Dear Editor
Dear Editor Critic's Corner As an ex-NEw Leader theater critic, I must take exception to your present critic's recent statements that "people like Beckett ... attack the spoken word," and that...
...Specifically, he states that photography is "one of those simplified popular surrogates all high arts beget...
...What they need is jobs, not people telling them maybe, perhaps, and if the circumstances allow...
...Frank Jefferson Envying Eric Instead of simply saying in four words, "I don't like Sevareid," or in three, "I hate Sevareid," it takes Marvin Kitman—how many words?—two full pages ("Eric Severalsides Signs Off," NL, January 16...
...Whereas each of the other "para-arts" mentioned is related to its respective "high art" in that it shares the same medium, photography and painting are wholly different media, and have their own potential for greatness...
...But I was not impugning Beckett's talent...
...for ballet, disco-dancing...
...Such an assertion, however, must be phrased in the past tense...
...But his "Underestimating Humphrey-Hawkins" (NL, February 27) was rather disappointing—full of liberal pieties, without a convincing argument...
...for cinema, the home movie...
...The parallel between photography and the other mass pleasures is, to my mind, rather specious...
...Salem, Ore...
...for architecture, the prefab house that you yourself make...
...Terre Haute, Ind...
...Julie McCann...
...But since the bill calls for reducing unemployment and achieving price stability to the "extent practicable," it guarantees nothing...
...Some, however, are somewhat less so...
...And if Dean Valentine believes that "Beckett has lapsed into silence," that silence still speaks louder than most other writers' sounds...
...no one could doubt that he gave the spoken word "as much dignity and strength as any writer in the history of the theater...
...The High and the Low John Simon, in his review of Susan Sontag's latest book, On Photography ("Looking Into the Camera," NL, February 13), makes some cogent comments...
...That Humphrey-Hawkins would "so shift economic and social policy-making at the national level as to create an exciting new opportunity for movement toward social justice" is all fine and dandy...
...New York City Alan Schneider Director, Drama Division The Juilliard School Dean Valentine replies: I am sorry to have raised the ire, and provoked the condemnation, of Alan Schneider, whom I have always admired as a brilliant and knowledgeable director of Samuel Beckett's plays...
...Jacksonville, Fla...
...For painting, there is photography...
...The sarcasm, the ridiculing, the belittling, leaves an impression of jealousy or envy...
...Maybe it is not so much hatred...
...An artist who with each new play gives us fewer and fewer words, until we are left with only a wail—no words, no actors—in the midst of a wasteland, is saying something rather sad about language: that it is incapable of reflecting or conveying the reality of human suffering...
...When theater critics get too glib, they sometimes lapse into nonsense...
...attack the spoken word," and that "Beckett has lapsed into silence" ("Dark Vision and Blindness," NL, February 13...
...Words, Words, Words It is always good to see Bayard Rustin in your pages...
...Could be...
...1 believe that Samuel Beckett loves the spoken word so much that he has given it as much dignity and strength as any writer in the history of the theater...
...the best photographers, like Harry Callahan, are artists...
...This constitutes an "attack" upon the affective and communicative powers of words, and Jesuitically followed to its logical conclusion, it ends in silence, which can be listened to just so long...
...For music, there is pop music in all its forms...
...That the "burden of proof is placed on the President and Congress should they want to justify elongating the attainment period" is another fine phrase that doesn't mean much and won't do much for people out of work...
...The best pop musicians can still be uninteresting hacks, like Elton John...
...Words are not actions...
Vol. 61 • March 1978 • No. 6
