Atkinson Reviews New York

Last week the New York Times received a dispatch from one of its ace staff members, written from a Manhattan hospital bed. It came from thin, thoughtful Brooks Atkinson, who chucked 20 years of play reviewing to become a war correspondent. During his two years in China for the Times, he watched a hungry nation fight a lean war, saw men killed, and lost his own health. Since returning to the U.S. two months ago, he has been in & out of hospitals, recovering first from jaundice, then from an operation.

His stretches in hospital gave him time to analyze the gulf between homefront and warfront--something that never fails to prey on the minds of returning war correspondents. "After an absence of two years, New York looks normal," wrote Timesman Atkinson last week. "Despite many shortages in variety and volume, the food is excellent. . . . Shop windows along Fifth Avenue look brazenly luxurious, although everyone complains that 'you can't buy a thing. . . .' People seem to be living under tension, which is apparent in the boorishness and impatience of public manners. There is an overtone of desperation in the pleasure-going. . . . On the surface [however] the normality is overwhelming . . . the atmosphere is strange and at first a little disquieting."

On second thought, ex-Critic Atkinson decided that sackcloth & ashes was not the proper wear for civilians: "There is no blame to be attached to New York's attitude toward the war. Circumstances have sheltered New York from the awful fury and the dullness of war." In effect, he confessed a journalistic failure, for he decided that an understanding of what war is like cannot be had by "taking the war news at polite second hand from the newspapers and radio. War cannot be understood vicariously. Only the men overseas can know what it is all about."

This week, recuperating in his Riverside Drive apartment, the graduate dean of Manhattan theater critics said he would not return to China, was uncertain whether he would return to the theater: "I have always believed that drama criticism is an ignoble profession at best, and doubly so in wartime. I'm not ratting on my pals. I may some day return to it. It's very pleasant, and it doesn't matter to me whether it is ignoble or not."

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