The Godfather

To the Editors:

Mario Puzo is indeed "The Godfather of the Paperback Boom" [Aug. 28]. Who else but the expert novelist could write so much yet so little about something he's never personally experienced? If I could do as much, I too would be a millionaire. Hats off to "Mr. P."

John Luetkemeyer Jr.

Naperville, III.

Would Mr. Puzo like to tell us what proof he has that "it is a psychological fact that Italians do not give to organized charities"? He can speak only for himself. I can list dozens of men and women of Italian heritage who not only contribute to the Red Cross and other charitable, cultural and educational institutions, but also give generously of their time and talents to every sort of worthwhile endeavor.

Rose M. Cipriano

Millburn, N.J.

Please tell Mario Puzo that he was not alone in the forests when he was tracking Senecas and Iroquois as a youth. I, too, loved with a passion the novels of Joseph Altsheler, and couldn't take them out of the public library fast enough. Doc Savage, too, of course. But while my friends all know about Doc Savage, most of them have never heard of the Altsheler books. If Puzo wants to set up a small Altsheler memorial from little boys who grew up to be writers, I'm ready.

Alvin Toffler

New York City

Balloon Heroes

The crew of Double Eagle II has proved that the idea that there are no more modern heroes is a lot of hot air.

James C. Strittmatter, M.D.

Gainesville, Ga.

Actually, these "modern heroes"conquered the Atlantic not with hot air but with helium.

When the three men from New Mexico flew their balloon to France, the prophecies of Jules Verne were invoked. No one said a word about the American, Mark Twain.

Yet almost a century ago, in Tom Sawyer Abroad, he described how his hero boarded a balloon in the Midwest and flew across the Atlantic with his loyal comrade, Huck Finn. Don't journalists read Mark Twain any more?

Abram Vossen Goodman

Lawrence, N. Y.

It was promptly recorded for posterity that Larry Newman proved to be the lucky transatlantic balloonist who got to sleep in the Lindbergh bed at the American embassy in Paris. But it's disappointing that the press did not report what Newman wore on the occasion.

You see, for his first night in France, Charles Lindbergh had to borrow a pair of the distinguished U.S. Ambassador Myron T. Herrick's pajamas. We Herricks are very proud to have those famous pajamas hanging on our family tree.

Helen Herrick Malsed

Seattle

The Sue-Somebody Syndrome

In Frank Trippett's Essay "Of Risks, Hazards and Culprits" [Aug. 28] decrying what you call "the increased tendency of injured parties to sue somebody," you attempt to equate American law holding negligent and careless individuals liable for their conduct with "the modern welfare state." That is unforgivable. In fact, the tort system allocates losses to those who actually cause them, rather than asking society in general to pay.

Perhaps you espouse a true no-fault society, where no person or corporation is responsible for its acts and conduct--no matter how injurious the result. I hope your readers will never agree.

Peter Chase Neumann

Reno

We will truly become a suing society now that the overcrowded legal profession has entered the advertising arena.

Nancy Jordan

Carrollton, Ga.

Since I am in charge of negligence cases as the risk manager for a reasonably good-size, self-insured city, I fully concur with the observations in your Essay. The "I'm entitled" spirit has been aptly named "the Psychology of Entitlement," which I define as "whatever happened to me must be your fault, and even if it isn't, I should be compensated for it." Thus the question of legal liability is rapidly being degraded to a form of social welfare. Personal accountability seems to be a vanishing ethic. Cities, as you can well imagine, have become a prime target. No small part of the blame rests with an overpopulated plaintiffs bar willing to take almost any case.

Robert G. Walters

San Diego

This heightened devotion to litigation may seem to offer a cushy windfall to the person who files the suit--and his lawyer, of course--but it is not without a price to the rest of us. We pay for it in clogged court systems, in the continually rising cost of our insurance policies, and in the cost of just about everything else in which insurance figures as part of the price, doctors' malpractice insurance being the most dramatic example.

Robert G. Schultz

Chicago

King and Kennedy Hearings

The real fiasco on Capitol Hill is the hearings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations [Aug. 28]. These naive, amateur, armchair hawkshaws are bent on showcasing thieves and murderers on the national media. James Earl Ray loved it. It sure beat wrestling rattlers at Brushy Mountain Penitentiary.

The committee is attacking the FBI, the CIA in particular and law enforcement in general with its idiotic safaris into a criminal world it knows not of.

Chapter 2 of "strange encounters of the fourth kind" is coming up on the J.F.K. assassination hearings. Here, incredibly, the committee will venture still further afield when it tries to second-guess the expertise of the most sophisticated investigative agency in the nation--the FBI.

James H. Griffith

Cincinnati

Spending millions on investigations of the King-Kennedy assassinations is criminal when black slum children are hungry.

C. Evans Chew

San Antonio

Good Skate

The roller-skating story [Aug. 28] was pure nostalgia for me. In 1938-39 I skated to work down Seventh Street in Winfield, Kans., rain or shine--and in those days skates did rust.

I met my wife of 24 years on a roller-skating rink in Arkansas City, Kans., and got fired from a job in Wichita, Kans., for going skating instead of working overtime as requested. But I haven't been on roller skates since, and I am now too far over the hill to try.

Lew F. Torrance

Houston

Forgiving Nixon?

Do I detect a kind word for Nixon in the last sentence of "The Presidency" by Hugh Sidey [Aug. 28]? You mean there are actually things like forgiving and forgetting?

Dorothy A. Erl

Sterling Heights, Mich.

If there is any one outstanding characteristic of Mr. Nixon's public career, it is his lifelong inability to perceive the true nature of power in politics and differentiate its use from its abuse. It behooves all Americans to remember this as they contemplate his resurgence.

Norman J. Sissman, M.D.

Princeton, N.J.

Perez and Plaquemines Parish

It is unthinkable that a man like Plaquemines Parish's Chalin Perez [Aug. 28] can refuse to apply for federal grants, even though they are in the best interest of the community, because he fears federal control. It seems to me that it is about time the Federal Government did something. I thought this was supposed to be the land of "Liberty and justice for all." I don't call letting a man's wife die for lack of decent water justice. This should not be allowed to happen in the U.S.

Gail Cooper Brumleve

Atlanta

You object in your American Scene to Plaquemines Parish's purchasing a golf course for the public at a return of $2 for every dollar invested by the taxpayer, and advocate the expenditure for water in Ironton of $2,000 a person, or over $20,000, for the benefit of the Merlis Broussard family of ten or more. The officials of Plaquemines Parish have always maintained fiscal responsibility and resisted irresponsible federal handouts, a duty they owe to their tax-paying citizens.

Luke A. Petrovich, Vice President

Plaquemines Parish Commission Council

Buras, La.

Dollar Disaster

Your "Greenbacks Under the Gun" [Aug. 28] was almost a true account of our disastrous situation. Your list of things the U.S. "could do" is an exercise in futility. Buy up dollars aggressively with what? More I.O.U.s? More Treasury debt certificates? Freshly printed greenbacks? Sell our gold? What will that do but ruin the price of gold without even touching our foreign and domestic deficits? Sure, sell at the market and we could pay the foreign deficits for a couple of years, and then what? What pol would vote to raise interest rates far enough to put us into a depression? Oil surtax? Moderately helpful as it pushes us into depression. There is nothing we can do that won't hurt too much.

William H. Corson

Stanwood, Wash.

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