Rare Rationality
Reuel Marc Gerecht's suggestion that President Bush enlist the help of congressional oversight ("What's the Matter with Gitmo?" July 4 / July 11) has great merit.
Unfortunately, ever since Operation Enduring Freedom was implemented, so many opportunists looking at reelection, or election to higher office, or who are just full of plain old nastiness, have engaged in shouting matches that block any and all attempts at fostering fruitful discussion. It appears that regardless of what is said on either side of the aisle, the opposite side will pounce upon them with angry and derisive public commentary. It will take one incredible diplomat, and they appear to be few and far between right now, to bring these sides together to develop some type of mechanism that could oversee the matter of dealing with "detainees."
Lately I have not seen a perspective such as Gerecht provides. America needs more of this kind of balanced, objective, and thoughtful discourse.
Steve Ralston
Coatesville, PA
Fateful Hope
Stephen Schwartz's excellent account of the feud between Hemingway and Dos Passos ("To Die in Madrid," July 4 / July 11) veered briefly into the breakdown lane when he wrote: "Malraux, a gaudy star of French culture, produced an overwrought novel about the [Spanish civil] war, Man's Fate . . . "
The characterization of Malraux could not be more apt, but Man's Fate is the English translation of La Condition Humaine, which was Malraux's tearjerker about the sad fate of Shanghai Communists, betrayed by Stalin's Comintern into the hands of their erstwhile allies, the Kuomintang.
Perhaps Schwartz was thinking of L'Espoir, published in late 1937 and translated as Man's Hope, about which the less said the better.
John Van Laer
Scranton, PA
Beltway Bilge?
T he favorable review by Judy Bachrach of the trashy novel The Washingtonienne ("She's Come Undone," July 4 / July 11) was disappointing. Jessica Cutler's book exhibits vulgarity, licentiousness, and crude behavior of the worst sort. Only one with a cynical worldview would find "joy" in such a hopelessly jaded, murky work of fiction.
Why go along with the rest of our culture and exalt that which mars and parodies the ideal of the best that man was created to be and that tries to promote the idea that there is no such thing as a truly upright human being? Should we receive such caricatures with the same detached cynicism of Bachrach, who finds such material highly entertaining?
Most of us in the heartland do not hold such a hopeless, shameless worldview. We still teach our children by precept and example that nobility of thought, mind, and action still exists and can be attained through devotion to God, and then filtered down to our fellow men in deeds of kindness, justice, and mercy. Such noble ideas are what makes America worth defending.
Cynthia Scott Hutchinson
Lake Worth, FL
For the Birds
Regarding Robert Winkler's "Birds Gotta Sing" (June 13): An autistic woman, Temple Grandin, has written a fascinating book on animals and birds, Animals in Translation. In it, she writes that Mozart's compositions were "definitely influenced by birdsong," and she cites the example of his pet starling:
"In his notebooks he recorded a passage from the Piano Concerto in G Major as he had written it, and as his pet starling had revised it. The bird changed the sharps to flats. Mozart wrote, 'That was beautiful' next to the starling's version. When his starling died, Mozart sang hymns beside its grave and read a poem he had written for the bird."
Grandin proceeds to claim that this anecdote about Mozart suggests that early humans followed the example of birds when creating their music, which is an intriguing notion to consider.
Harold Theisen
Brooklyn, NY