Man of the Year
Sir:
Standing a tall, intellectual head above all other candidates is Boris Pasternak. If one man, standing alone, can create a situation almost beyond their control, what hope have Communists against the rising legion of such courageous truth-seekers?
DAVID DICKLER
Brooklyn
Sir:
King Hussein of Jordan! No man has shown greater personal courage during this year--and against such heavy odds.
HAMEED NIZAMI
Lahore, Pakistan
Sir:
Nelson Rockefeller. He reversed the Democratic trend and, I hope, instituted a new type of Republicanism.
GEORGE E. SLOTKIN
Buffalo
Sir:
The title of Man of the Year for a fabulous man like Adlai Stevenson is inadequate; he should be Man of the Century.
B. O'BRIEN
Detroit
Sir:
The U.S. voter, for grasping the bigger issues and returning a mandate for congressional leadership in the face of presidential default.
JOHN L. SUTER
Genoa, Italy
Sir:
Ike: for steering the nation out of the recession without resorting to wars, WPAs, boondogling, hysterics, etc.
PETER J. SVIRSKY
Brockton, Mass.
Sir:
John Foster Dulles, whose brinkmanship has kept the world on edge during 1958.
JOHN WESTHORP
Kingston, Jamaica, B.W.I.
Sir:
Nasser. Many informed people regard him as the "Lincoln of the Mideast."
ABDULLA WAYSHAK
Medford, Mass.
Sir:
I nominate Charles de Gaulle--for his dignity, honesty, strength and purpose, qualities not particularly evident among his compatriots during the last decade.
J. CHANMUGAM
Princeton, N.J.
Sir:
Mr. Dow-Jones.
U. MORGAN DAVIES
Sarasota, Fla.
Sir:
You can't overlook the Rev. Martin Luther King of Montgomery, Ala. Think about it.
CARTER GODWIN
Hampton, Va.
Sir:
Viscount Montgomery.
ROBERT GUDE
Perth, Western Australia
Sir:
The man who sold automakers on four headlights instead of two.
DWIGHT R. FURNESS
Evanston, Ill.
Sir:
Speuydre Lubinski.
SPEUYDRE LUBINSKI
London
Before the Jets
Sir:
If the key to heaven is kindness and charity, "Minnie" Smith probably looked down and smiled when she saw TIME'S Nov. 17 cover of her son, American Airlines' C. R. Smith. Not only did Minnie [see cut] support and educate a family of seven children, but she also, during the latter part of her life, helped scores of struggling students (including myself) at the University of Texas.
BUCK McCASLAND
S. San Gabriel, Calif.
Sir:
Thank you very much for your excellent article on our brother, C. R. Smith, and American Airlines. You quote C. R. as saying that he "liked" our mother. "Like" is an understatement. Our admiration for her is unbounded as it is for C. R.
DOROTHY S. WALTON
Charlottesville, Va.
Sir:
After reading your story I find myself being rather grateful that I am not still stewardessing. In our day we could spot a "first-flighter" the minute he stepped aboard; now I don't think I could ever find that poor soul again among 150 passengers. He is going to miss that bit of cheerful reassurance that he used to get from us. The handwriting is on the wall--no more starry-eyed little boys taken up to the cockpit; no more pert, teen-age girls allowed to help with the beverage service. It is going to take a gaggle of girls on the jets to continue that type of service, and I wish them well. Now I shall give my moment of silence for those two darlings: the DC-3 and the Lodestar.
MARION LOVE KNUDSEN
St. Simons Island, Ga.
Democratic Hopefuls
Sir:
Congratulations on your Nov. 24 cover. It's the funniest picture I've ever seen.
WAITE WELKER
Lexington, Ohio
Sir:
Of the six hopefuls appearing on your cover, the logical choice is Stuart Symington. He is the only one with experience in both the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government.
WALTER W. APPLE
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Sir:
Any hidden significance in the fact that Stevenson is "hanging" on the wall behind the other six?
TERENCE H. BERLE
Gambier, Ohio
Sir:
If Jack Kennedy is elected, he will either have to ignore his church or his country. All one has to do is read Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power to know the Roman Church's position, or simply visit a Roman Catholic country and see for himself.
(THE REV.) W.J. B. LIVINGSTON
First Presbyterian Church
Hampton, Va.
Sir:
Couldn't Artist Chaliapin at least give one of them a bow tie? Or are the Democrats that close--down to the cravat?
JACK BISHOP
Hartford, Conn.
Sir:
Your cover pictured six honest, dedicated and resourceful men as six happy-go-lucky, good-time Charlies, all out to stab each other in various parts of their anatomies. How about a future cover of Nixon and Rockefeller in a Dagwood-Herb Woodley type of brawl? We wouldn't use that cover to wrap our garbage in.
ANDREW FELLIOS
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
According to your Nov. 17 JUDGMENTS & PROPHECIES, Khrushchev is happy over the Democrats' victory. This is the strongest indictment that could possibly be made against the Democrat Party.
PAUL A. H. DE MACARTE
Tolland, Conn.
The Old Man & the Sulk
Sir:
In your Oct. 27 review of The Old Man and the Sea, a picture I directed, you said that Spencer Tracy "sulked at the director and hardly bothered to act at all." It is certainly the privilege of your reviewer to either like or not like Mr. Tracy's performance, but I assure you this statement is untrue. Mr. Tracy worked on this picture with the same drive, enthusiasm and integrity which has always made him the great actor he is.
JOHN STURGES
Hollywood
P: And he sulked and sulked at the first director, Fred Zinnemann. until Zinnemann quit. That's when Reader Sturges took over.--ED.
Now, Girls!
Sir:
Former WAVE officers who were indoctrinated at Smith during World War II will be impressed with the new Smith dormitory [Nov. 17]. How about the bathroom facilities? In my WAVE group, 13 women used one tub, one toilet, and one basin, with the result that a knock on the door once brought this shouted response from within: "There's one in, one on, and one at--stay out!"
MILDRED G. RADANOVICH
Los Angeles
Sir:
Those compulsory yellow curtains will give the Smithies a rather jaundiced outlook, won't they? Vive Radcliffe !
BARBARA O'BRIEN
Aberdeen, Wash.
Lo, the Poor Lit Crit
Sir:
What better can be said of a writer than that he has a lively style? Even some occasional malice can be forgiven, but in the review of Huxley's new book [Brave New World Revisited--Nov. 17] your reviewer seems to have gone beyond the malicious to the vicious. And I wonder what age would he suggest as appropriate to stop talking about the problem of overpopulation?
CHARLES WALKER
Cheyney, Pa.
Sir:
The space slave--one of TIME'S prophets --should have said: "Have words, cannot unravel." This nitwit lit crit dissembled a vile mess of subliminal nonsense to suggest that Aldous Huxley is a sub-pessimistic old fuddy-daddy. He treated Huxley's prognostications, fulfilled or unfulfilled, with the strangled insincerity of a man who likes to say "say it ain't so," so he says it ain't. The thought of this compulsive lop-shifter of ideas and neologisms frothing his prophylactic at the dreaming West is downright rummy.
ROBERT BASSIL
Saginaw, Mich.
Sir:
Your review was well submitted. The only trouble with Huxley's preaching is: those he preaches of do not read his books, but those who do read them either do not agree with him or will not act if they do agree.
ROBERT F. ATKINS
Hawthorne, Calif.
And on the Other Hand
Sir:
Since I have long used TIME as my window for viewing the activities of the world, I was extremely gratified to find you devoting whole handfuls of words to my book, A Twist of Lemon [Nov. 10]. While your reviewer seemed somehow callously immune to the opinion of my agent and my mother that it is the greatest book of the century, he certainly treated me with tact and sympathy.
EDWARD STEPHENS
New York City
Against the Grain
Sir:
You published a news item in your Nov. 3 issue which said I had admitted holding 3,000 tons of wheat in my private warehouse. I would like to state that I have made no such admission. I do not hold or ever have held 3,000 tons of wheat in my warehouse. My land produced 20 tons of wheat this year. Half was given to the tenants, and half was sold to the government.
MALIK FIROZ KHAN NOON
Lahore, Pakistan
P: TIME erred.--ED.
It Takes All Sorts . . .
Sir:
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw J. S. Martin's letter in your Nov. 10 issue. This is a free country, but you should have enough judgment not to publicize a senseless letter calling the President of the U.S. a "golf playing idiot."
DR. G. A. ORBAN
Montreal
Sir:
We have put up with your Republican partisanship for 20 years and that's enough.
A. D. McDUFFIE
Wichita Falls, Texas
Prayer for Policemen
Sir:
Re "Chasing Women in South Africa" [Nov. 17]: I wish you could have published the names of the two "brave" white policemen who were shown beating up African women so that I, and millions of others, could pray each day to damn them and their masters to hell. But why blame others when the same thing happens in the U.S.? If some of your Negro citizens prefer to live in Paris or Rome (e.g., another story in your same issue), then there must be something wrong somewhere. A country in which a small state Governor can defy your President and the Supreme Court and treat the blacks like dirty dogs has no right to call itself the leader of the free world. Can't you please the young Asians now (who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow) and do something about this race problem?
FAZAL H. QURESHI
London
When Danes Get Blue
Sir:
Could the suicide rate in Denmark [Nov. 10] have something to do with one of those natural laws pertaining to birthrates and suicides in countries which have seen much war? For instance, during the last war the suicide rate in England dropped tremendously.
JOHN GOLDMEIER
Forest Hills, N.Y.
Sir:
When I was in Denmark a year ago, I asked our taxi driver, who boasted that the Danes were the happiest people in the world, how he accounted for the high suicide rate. He said it was because they were so happy that when they became downhearted they couldn't stand it and so took their quietus. The Danes have a saying that, "When a Dane gets blue, indigo is no longer a color." HARRY A. NELSON
Madison, Wis.
Sir:
The curious thing is not that we Danes commit suicide, but that the rest of you do not!
NILS MELIN
Bedford Village, N.Y.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.