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MAGGAIE RAE
New York City
Sir: By publishing your recent analysis of "Camp," you have ensured that Camp will no longer be Camp, if you see what I mean. We philistines will now recognize the unique virtues of vulgarity, while the avant-garde will be driven to rely once more upon their taste, if any. Western civilization has again been snatched from the brink.
DAVID W. SIFTON
Patrick A.F.B., Fla.
Sir: Whether the derivation of "Camp" comes from the low "Aussie" saloons, or from the police rating "K.M.P." (Known Male Prostitute), or from the World War II concentration camps, where homosexuality was supposedly rife, "Camp" is here to stay. True—the vulgar and outrageous is Camp. What could be more ostentatious than Victorian "Tatt" and Barbra Streisand and superlatives like "divine," and "delicious." But I must add that the term Camp (Down Under, anyway) is not derogatory in implication.
JOSEPHENE OSBORNE-BROWN
Wellington, N.Z.
Ancient Trade
Sir: The photograph in your Cinema section [Dec. 11] of a slave trader coolly examining the teeth of a naked woman closely parallels the 19th century French painting Slave Market, by Jean Léon Gérôme, in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass, [see cut].
ALLEN M. BURNHAM
Manhasset, N.Y.
Consultant Competition?
Sir: The "Executive Peace Corps" [Dec. 4] seems an ironic commentary on the modern concept of free enterprise. There are a number of experienced consultants in the "developing" countries providing the continuity of contact essential to effective consulting who will now be faced with cut-rate competition sponsored by the U.S. taxpayer.
SPRUILLE BRADEN JR.
Bogotá, Colombia
Home, Sweet—Home
Sir: I got quite a chuckle out of your use of German in your treatise on sculpture [Dec. 11]. Did you mean Lebensraum (room or space to live in), or Liebesraum (room to love in)? The implication of the combination was delightful, Miller's Mary: Walking Sequence—beautiful!
ERIKA B. PAULSON
Muskegon, Mich.
> It depends on the sculpture. Miller's Mary obviously needs both.