whose work initially appeared unsigned, and in the first person plural...
...Bob Jacobs Medical Questions It is not intended as a criticism of David R. Pap-ke's "Capitalizing on the Premed Dream" (NL, January 2) to say that it raised as many questions as it answered...
...New York City Helen Warner...
...He writes as if all Carter has to do is change his approach, stop listening to the business interests, and—poof!—everything will be on the way to being all right again...
...they demand far more than a right-thinking man in the White House...
...Papke refers to the "crazy race for professional status in America," and this strikes me as one of the most fascinating social trends of the '70s...
...On welfare, to take only one issue, Margolis writes that Carter hasn't done anything about "the basic problem of a stingy welfare mechanism...
...That isn't the basic problem, any more than the conservative shibboleth of welfare cheats is: The real villain is an economy where everyone who wants to work can't...
...Muller points out that "White has managed to avoid most of the chic literary and political movements of the 20th century" and counts this a blessing...
...that thousands willingly go this route astounds me...
...Buffalo, N. Y. Joseph Haines Empty Rhetoric While I agree with Richard J. Margolis that little has been accomplished on the domestic front during Jimmy Carter's first year in office ("Carter's Record at Home," NL, January 16), I think Margolis' interpretation of the inaction is unfair to the President...
...The only approach that would succeed in any meaningful way requires the economy to energetically expand, and given our difficulties with energy and natural resources, that seems both an unwise and unlikely prospect...
...In other words, garrulousness and unfettered emotion are perhaps not so great sins as the conventional wisdom supposes...
...1 am surprised that even a few fledgling doctors would be willing to spend up to $5,000 to get into a foreign school, from which they would have only a chance to transfer into an American institution...
...Why, for example, are there so many (presumably qualified) med-school applicants for whom no places exist...
...What 1 am saying is that the old days of clear-cut issues, with right sides and wrong sides, are just about gone...
...Tulsa, Okla...
...Dear Editor White I would like to register a dissenting voice in the current clamor to apotheosize E. B. White—exemplified by Gil Muller calling White "America's master of contemporary prose" in his review of Essays of E. B. White (NL, December 19, 1977...
...Papke's article also made me curious about the people who give the foreign-school placement services their business...
...But bringing about full employment is nowhere near as easy as Margolis makes it sound...
...The fact is, the troubles facing the United States are deeply-ingrained and linked together in a long chain...
...Unquestionably, there are virtues to be found in tightness and control, in order and clarity, in the mot juste...
Vol. 61 • January 1978 • No. 3
