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I think TIME'S lack of respect for the former Vice President of the United States, Mr. John Nance Garner, is shocking . . . I am a Republican, and I disagreed with the man when he was in office, but . . . this disrespect for a man who once held the second highest office in our land gets under my skin.
FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON Saint Paul, Minn.
Hoof & Mouth Trouble
Sir:
" 'Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons steelyringing imperthnthn thnthnthn,' wrote James Joyce in Ulysses. What he meant was that two barmaids, a redhead and a blonde were listening to the clatter of dray horses in a Dublin street" [TIME, Nov. 12].
He didn't write that, and he didn't mean that. He wrote "Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing" as a brisk note, to be expanded on the next page, of barmaids watching the viceregal cavalcade. He then wrote, on the next line, "Imperthnthn thn thnthn" as a note, also to be expanded a page later, of a bellboy mimicking the [barmaid's] phrase "impertinent insolence."
For fusing two unrelated phrases and turning the viceregal carriage into a dray, to TIME'S imperthnthn editor, an Emily-colored blush.
W. HUGH KENNER Santa Barbara, Calif.
¶ I And deservedly—but not Emily-colored (see below).—ED.
Sir:
" 'I did not write any poem referring to Emily-colored hands,' hissed Miss Sitwell . . ."
I am an admirer of Miss Sitwell but I will absolutely worship her if she can hiss that sentence.
SIDNEY JONES Philadelphia
¶ TIME'S hiss expert deposes, with a Sit-wellian smile, that one sibilant in a sentence is enough for a real hisser.—ED.
Sir:
We were glad to learn Miss Sitwell is capable of roaring on to a battlefield and hissing by post. Such vocal athletics no doubt enhance the status of a poetess who has progressed beyond the White Cliffs of Dover to the point where she writes of the "pink cheeks of young country girls in unintelligible floral arrays."
And the reason James Joyce wrote as he did is, no doubt, explained in the first episode [of Ulysses], "You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought." However, both are artists. And what else, cries the voice of doom, matters?
LEWIS WILLIAMS Philadelphia
Envoy to the Vatican
Sir:
The tired old saws elicited by your Nov. 19 readers (Protestant) concerning the appointment of Mark Clark as Ambassador to Rome (Catholic) have caused me to draw a bead of indignant ire on them . . .
I am a Master Mason, therefore surely not prejudiced in favor of the Holy See in Rome . . . The basic weakness in Protestantism seems to be an insecure and wholly immature feeling, which impels them to show extreme aggression against any school of thought not completely in accord with their feelings and doctrine . . . Our common enemy is not Russia, Poland, or Communist China, but the things they stand for. They believe, and as sincerely as we believe the opposite, that power is right. Any means that we can use . . . to combat this incipient evil, are the means that we should use, including the appointment of a courier to Rome.
JAMES F. HAYS Beverly Hills, Calif.
Incident at the Stork
Sir: