Letters: May 10, 1963

Operation Successful

Sir:

Tremendous!

Your article on Surgery [May 3] tops the already superior efforts of your magazine to keep abreast of medical progress.

Here's hoping you continue to give the medical field its deserved coverage.

JOHN LAMMERS

Omaha

Sir:

My wife is to have major surgery this week. The caption on the cover, "If They Can Operate, You're Lucky," was the first news that settled my nerves since finding out about the forthcoming operation. My first restful sleep in a week came from reading your article.

LEE CARNEY

Westerville, Ohio

Sir:

One of the happiest miracles of modern surgery is that it is not carried out in my living room. You, alas, have changed all that.

PHILIP H. HARTMAN

Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

I admired your guts.

PETER KUGEL

Boston

Sir:

It's worth a year's subscription price.

MRS. O. C. PARIS

Catawba, S.C.

Sir:

Congratulations and a bushel of orchids. The text, the pictures and diagrams were marvelous. TIME can really be proud.

JOHN L. BACH

Assistant Director

Department of Scientific Assembly American Medical Association Chicago

Princely Players

Sir:

Congratulations on John McPhee's cover story [April 26] on Richard Burton. I read it with mounting excitement—would he fall off the tightrope stretched between ruthless factual reporting and sensitive (and sophisticated) interpretation? He didn't; the subject was rendered in the round; and the subordination of the Elizabeth Taylor episode at the end was exactly right. Without either apologizing or moralizing, Mr. McPhee conveyed the pathos (tragedy would be too big a word) and the self-destructiveness (selling-out would be too small a word) of Richard Burton's career.

I note that Mr. Burton agreed to the story "on the condition that McPhee do all the interviewing of him as well as the writing." Perhaps the peculiar excellence of this article may be due to nothing more complicated than its being the product of one writer as against that of a committee of editors. May I suggest, tactlessly, that the "collective journalism" which TIME invented is sometimes inferior to the old-fashioned kind?

DWIGHT MACDONALD

The New Yorker

New York City

>TIME brings all things, tries all kinds.—ED.

Sir:

Don't worry about Burton. Unlike Cleopatra, the last scene will be tearfully happy. The end of the affair will come when the flick has been declared a smashing success; Richard will return to the legitimate theater; Liz will mark up another man; and 20th Century-Fox will gladly get its $40 million back.

J. RONALD PIERCE

Richmond, Va.

Sir:

I never said, "This man has sold out." Richard is too intelligent to do that and I to say it. Selling out would imply personal gain, which in any form is farthest, unfortunately, from Richard's aim.

I did say that he had been the most gifted of actors and that I wish he would accept the difficult challenges necessary to his form in order to maintain his marvel.

HARVEY ORKIN

Beverly Hills, Calif.