Bare, Bright & Orderly

Sir:

Thank you for the cover story on Edward Hopper [Dec. 24]. This is the comprehensive type of article on art that the people understand. Refreshing compared to some of the stuff appearing in the art publications.

A. F. GEGAN

Albany, Calif.

Sir:

Congratulations and thanks for the wisest and most inspired presentation of American art that has appeared anywhere during the last quarter of a century.

SAMUEL GOLDEN

President

American Artists Group, Inc. New York City

Sir:

I suppose I am a highly prejudiced observer (considering the generous way you quote me), but the Hopper story struck me as a dazzling performance, even for you, and those final paragraphs the finest I have ever read in TIME (or in art criticism, for that matter). You almost persuade me that Hopper is a painter and belongs to the ages.

SELDEN RODMAN

Mexico City

Sir:

That is an excellent piece on Edward Hopper, but I disagree that "the Hoppers go miles out of their way to get gas a fraction of a cent cheaper," as they buy some of it from me and not at cut-rate prices. Mrs. Hopper appreciates our clean rest rooms.

JIMMY DELORY

Orleans, Mass.

Sir:

Thanks for the excellent reproductions of a very fine selection of paintings.

JOHN REESE

San Marino, Calif.

Sir:

The clue to Hopper's paintings is found in the description of his studio--bare, bright, orderly, still heated by a coal stove--and in the man himself, a man of few words. His pictures are not a moment in time as are those of the impressionists but a moment out of time--pictures that seem to regret change.

ELIAS BLECHMAN

Goshen, N.Y.

Sir:

Since Edward Hopper came to the Huntington Hartford Foundation recently, I've had an opportunity to learn that this reticent fellow has a good sense of humor, and is not always silent. He broke his silence in facing himself on your cover. To quote him on your article--"damn."

CHARLES B. ROGERS

Assistant Director

Huntington Hartford Foundation

Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Second Generation

Sir:

TIME, Dec. 3, published a picture of the new Ford hardtop convertible. I would like to point out that in the middle '30s a French automobile manufacturer, Peugeot, put out a similar car, the "Peugeot 601."

JEAN BOSSON

Washington

High-Slung Motorist

Sir:

As your Dec. 17 issue states, the New York Coliseum had a fine, spectacular showing of new cars, all presented very attractively. Like several other visitors I spoke with, I found that none of them suited me. The reason is very simple: I cannot fit inside. My head touched the ceiling, and my legs would not fit under the steering wheel with enough room to operate the foot pedals. In some cases I was unable to see a safe distance through the contorted windshields. True enough, my 6 ft. 6 in. height is a contributing factor, but a comparatively short man of 6 ft. reported the same trouble. After seeing this show, Im wondering how many more years I'll have to drive my 1951 sedan.

HENRY H. PLOCH

Clifton, NJ.

The Cardinal & Baby Doll

Sir:

TIME'S Dec. 24 review of Baby Doll is sickening. When you say an admitted stream of carnal suggestiveness is fit for your readers' attention because it is expertly served up, you insult your reader's moral integrity by implying that he has none. Elia Kazan may have had puritanic motives, but look at the lewd billboard and newspaper ballyhoo that sings the seductive praises of Baby Doll. Who's kidding whom?

HARRY PLATE

San Francisco

Sir:

Cardinal Spellman's condemnation of the motion picture Baby Doll has intrigued and greatly puzzled me. If it is a sin to see this picture, it must be assumed the cardinal himself has not seen it. But how can the cardinal condemn Baby Doll if he has not even seen the film? Could it be the cardinal has committed a cardinal sin?

WALTER GERSTEL

Berkeley, Calif.

P: The cardinal did not see Baby Doll.--ED.

Inside the Outsider

Sir:

In your Dec. 17 People section, you printed a paragraph about me, stating that I had publicly announced that my book, The Outsider, was a fraud. What I actually said was that The Outsider is a fraud as a work of philosophy. When someone has written a book which expresses an intensely personal viewpoint, he is bound to feel a fraud when people hail it as "representing the younger generation, etc." Nevertheless, The Outsider was written with deadly serious intent.

COLIN WILSON

London

The Moral Heights

Sir:

Your Dec. 24 story on Israel's "Massacre of the Innocents" [48 Arab villagers were shot by over-zealous Israeli border guards on the eve of Israel's invasion of Egypt] does credit to the fundamental ethical and moral values by which humanity professes to live. What other leader and Parliament would make public such a disgrace voluntarily and display sincere contrition so quickly and compensation so readily without U.N. meddling.

I am sure that Nasser and the other Arab gangsters will never rise to Premier Ben-Gurion's moral heights. Israel has reached the pinnacle of ethical sensitivity.

RABBI MORTON J. SUMMER

Brooklyn

Learning the Hard Way Sir:

Concerning your Dec. 12 article on changing policies toward world Communism: it is rather sad to learn that the Hungarian tragedy was necessary to open the eyes of the world. That the average citizen, with his own troubles and worries to take care of, should have been misled by this flirtation of coexistence, seems understandable to me; not so, however, for people whose only job it is to concern themselves with world affairs and who bear the moral responsibility of leading their respective nations. All that has happened since the early days of Communism has not taught them a thing. All at once, Mr. Nehru and other similar "neutralists" give a second thought to their policy of how - close -to -fire -can -we -stand -withoutbeing-burned. I feel sorry--and frightened --for the free nations, should our future rest with such naive politicians.

ROGER C. VAN OPENS

St. Niklaas, Belgium

George Bernard & Shawm

Sir:

Somehow the whole point to the G. B. Shaw anecdote as related by Biographer Archibald Henderson [Shaw was outraged when he received a letter addressed to G. B. "Shawm," even more outraged when his wife pointed out that a shawm was "an old-fashioned wind instrument"--Dec. 3] has been lost. Shaw's pseudonym as a London music critic was "Corno di Bassetto"--the Italian for basset horn, a tenor clarinet. The cleverly misdirected letter implied: "If you must call yourself a wind instrument, why not 'Mr. Shawm'?" Nettled by the dig, Shaw pretended not to recognize it, and succeeded in throwing both Mrs. Shaw and Biographer Henderson off the track. A shawming ruse, one might add.

J. MURRAY BARBOUR

East Lansing, Mich.

Sir:

Re your item on G. B. Shaw and Shawm: the figure of a shawm player can be seen on the Hansel Fountain in the courtyard of the Heilig-Geist-Spital (Holy Ghost Hospital) in Nuernberg. Although the figure is a copy, the original (about 1400 A.D.) is on display at the Germanic National Museum of Nuernberg.

DORA RENZ

Frankfurt, Germany

P: For Nuernberg's original shawmist, see cut.--ED.

English As She Was Spoke

Sir:

Your Dec. 17 reviewer finds a "fatal weakness" in Rebecca West's Fountain Overflows in "an unnatural and very unmusical style of dialogue" modeled on Victorian storybooks. Victorian storybooks were, after all, modeled on the style of speech familiar to their writers at a time when there was not the difference one finds today between written and spoken English.

E. W. SMITH

New York City

The Abbe

Sir:

I am sorry you saw fit to publish that terrible and unbelievable story [of the Catholic priest in France who murdered his mistress and their baby--Dec. 17]. This man sinned by yielding to temptation. His sins caught up with him and drove him mad, for no one but a madman would do what he did. Things that madmen do should never be told in a magazine like TIME.

CHARLES DOESCHER

Waterbury, Conn.

Sir:

It is a disgrace to publish such a story.

CAROL MURPHY

Purchase, N.Y.

Sir:

TIME'S discreet omission of the lurid details in this case is commendable. Perhaps the official statement of the Chancery in Nancy would interest your readers:

"Public opinion will have been painfully shocked by news of the tragic drama enacted in a parish of our diocese. Such an act is incomprehensible by its very monstrosity . . . We share completely in the sorrow of this dreadfully afflicted family and confronted with a crime committed by one of our own, we experience a heart-rending humiliation in the depths of our being. However . . . there remains the comfort of a confident prayer for the victim and our own expiation for the guilty party."

(THE REV.) FRANCIS CONKLIN, S.J.

Seminaire des Missions

Saint Martin d'Ablois

Marne, France

Stormy Weather

Sir:

You will undoubtedly get a flood of mail from irate weathermen about the isobar curvature for Artzybasheff's Dec. 17 cover. At first I too was puzzled over the clockwise hurricane below the clockwise high cell, but after much head-scratching, it occurred to me that if we draw the equator through Weatherman Rossby's temples and put the two cells in separate hemispheres, then the isobars are possible. Unfortunately this leaves unexplained the absence of the trade winds belt.

R. A. LUNDEGAARD

Lieutenant (j.g.) U.S.N.

San Francisco

Sir:

As an ex-naval aerologist, I couldn't help but cast an askance glance at that weather map and saw the isobars labeled in both millibars and inches. Weatherwise, a faux pas, but artwise, quite correct?

RICHARD E. LIMOLI

New York City

P: Artist Artzybasheff used a genuine weather map for the cover background, but did not permit isobars to interfere with art.--ED.

Sir:

After studying the background, I wondered what the weather behind Rossby could possibly be. So I carefully peeled off the face. My findings are enclosed.

B. W. ROBERT Woodland, N.Y.

P: For Reader Robert's "findings," see cut.--ED.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.