The Loneliest Art

Sir:

The world stewing over H-bomb developments ; Berlin gate crashers newsworthy; Castro trigger-happy again; Carla making history; and TIME [Sept. 15] comes up with a literary bug for a cover story. Zooey!

CARLOS PEREIRA

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Sir:

Bravo Skow and crew!

AL GILDZEN

Kent State University ('65)

Kent, Ohio

Sir:

The Salinger story is your best work on an artist since your Marian Anderson piece.

My only regret is that Skow passed a negative judgment on Salinger's desire for privacy. Some writers run for public office, others enjoy the social whirl, others get into scrapes with the police. This is their business. But a man who asks nothing but to be left in peace to attack the blank pages in his typewriter should be able to do just that without being sniped at by a Swados or a Skow.

ROBERT D. KEMPNER New York City

Sir:

Jack Skow claims that Seymour's suicide was "wrong" and senseless because "saints may be martyred, but they do not shoot themselves."

Seymour was--and is, as far as I and all believing readers of Salinger are concerned--a saint, yes, but not by any standards set down before Salinger. Seymour is a man suffering from the lacerating discrepancies between truth and beauty, Keats to the contrary. Such a man lacks "sense" in the common understanding of balance or proportion, because he is so utterly involved with love. It is unreasonable to judge such a man in terms of a right and wrong that Salinger had probably outgrown by the age of seven.

ELIZABETH CHAPMAN HEWITT Williamsville, N.Y.

Sir:

What J. D. Salinger is, is a phony, and it is by no means inconceivable that what drives him to such extremes of reclusiveness is simple self-knowledge, inasmuch as Mr. Salinger must surely have the windiest conscience yet granted to mortal man, the onslaught of the aspen-hinged tongue of which would drive any man to flight and concealment. .

To this reader, his puerile exegeses of such systems of theology, philosophy, epistemology and, for that matter, bath-taking, as he has brought under the batteries of his irredeemably third-class mind bring much the same kind of pain as does unexpectedly bending back a fingernail below the quick.

E. L. JESSE McLean, Va.

Sir:

The exceptional cover story on J. D. Salinger depicting him as the solitary worker at the loneliest of the creative arts brought home the fact that those of us who thought ourselves solitary admirers of Salinger are, on the contrary, members of a vast crowd. Writing is a quiet art--its audience does not queue up at a Carnegie Hall or a Guggenheim Museum. But the Salinger who interprets the singular and lonely person trying to stay intact amidst the reality of thousands must feel as out of place facing the thousands of

TIME readers as do his somewhat introverted worshipers, who find that they are not in solitude but in an admiring throng.

BETTY BARRE Buffalo

Sir:

According to your article on J. D. Salinger, "only a small group of friends has ever been inside his hilltop house." I must be privileged, then, because a few years ago when our youth group went on a hike, after asking for some water, we were taken into their kitchen and given cookies and something to drink. If we were able to walk through their gate, it seems quite impossible to think that neighbors had to climb the fence to see Mr. Salinger's home.

DAWN AMIDON Plainfield, N.H.

Sir:

Thank you for a much needed cover piece on J. D. Salinger.

It will now be fascinating--in a morbid and unrewarding way--to watch the hatchet men of academe attempt to prove that no writer earning a TIME cover story can possibly be of literary consequence.

Those same precious people who nibbled at James Gould Cozzens will be quoting paragraphs out of context, accusing Salinger of writing like Salinger, reading in their own Freudian fantasies, and eventually, of course, forgetting Salinger entirely as they turn to criticizing each other's criticisms.

PAUL W. FERRIS Park Forest, Ill.

Neutrals & The Bomb

Sir:

When is the U.S. going to stop worrying about the attitudes of the spear carriers of Africa and the sheepherders of Asia? We had better start considering what is beneficial for the U.S. before Russia decides to use North America for its next test area.

T. A. THINNES

Cincinnati

Sir:

I fail to see how the nations that recently met at Belgrade, Yugoslavia [Sept. 15], can call themselves "neutral" when they see colonialism in Algeria, Angola and Guantanamo Naval Base without also seeing it in Albania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Rumania, Poland, Estonia, Hungary, Tibet, North Korea, Latvia, Lithuania and Mongolia.

How much longer must we support such selfish and narrow-minded "neutrals"? I believe that it is high time we stopped trying to buy friends. Let these nations learn that the road of friendship is a two-way street.

JOHN D. THYEN JR. Second Lieutenant, U.S.A.F. Sewart Air Force Base Smyrna, Tenn.

Sir:

Had any of the Western powers been the first to start testing after three years of test ban, as the Russians did, the cries and protests from the neutrals would have sounded louder than the explosion of the proposed 100-megaton bomb of Russia.

J. EMMANUEL ROBERTS

Monrovia, Liberia

Law & Order

Sir:

"What kind of animals?" Ha! The same kind that are on the police force, Mr. Murphy ["Is There No Respect?" Sept. 8].

Why is it the police refuse to accept some of the blame for the public reaction against them? It has been my observation that the caliber of the men on the force is far from ideal. They take advantage of their uniform, their gun and the law.

Respect and decency are important factors in the police department too--try using your own words to your staff, Mr. Murphy--"Do unto others," remember?

MRS. E. SYMMONDS

Hanford, Calif.

Sir:

There are several items of distressing interest in your Sept. 8 issue, but none of them seem more alarming to me than the account of the contempt and disrespect with which officers of the law are coming to be held by the young people of the nation. If this is a true commentary on American life, and if the Bible and history have anything at all to say today, then our days are numbered. Both sacred and profane history are replete with examples of the fact that nations and civilizations are not murdered; they commit suicide. Rampant contempt for law is symptomatic of advanced moral decrepitude that should be of more concern to us than Mr. Khrushchev's boorish intimidations.

BILL G. WEST Pastor

First Baptist Church Okmulgee, Okla.

Wink Revisited

Sir:

As a former resident of the once and now again eminent West Texas town of Wink for 18 years, I was sadly displeased to read [Sept. 8] that the U.S. Government is pouring more than $1,000,000 of taxpayers' money into this decaying ghost town.

For God's sake, can't something be done to stop this complete waste of tax money? Can the U.S. afford to subsidize the thousands of dying towns across the nation? After a dog dies--bury it!

F. P. ELLIOTT Caracas, Venezuela

Sir:

You should receive 1,863 (total population) letters from irate citizens of the finest little town in the world. Here's mine.

Just for the record: the majority of the people here will receive no "federal aid." Some of-those receiving aid will not receive an amount equal to their investments. More families have moved in than out since purchases of property began. The last rigger and roustabout is not gone. The silent decay and slow death you mentioned has somehow caused a 50% increase in our school enrollment since 1951. And finally, concerning the reason for Wink existing: Friend, we must exist. For how else could we win football championships ?

ROBERT N. MARTIN

Proud Citizen Wink, Texas

Sir:

TIME'S Wink correspondent should have spent more time listening to the "calm and confident 'Buffalo.' "

C. E. SCHERMBECK Head, Processing Section Urban Renewal, HHFA Fort Worth

Strangers in the Land

Sir:

It is true, as your article on foreign students [Sept. 8] points out, that more students from underdeveloped areas are studying in the United States than in the Soviet Union. But we are still far from satisfying the desire for education which is sweeping through these areas like a prairie fire. Unless we can offer the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America the educational opportunities they so desperately need, they will surely seek them in Communist lands, with consequences potentially destructive to them and dangerous to us. Here is an opportunity not only for expanded programs of Government assistance to foreign students, but for corporations and private citizens to support exchange programs and thus contribute to what Mr. Coombs rightfully calls "the people's branch of foreign relations."

KENNETH HOLLAND President

Institute of International Education New York City

Bleacher-Blaster

Sir:

Oh, come now, TIME Magazine. In your Sept. 1 issue Press section, you deplore the purple patois of some sportswriters, and then under Milestones you describe Roger Maris as the "New York Yankee bleacher-blaster." Who's on first?

R. H. NUTT Staten Island, N.Y.

> Press. Milestones whiffed the ash.--ED.

Art of China

Sir:

I caught the matted elegance of the Chinese art on opening my TIME [Sept. 15].

Feeling them, I convinced myself--the paper was different! Turning to the editorial section, I found the explanation: another first for TIME in excellent color reproduction.

This is one issue I'll save!

MARY Risen

Connersville, Ind.

Sir:

My heartiest congratulations on the superlative reproductions of Chinese art. I'm aware of the problems involved: as a journalist, I feel that a new standard has been set; as a TIME reader, I'm grateful.

CONRAD KULAWAS Managing Editor Chicago Review Chicago

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