Letters: Aug. 5, 1966

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Spreading Out from the Middle

Sir: TIME'S cover story, "The Command Generation," [July 29] is brilliant and penetrating. The writer is knowledgeable and wise . . . and I have a bone to pick with him.

He says, "In his 40's a man has done pretty much what he was capable of doing. Most depressing, he knows that he will have to go on doing it with ever-brighter, ever-younger men nipping at his heels." It is precisely that self-imposed psychological impotence that lies behind T. S. Eliot's middle-age "hoo-ha's." The primary affliction of middle-age is the fear of taking a chance, sloughing off old, stultifying patterns and starting something new in the direction of self-fulfillment.

Nobody says it's easy at this time of life. But I wonder if it isn't easier than living in the kind of tomb that too many lives are. Nobody ever reached a difficult goal by saying, "But what if . . ." Take a look at the chronicles of history and see how many "trapped" men emerged as brilliant contributors to their times after 40 years of killing unfulfillment.

HERBERT HECSH

Philadelphia

Sir: My father recently proved that people are not as old as they look or as old as their birth certificates say. My father is 51, and he received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in June after spending a whole year there as a senior. (He was a dropout during the Depression.) I think this is a good example for all those middle-aged people who use their age as an excuse for not doing the things they'd like to do.

JANE COTTON

North Wilbraham, Mass.

Sir: "A Letter from the Publisher" boasts about mere youngsters of 41, 43, 46 and 48, and timidly ventures to mention those on the verge of 60. All, if you think of it, mere babes in arms!

The author of some 50 published books and hundreds of articles, essays and reviews in some 70 leading newspapers and periodicals in England and America, I am today 85, well into my 86th year, and now doing my best work. For the past seven years, I have risen religiously at about 4 o'clock every morning and, during that time, have written at least seven books of poetry and prose. I am now at work on a book on Human Nature (a big subject), already in its 400th typed page.

JOHN COURNOS

New York City

Sir: "When does middle age begin?" When the phone rings on Saturday night, and you hope it's a wrong number.

DAVE BREGER

S. Nyack, N.Y.

Policy & Prospect

Sir: Now that it is quite apparent that the expanded bombing in Viet Nam [July 8 et seq.) is failing to attain any constructive result, I invite consideration of my "Fourth Alternative," which is for the U.S. to take all feasible measures to quiet down the war, to de-escalate it, to change the priority emphasis to economic, educational, social, and political factors, and to contemplate a decade or more of competition of systems in Viet Nam.