Tarbox Town Criers

Sir: On opening my mailbox and catching a glimpse of Robert Vickrey's cover portrait of John Updike tumble out [April 26], I was instantly impressed with a feeling of Andrew Wyeth's nostalgic quality. Being a Wyeth fan, I immediately dove into your cover article and was quite pleased with myself and with Robert Vickrey on reading of John Earth's comparison of the artist Wyeth to the author Updike. I am now hurriedly on my way to our library to uncover every novel by Updike I can find.

MRS. ROBERT B. JOHNS Lenox, Mass.

Sir: Updike made a talented try at marrying priapism to poetry by using hard-breathing language as the preacher. Your review almost succeeded where Updike's novel fails--that is, to see beyond the current public American view of sexuality as a gee-whiz genital performance. But neither your reviewer nor Updike ever really found a way out of Updike's Tarbox. I believe you ought to get some reading done away from the Greenwich commuter's bar car. There's a whole landscape of really living people outside who aren't the lost adolescents of most modern fiction.

JAMES R. MILLMAN South Euclid, Ohio

Sir: Saying that Updike is not in the mainstream of contemporary American letters is manifestly absurd. Since when is creativity governed by conformity? Updike would not deign to wade in Mailer's muddied mainstream. Updike, in his personal life and his writings, is a lover. Mailer, in both, is a hater.

(MRS.) RUTH ROSENER New Haven, Conn.

Sir: It will be interesting to note whether future historians refer to this decade as the Sexties or the Sicksties.

C. M. WILLIAMS

Jacksonville

Sir: What a pity that Updike has dedicated his talent to the "boudoirsie."

JAMES L. SCHLAGHECK Washington, D.C.

Sir: Man, am I glad that we now have John Updike to tell us all about the ins and outs of Tarbox. Down here in our benighted society we have difficulty finding privacy with our own husbands, much less anyone else's. What with raising a family, providing for them and maintain ing the virtues, we just don't have time for marital adventures outside our own home. Although admittedly we have to resort from time to time to sending all the children to a wickedly expensive Disney film in order to attain dark at the top of the stairs.

H. A. BALLENGER Spartanburg, S.C.

Sir: Gee whiz, that kind of carryin' on has been all the rage from these Kansas plains clear out West to Hollywood and beyond. You mean it's just startin' to catch on back East?

EVELYNE L. GORDON Wichita, Kans.

Sir: I'd be interested in knowing why he picked the name Tarbox for the town in which the action, among other things, was laid. While reading, I watched carefully for a cause for civil action, but ended feeling more envious than damaged. In Pasadena, about the most daring thing mixed couples do that I know of, is play a fast game of croquet.

JOE W. TARBOX Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: Those of us who tried to edit Shillington High School's Chatterbox after he left felt that the feature page should be permanently edged in black. And thanks for the picture and mention of his parents. Anyone who studied math under Wesley Updike may no longer remember how to calculate compound interest, but they will never forget the wonderful experience it was to know this big, surprising, kind, humble and completely unique human being.

(MRS.) JOAN P. KRONINGER West Chester, Pa.

Confrontation at Columbia

Sir: The recent sit-ins at Columbia University [May 3] are just one more instance of how absurdly far we have gone in our homage to youth. If administrators and faculty of the nation's colleges can't keep a semblance of order in their schools, for the sake of pur survival let's keep them out of politics where all problems aren't neatly catalogued and solved within the covers of a book.

JAMES S. HOWLEY JR. Upper Darby, Pa.

Sir: Nothing raises my anger more than being sold ideals by force (since I lived and fought 20 years of fascism and twelve of Nazism). This is exactly what the students who occupied Columbia University tried to do. If anyone must close doors to sell ideas, shouting them from the second-floor window for acceptance, there can be but one reason: at street level such ideas are too void to inspire.

(MRS.) JACQUELINE P. MARCAULT Saugerties, N.Y.

Sir: What could ever have prompted the New York City government to let those cops with their hoodlum tactics loose among so many naive kids? Now Columbia knows what every Harlem kid has known all his life--the hard truth about police violence.

MORSE HAMILTON Graduate Student Columbia University Manhattan

Sir: Your Student Protest Essay [May 3] was right in pointing out that the way "to deal with student power is to anticipate it, to initiate changes before the students demand them"; this latter approach was definitely not implemented at Columbia. But more basic to the very root of the problem, student unrest and rebellion stems from the sometimes appalling slowness if not indifference displayed by university officials to come to grips with the burning issues of the day. Some would rather dismiss the whole problem as a temporary sign of spring fever, hoping that time will take care of things. This "spring fever" blossomed into one of the largest police raids that ever took place on an American campus.

J. P. DENS Ph.D. Candidate Columbia University Manhattan

Over There

Sir: . "Bitter Aftertaste," the title of TIME'S gloss on student unrest in Germany [April 26], describes what at least one German conservative had in his mouth after reading it. You assert that the students had "found neither violence so romantic nor West German society so weak as they had imagined." What evidence is there that they had imagined violence to be romantic--a few months after one of them had been shot in Berlin? I see diverse ingredients in our students' attitude toward violence. Of romanticism I see no trace. Also: Is society's strength measured by the volume of tough talk emanating from (mostly confused) officials? You state: "The radical students charge that Springer has manipulated public opinion in order to create a repressive society and an atmosphere of hate against them." Not only radical students charge that. Almost everybody I know does. Some liberal politicians do so publicly. And most German editorial writers and columnists do. Unless, of course, Herr Springer owns their paper.

EBERHARD PELS Professor of Statistics University of Munich Munich

Sir: In June it will be 20 years since the airlift began to Berlin that saved that city after the Russians and East Germans had blockaded all surface communications. The city, as one man, hoped and prayed that the Allied airlift would be successful. In 1961, the Wall went up between West and East. One must wonder what would happen if once again Berlin was in danger, a city that has thrived under the protection of the Allies. The students should realise that they are using the democratic freedom of West Berlin to champion a cause that, if victorious, would withdraw their freedom of expression from them immediately. If they still feel that this is what they want, they certainly have an option--to move from West Berlin into East Germany, where the government would surely welcome them with open arms to offset, in a small way, the millions who, voting with their feet, left the East to seek protection under a system of government that allowed them the right of choice.

PETER FRANKEL Melbourne, Australia

More than Paint

Sir: Having participated in "The Thing in the Spring [April 26]" I am now absolutely certain that white people cannot hide a slum with a coat of paint--even if the suburbanites are the painters. The poor need low-cost housing--white America cannot paint that fact away.

NANCY MCMAHON Purchase, N.Y.

Sir: Deo gratias for Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle of Washington. As a Catholic, I am greatly excited about the idea of one of our prelates halting his building programs in order to use the funds to alleviate the immediate problems of the poor. For too long the ludicrous situation has existed where the poor have trudged from country hovels and slum cellars to worship in million-dollar edifices of stone, marble and gold leaf.

LORCAN J. BOWDEN

San Francisco

Trouble from the Tube

Sir: Let's face it: mass-media newscasting [April 26] is now the global version of that old game, let's you and him fight. For profit, politics or publicity, we are perpetually assaulted, kicked in the adrenal glands, frustrated and depressed vicariously by the stream of reports on rape, riot and rebellion in places we know nothing about, will never see, can do nothing for, and which consume our energies and misdirect our concerns from our real individual responsibilities for job, family and community. One man's information is indeed another man's identification with militarism, license, revolt, sadism or criminality. Worse, the newscaster's carefully modulated vocal intonation of emotional neutrality carries a powerful subliminal, nonverbal "message" to impressionable minds about society's indifference to aggression and human suffering. This is an insidious attack on society's age-old weapon of restraint: collective moral indignation. The so-called "truth" is very difficult to communicate accurately. It must only be broadcast after careful evaluation in the light of total communications impact, and with full awareness of the "other and distorted messages" conveyed by carelessness or sensationalism regarding timing, balance, intonation, emphasis, association, attitude and implications. In short, newscasting can no longer afford to be show business.

ROBERT C. CURREY Larchmont, N.Y.

Tell It to the D.A.

Sir: Heartiest congratulations to President Peterson on keeping her cool in the Linda Le Clair affair [April 26]. The problem is not Barnard's, or that of any college. It was produced--and must be accepted by--the adult community. What I rebellious students overlook is the immutable equation that if one would contest the paternalistic supervision of the college, he must accept the legalistic restrictions and moral consequences of society. Even if Linda makes the minor point that some of the residential requirements of the college may trespass upon what she claims as her individual rights, has she proved the proposition implicit in her impertinence: that she may cohabit anywhere with a male not her spouse? Surely Barnard is not alone in expressing its disapproval. Has not society condemned it also? Or has it? If Barnard will not consent to Linda's plans, perhaps she can stop by the district attorney's office and get his endorsement.

KEITH F. SCOTT Circuit Judge State of Illinois Macomb

Sir: Rabbi Goldman argues that Barnard's housing rules should be changed since they "cause a great deal of guilt because everybody breaks them." I reckon he could say the same about the Ten Commandments, but I don't think Moses would like it. Nor, very likely, would God. This is a rabbi?

RICHARD WHITE Short Beach, Conn.

Sir: I don't know what kind of student Linda Le Clair is or what kind of a mistress she makes, but judging from the picture of her apartment, she makes one lousy housekeeper. Doesn't Barnard College have a Home Economics department?

(MRS.) HARRIETTE B. WAGNER Northbrook, Ill.

Vive la Difference

Sir: Your article "The Search for Something Else" [April 26] is a remarkably concise and exact expression of what has become the policy of the nation's leading colleges toward its admissions candidates. The extent to which this policy has manifested itself these past two years is noteworthy. We cannot help feeling sorry for the high-school senior who has maintained a straight A average for four years and has scored consistently in the mid-to-upper 700s on the College Board exams--and who is rejected at the school of his choice simply because he is not "different." Nevertheless, the striving of this nation's colleges for diversity and individuality among its student body is indeed commendable. Even here at Yale, where undergraduate education is perhaps the best in the country, I often find myself thinking that I learn more from one of the communal nightly "bull sessions" than I do from a week of classes. For a rewarding college experience in general, students who can offer something else are sine qua non.

STEPHEN A. CUSHNER, '71 Yale University New Haven, Conn.

Sir: I think it is an outrage to normal society that the leading colleges and universities deliberately seek and honor the "oddball" candidate for admission. It is no wonder that these same institutions are plagued by sit-ins, riots, sex orgies and drugs, for this is the world of the oddball, who has no respect or responsibility toward law and order.

What has happened to decency, honesty, integrity, ambition and the clean-cut American youth--are these no longer desirable characteristics?

MARGARET H. WICKER East Norwich, N.Y.

To Be Frank

Sir: Thank you for the informative article on the Oscar Mayer company [April 12], and for printing what I consider to be my theme song. I love it and sing it at least twice a day. I teach high school French, so I ventured Oscar Mayer a la franc,aise :

Je voudrais etre une saucisse Oscar Mayer.

Je m'amuserais, oui, je m'amuserais.

Et si j'etais une saucisse Oscar Mayer,

Tout le monde, oui, tout le monde m'aimerait.

H. JOSEPH BECKMAN Los Angeles

Sir: The story making the rounds here: There was this surfer sitting on his board off Santa Monica one day, when a bottle floated by. A note inside said: "You have been granted three wishes." He thought "sheez," but decided to give it a try. So he wished for a Cadillac convertible--and boingg--there it was on the beach. He thought "crazy," and wished for enough $100 bills to fill it. And shazam--it was filled. He started on a third wish--should it be women, fame? These he could buy. So he decided to save the third wish, and drove that Cad down the freeway. Feeling extra good, he started singing along with the radio, which just happened to be airing a commercial: "O, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener."

(THE REV.) KENNETH E. HARTZHEIM Fullerton, Calif.

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