Who I Am

Sir: Thanks for the characterization of me. Now I know who I am, what t am, what I believe and why I believe it. Thank God for Middle Americans [Jan. 5].

MRS. J. J. PERKINS Wichita Falls, Texas

Sir: In this year of man's first moon landing to make Middle Americans Man of the Year is like making the Spanish peasant man of the year in 1492!

BARBARA MUNSCHAUER Ithaca, N.Y.

Sir: Even after a losing season, a coach wouldn't give the team's Most Valuable Player award to the scorekeeper!

DAN DURAWAY Buffalo

Sir: You have given words to a theme so basic that its music will be heard throughout the entire coming decade.

PHILIP F. ANSCHUTZ Denver

Sir: It is the students, the peace workers, the black militants, the Charles Garrys, the Dan Berrigans, the Panthers and the Young Lords who are alive to the currents that can move our country toward a more honest, yes painful, human freedom. It is not the Silent Majority, who wait for a Spiro to voice their private thoughts and then say "Amen," who are going to affect the dynamism of America. I think that the people who are satisfied and proud ought to be invited to leave, for they don't truly love their country nor do they want a greater future for her.

SISTER AGNES KELLY St. Angela's Convent The Bronx, N.Y.

Sir: Many of the Middle Americans probably will not recognize themselves, and even sadder, the remainder will recognize themselves and be proud.

JOAN M. JUDGE Saugus, Mass.

Sir: My husband and I were very proud to be on the cover of your magazine. It was an eerie feeling to know you were writing about us, as if you had interviewed us personally. We did stand for over an hour, in the cold, to take the kids to Radio City this Christmas vacation; we did vote for Nixon; we do feel S. I. Hayakawa is one of the heroes of today; and I cry at every splashdown. You've captured in print our hopes, our ideals, our feelings, our fears and our concern.

(MRS.) SUSAN LEVINE Rockaway Beach, N.Y.

Sir: "They sing the national anthem at football games--and mean it." Your wisecrack is contemptible.

WILLIAM P. HEPBURN Annapolis, Md.

Sir: Your banal enthronement of confused, inarticulate, chauvinistic, anti-intellectual mediocrity has struck a responsive chord in my cynical heart. Bless you. LUCIAN R. SMITH Mankato, Minn.

Sir: There have been times in the past decade when I was sure I was in the wrong house, dead, or just plain insane, or maybe all three. Your reassurance that I'm alive, and that there are others like me, has made my New Year.

(MRS.) MARJORIE D. WHITESIDE Richmond

Sir: From the visual put-down of depicting us as flat, two-dimensional beings existing on cigarettes and ersatz food to the condescension slightly tinged with apprehension of the article, you show clearly the mild contempt of the self-anointed intellectual aristocracy for the stupid middle-class geese who lay the golden eggs of taxes and keep our country running.

I'm sure you confidently expect that we will be so flattered at being noticed by our betters that we won't realize we are being mocked.

C. A. COZART

Boulder, Colo.

Sir: Flat, wooden-headed, with money and a monkey wrench in the middle of everything: Vin Giuliani has certainly captured the essence of the Middle American!

(THE REV.) WILLIAM K. HUBBELL Lexington, Ky.

Dog Spelled Backwards

Sir: No, the eternal God did not die and come back to life [Dec. 26]; but your article points out hopeful signs that dead doctrines, feeble faith and stagnant systems might be on the verge of revitalization. Who knows but what with all the other inversions taking place these days, the Year of the Dog (1970, according to the zodiac of the Orient) may yet turn into the year of our God.

(THE REV.) CLARK B. OFFNER Chikusa Ku, Japan

Sir: God was dead because He did not conform to the image and desires of the selfish. He still does not. To say that we must make God relevant is foolishness. It is blasphemy based on the notion that God is only the opiate of the people.

WILLIAM E. SPEED Foreman, Ark.

Sir: Until humanity reaches a level of maturity with enough stability to overcome all religions, we are doomed to failure in His quest. If the meaning of G.O.D. is "Grand Old Dad" to many, it also is the "Greatest Overwhelming Doubt" to others. Anyway, there is enough hope left to brag: In man we trust.

JEAN CRETE Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sir: Perhaps man is coming of age, and having gotten off his knees, will finally do something that even a God might be proud of.

RICHARD J. SMITH Grand Forks, N.Dak.

One Big Drugstore

Sir: In the article about a young boy who died from an overdose of heroin [Dec. 26], the following comment was made: "Walt had no trouble getting the stuff. Take a ride down 116th Street some time; see the pushers openly peddling heroin . . . you will see doped youngsters nodding listlessly in doorways."

I am a sophomore at an almost all-white high school whose district includes most of the elite part of town. Drugs are peddled in the school, sometimes during study hall, more often at lunch and in the restrooms. They are peddled almost openly at the hamburger joint across the street, even when a cop car is there (the cops don't ignore it, they just don't realize what's going on). Kids come to school high on acid, pot and speed; some of them take codeine and other hard drugs.

It surprises me when people say with a great deal of shock that drugs are openly peddled in a ghetto or at a rock festival. Drugs are peddled openly and used by your sweet, innocent Jimmy at your friendly neighborhood school.

JENNIFER ADAIR Memphis

Those Black Irish

Sir: In your article about Bernadette Devlin [Jan. 5] you state that the prosecution charged that she called police "black bastards." To the Irish Catholic a "black" person is one who is militantly anti-Catholic. I am afraid that by publishing this alleged statement without some explanation, you may confuse your readers. To my knowledge, she is not a racist.

ERNEST P. WECKESSER Fort Wayne, Ind.

Oil and Trouble

Sir: I am surprised that there wasn't a mass movement in Santa Barbara to send Wally Hickel all of the dead birds from the beach for a Christmas present [Jan. 5]. He doesn't seem to be getting the message. We have heard enough about "pressure buildups," "more wells" and the "poor oil companies." We Californians want these oil wells, rigs and lines removed from our waters and the oil companies to be liable for the billions of dollars of damage that they have done to our environment.

J. DENTON COLLIER San Diego, Calif.

Sir: Let us pray that the oil companies stop drilling in Santa Barbara and that everyone commit himself to saving our lives. Let us rather walk to where we are going than let one more bird die.

ALAN S. WEINER San Francisco

Sir: After Illinois Attorney General William Scott cleans up Illinois [Jan. 5], we sure could use him in our state!

(MRS.) LYNN ROBERTS Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Echoes from My Lai

Sir: I wish military officers, such as Captain Marvin F. Pixton III, who are so eager to criticize critics of the My Lai incident [Jan. 5], would keep their damned mouths shut! They only verify the growing caricature of the military officer as a feeble-thinking neo-fascist type incapable of understanding the responsibilities of democracy in war or peace and, therefore, not to be trusted with either. War is hell, but loss of humanity is far worse.

DAVID P. WILSON Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N. A.P.O. San Francisco

Sir: We here are all very sorry about the heartache, disbelief and nausea that Miss Swenson feels concerning My Lai [Dec. 26]. We too have those same feelings --when one of our best men steps on a booby trap and has his leg blown off, and when incoming mortar rounds blow a buddy's head off and you volunteer to put the remains into a plastic bag.

We neither defend nor condemn My Lai, but we are sick of people regarding us as murderers. For those who have fought for it and died for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know.

(Sox.) DAVID CHURP U.S.A. A.P.O. San Francisco

The Real Noel

Sir: You suggest that critics who rank Noel Coward with Sheridan and Wilde tend to overlook "the extent to which Coward's work is sheerly theatrical" and "remote" from real life [Dec. 26]. If this means that Sheridan and Wilde were relatively realistic writers, it would, I submit, surprise a great many.

You emphasize the view that Coward's works are of "inspired inconsequentiality," mere flippant echoes of the trivial '20s, and that his greatest gift has been more his personal style than writing, directing, composing or acting. If this means that Cavalcade was a "brittle," sophisticated assemblage of early-'30s witticisms instead of a great, deeply moving and enormously successful spectacle, then many memories, records and scrapbooks are at fault.

Does your article mean to ignore what most critics still agree was one of the best and most "real" of all war films, In Which We Serve? And what about the simple, heartbreakingly "real" Brief Encounter? Or Fumed Oak? Or Post Mortem? Or one of his earliest--The Vortex, an in tense, psychological drama? And are the serious, sentimental and romantic musicals like Bi tersweet and Conversation Piece to be dismissed as part of the legend which "dashes off pages of decadent dialogue before breakfast"?

In short, your account--presumably well-intentioned--seems to have been a "paste and scissors" affair, put together by someone who is either too young, too uninterested, or too lacking in theatrical knowledge for the assignment. Perhaps all three!

DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR. Honolulu

Reading Enjoyment

Sir: Thanks for taking a big fat load off my mind. For some time I'd been wondering whether this Nicholas von Hoffman [Jan. 5] was for real. I had been reading the product of his labors with horrified fascination, astounded that here we had an instant expert on absolutely everything and wincing at his diatribes against fat, contented, middle-class whites.

Thanks to your article, I know now that Nicky-poo is real. A real egocentric who uses his fire-eating "social commentary" and the fame (?) deriving therefrom as a lever to get himself little pay raises from his imbecilic capitalist employers. A real armchair revolutionary.

I'll enjoy reading Nicky's pieces from now on--knowing, finally, that they are the work of a gold-plated phony.

GEORGE ZINNEMANN Upper Marlboro, Md.

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