Anti-Matter
Sir: Your truly splendid Essay on American humor [March 4] describes a condition prevalent in the sister arts. If contemporary native humor lacks the comic, it is no less true that poetry has won for itself the name of "antipoetry"; the human portrait in painting and sculpture is a confused mass of cogs and angles; the latest creative hero, Truman Capote, in writing a novel, has disposed of fiction; finally, we have a rising school of theologians who advocate religion without God!
JOHN COURNOS
New York City
In the Year 2000
Sir: Your Essay "The Futurists" [Feb. 25] leaves me with just one happy thought: that I shall not be alive in the year 2000.
(MRS.) RUTH CHASE Ferrisburg, Vt.
Sir: What is predicted is a decadence similar to that which ended the glories of ancient Greece and Rome.
The most frightening prediction is the use of DNA to "control the shape of men to come." This reminds me of the young bride whose husband had been transferred from Iowa to Boston. At a welcoming tea, a proper Bostonian lady remarked: "Here we regard breeding as everything." The young bride retorted: "In Iowa we think breeding is fun, but we don't think it's everything."
J. C. DEAN
Paris
Salut to Showpan
Sir: The cover story on Artur Rubinstein [Feb. 25] rang bells in my heart. How I wish I had saved a copy of the program he played in Canton, China in the summer of 1935. He had been engaged by my father, Edward Lockwood, to appear at the Chinese Y.M.C.A. and had telephoned from Hong Kong the evening before, reading off the selections in his thick Polish accent to a Cantonese printer. On the program, set without proofreading, Showpan was represented by several ayetoods and a couple of scaretzos. The hall was stuffed, the temperature stood at over 100° and Mr. Rubinstein, dressed in full concert regalia, played a two-hour program, a half hour of encores, and left the stage with his clothes soaked through. As a boy of 15, I was assigned to take Rubinstein on a ricksha tour of this teeming river port. I shall never forget his courtesy or his marvelous enthusiasm. He was a young 48 then, and by golly, he's a young 79 now. Salut!
RICHARD LOCKWOOD
East Lansing, Mich.
Commitments on Viet Nam
Sir: For ten months I have been in Viet Nam, where much of my work has been with refugee Vietnamese. They do not comprehend the philosophies of free government or totalitarianism, but they want protection from communist brutality, and many have asked us for it even after their homes have been destroyed by our forces in the inevitable turmoil of war. Professor Kennan [Feb. 18] argues that because of our commitments to the Vietnamese, "our relations with the Soviet Union have suffered . . ." For the sake of the free world and of the South Vietnamese in particular, I am relieved that Kennan has retired from the State Department.
JOHN G. EDWARDS
Captain, U.S.A. Dental Corps
Viet Nam