Dear Editor

...Who was not struck by the vigor of his sentences while he attacked Reagan's economic policies ("Climbing Out of Reagan's Rubble," NL, January 10...

...Dear Editor Sidney Weintraub, RIP The death of Sidney Weintraub has deprived us of a sane mind and an impassioned voice What made his essays unique was the high degree of his involvement One could feel the full force of the outrage he expressed against social or economic injustices Through the vehicle of his powerful imagination, he was able to project himself and his readers into the plight of society's victims...

...Condoning joblessness has its parallels in praising tortures practiced on others," he said, "or asking the band to drown out the shrieks from the torture chamber ". The amplitude of Weintraub's analyses was not achieved merely through intellectual brilliance, it was produced by that splendid fusion of eye, heart and mind As one of your steady readers, I will miss this man...

...In fact, the gravelly-voiced former Secretary of State has proved himself rather fuzzy on all sorts of details (witness the scholarly verdict on his Metternich volume, A World Restored) This vagueness is of a piece with his hastiness to reduce more recent conflicts, however local and specific in nature, to a collision between the superpowers...

...Fort Lee, N J STEPHEN HOUSMAN...

...New York City Milton Cohen Political Commentary Isa Kapp has a peculiar notion of what constitutes ripeness and richness in writing about politics In her review of Luigi Barzini's The Europeans ("0ld World Wisdom," NL, May 16), she cites Henry Kissinger's "gravelly-voiced focus on detail" as a happy exception to the average American pundit's indifference to history and eagerness to oversimplify issues...

...New York City Patrick Sheehan Emotional Criticism Why does your reviewer Barry Gewen say that Edmund Wilson is analytical rather than emotional (" Wilson's Turning Point," NL, May 16...

...In general, Kissinger's attention to history is confined to the examples that corroborate his own post-Machiavellian view of society and human possibilities These cynical distortions would be of scant interest if the man who held them had not done such great mischief...

...Bronxville, New York Melvin L Rogers Hook on Marxism I enjoyed Irving Louis Horowitz' discussion of Sidney Hook ("A Man in the Fray," NL, May 16), occasioned by his latest collection of essays on Marxism and the recent Festschrift marking his 80th birthday It was good to be reminded of the crucial role Hook has played in the American response to Communism Indeed, reading Horowitz' analysis provided a mini-recapitulation of my intellectual development-an experience that was shared, I am willing to bet, by many readers of The New Leader...

...Wilson's writing is often vitriolic and emotional That is why his criticism is read more than that of the supposedly "objective" critics nowadays...

...The irony is that the only version of Marxism Hook recognizes is the crassest form of "Dialectical Materialism " This narrow view is evident in the passage Horowitz quotes on the Frankfurt School "Once we dismiss the causal priority of the mode of production in considering the structure of society and its changes, we eviscerate the theory of historical materialism beyond recognition " The alleged causal priority was one of the shibboleths of vulgar Marxism, deservedly abandoned by many more recent Marxists, not simply the Frankfurt School...

...Boston Jeffrey Martin The notions about Marxism espoused by Sidney Hook and warmly seconded by Irving Louis Horowitz are gravely flawed This is not to suggest that Hook's debunking of Sovietized Marxism has not been salutaiy, simply that scholarship has passed him by Many of the Marxist texts that earlier generations have relied on have been riddled with errors and tamperings Only recently have sounder editions been available Those who rely on older versions, of, say, Capital, as Hook does, have an antique air...

...Horowitz claims that "very few younger Marxists know the literature" as Hook does I would point out that the literature is bigger than it used to be, and Hook-as well as your reviewer-demonstrate little appreciation of the newer additions...