Doodler as Artist

To the Editors:

Critic Harold Rosenberg is absolutely right: "No artist is more relevant than Steinberg" [April 17]. To avoid boredom, he has doodled his way into the realm of the art world as a "serious" artist.

Claude Zic, Chicago

Saul Steinberg is surely the best cartoonist since Picasso. Picasso was an artist who degenerated into a cartoonist. Steinberg is a cartoonist who has metamorphosed into an artist. The difference between them is intellectual honesty. Viva Steinberg!

Andreas Karl Reiser Cosmopolis, Wash.

Fabulous! I love pictures that take time and creativity to make. So, Mr. Steinberg, keep on painting!

Joe Natalicchio Milltown, N.J.

How can TIME cater to artistic platitudes like the work of this "fantastic" Steinberg? Somewhere along the line, artists apparently decided that beauty and expressiveness in a work are old hat, and by masquerading behind secure parodies they can get away with a minimum of thought and effort. O.K., let's admit the world is crazy. But does that mean our art and culture should repress creativity and optimism and thereby give in to absurdity? Steinberg has proved to me that he and the other moderns are bored.

Phil Gimson Glen Ridge, N.J.

Wrong Target

Your story on the neutron bomb [April 17] is yet another example of unfair attacks on Carter. The first four paragraphs leave the impression that he can't make a decision. Only after attacking Carter do you give the facts: military and political leaders differ sharply over the bomb, and none of the key NATO countries will commit themselves to allowing it in their territory. Carter has made the only possible choice. He is not wasting $4 billion producing a useless weapon, and he is not precluding future production should the situation change.

Samuel C. Colbeck Norwich, Vt.

The neutron bomb supporters' argument that its destructive potential would be a deterrent to war is as absurd today as it was 111 years ago, when Nobel invented dynamite. We already have enough bombs to obliterate the planet; we don't need another one.

Patrick Hagerty Chicago

About Carter's B-1 bomber and neutron bomb decisions: all the Russians have to do is be patient; in a few years we will be a defenseless, unionized, inflationary, welfare state.

Roger Haymore Mount Airy, N.C.

Not Taxing, But Spending

Hugh Sidey's article on American taxation [April 17] omits one major cause for potential tax revolt. Nobody objects to taxation per se. What we are increasingly angry about is the idiotic ways our hard-earned money is spent.

Federal fiscal thinking seems to center on placating special interests -the ecologists, those with kids in private schools, the elderly, the handicapped, the unemployed, the military, foreign governments, ad infinitum, without the least thought of what the total bill will be.

Stephen Engel-Phillips Syracuse, N. Y.

Sidey says of Beardsley Ruml that "in tax matters, too, he took the path of least resistance." This is a singularly inept description of Ruml, who fought for four years to gain acceptance of a new tax idea from an initially hostile Congress and Administration. Ruml was a resounding response to the oft-heard question, "What can one man do?"

Treadwell Ruml Kansas City, Mo.

Lest We Remember

If NBC is so anxious to wash the dirty laundry of mankind with Holocaust [April 17], why doesn't it broadcast programs about the Armenians in Turkey, the Jews in Spain, the Huguenots in France, etc.?

Charles H. Claudon Plum Borough, Pa.

I am 23, but throughout my years as a student I never learned that 12 million people, 6 million of them Jews, were murdered under Hitler's orders. In school, we started every year with Columbus and ended with the Civil War. We should know about the war years. We must know, so it will not happen again.

Kathy Hnatt Winsauer Vernon Hills, III.

While NBC does not "trivialize" the Holocaust, the commercial medium as usual supplies staggering irony: love, hate, life and death, v. body odor, heartburn, junk food and spray starch.

Dick Robinson Chapel Hill, N. C.

Johnny and Joe

Johnny Harris [April 17], a black convicted of murdering a white guard, was sentenced to death. The Houston policemen, whites, convicted of the negligent homicide of a Mexican American, Joe Campos Torres, got suspended sentences in a state court. Who is kidding whom about human rights?

Istvan Lippai New York City

It is a shame Joe Campos Torres was not a dog or cat. If he had been one, I am sure the Humane Society and the community of Houston would have sought and achieved justice.

Francisco Avalos Phoenix

Those Endless Cases

Your article on lawyers [April 10] distorts a speech I made 20 years ago. It was not made, as you assert, "before an appreciative audience of Stanford law students." It was delivered at a seminar on protracted cases for U.S. judges. My speech contrasted judicial control with noncontrol of the protracted Government antitrust case. I did not articulate or advocate the "wear-'em-down" philosophy as your article states.

My point was that if the judges controlled more closely the progress of the litigation, it would put an end to protracted delay. I compared the 14 years it took me to try the Famous Players Lasky Corporation case, where there was no judicial control, with the three-year period that because of Judge Weinfeld's careful control would obviously see the complete disposal of the merger case (Bethlehem/ Youngstown).

The particular words were meant to be, and I am sure were understood by the judges and attorneys present, as my feeble attempts at humorous asides.

Bruce Bromley

Cravath, Swaine & Moore New York City

Readers as Judges

A slight quibble with Thomas Griffith's contention in Newswatch [April 14] that the adversary relationship between press and Government lacks a judge: in fact, the reading public judges, shortly after every publication goes to press.

Sam A. Angeloff Seattle Post-Intelligencer Seattle

Thomas Griffith's plea for more civilized behavior among the news media toward politicians may indeed apply to the Eastern Establishment news giants. But for most of us in the rest of the world -outside Washington -the First Amendment battles continue. And our war rages on.

Barbara James, Editor Perry County Tribune New Lexington, Ohio

It is our right to know what Government is trying to accomplish. In this way, we the people will have a real say in our Government. Only if the press takes an independent view is this possible.

Christopher Wenz Ridgewood, N.J.

Not a Complex, a Reality

South Africa's black journalist Percy Qoboza realizes the dangers of imposing economic sanctions against his country [April 17]. But I question his analysis of the Afrikaner mentality. He says, "The Afrikaner suffers from an acute persecution complex. He believes his existence is threatened and that there is a worldwide conspiracy." What the Afrikaner, or any thinking South African has, is not a complex, but a reality!

Dan Naude Scottsville, Va.

A Toast, Forsleuth

At long last, the sleuthsayers deservedly had their day [April 17].

Permit me to propose a toast of diluted hemlock and soda to the stodgy critics who equate the mystery story with mere mental pacification: May the ghosts of Dr. Crippen, Professor Moriarty and Jack the Ripper return to haunt their usually uninspired minds.

Harlan Holte Moorhead, Minn.

A Good Lie

Everybody needs to learn how to fib. The article "Ground Rules for Telling Lies" [April 3] could have presented the "good" side of the lie.

A child needs to learn how to tell a lie in order to develop a sense of a private world that no one else shares. This is important to the development of individuality.

James G. Andrews Knoxville, Tenn.

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