My letters are often sold not as literature but as the material relics of a modern saint, wrote George Bernard Shaw to a friend. "Often, some impecunious journalist asks me to refuse [his requests for material] on an insulting postcard, so that he can dispose of it to a collector for the price of a meal." That particular letter brought the price of a pretty good meal—$250—at an auction of G.B.S. letters and memorabilia at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries. A total of $41,900 was paid for the 165 lots—including $4,250 for a packet of 19 love letters from young Shaw to his "undeservedly beloved," a nurse named Alice Lockett. "I am," he wrote, "opinionated, vain, weak, ignorant, lazy and so forth." He gave her a sample in his final letter: "Lovemaking grows tedious to me—the emotion has evaporated from it. This is your fault."
"None is Fun" is the slogan of NON—the new National Organization for Non-Parents. Co-hosts at the launching in Washington were Baseball Iconoclast Jim Bouton (who has had two children and a vasectomy) and Theater Iconoclast John Simon (divorced non-father). Non-Mother's Day and Non-Father's Day will be celebrated on the appropriate days, as will anything that promotes a "child-free life-style." To that end, Bouton announced the first NON awards: to David and Julie Eisenhower and Congresswoman Shirley and Conrad Chisholm as Child-Free Couples of 1972, and to Ralph Nader and Gloria Steinem as Single Man and Single Woman of the Year. "Wonder what kind of a kid they'd produce," mused Bouton.
"Irreconcilable differences" is the term in California divorce law that covers a multitude of marital problems, and pretty, Dutch-born Mieke Tunney, 35, has used it to sue for dissolution of her 13-year marriage to California's Democratic Senator John V. Tunney, 37. In addition to alimony, child support and half the community property, she is asking for custody of their three children. Tunney, claiming surprise, hurried back from California to see Mieke in Washington. Washington, equally surprised, prepared to get along without one of its most glamorous couples.
The great Willie Mays—a running, throwing, hitting folk hero in his own time—was back in New York City, and everyone was glad. The San Francisco Giants were glad because their failing gates would no longer have to bear the burden of Willie's $165,000 salary (not to mention what they got in exchange: about $100,000 and a pitcher from the New York Mets). The Mets were glad because Mays, even at 41, is still a powerful player as well as an enormous drawing card in the city where he began his career 21 years, 646 home runs and 2,857 big-league games ago. Willie, who has been trying to get a long-term contract to guarantee his future, was delighted. "It's a wonderful feeling," he said. "When you come back to New York, it's like coming back to paradise."