Letters: Oct. 5, 1983

(8 of 12)
wonderful success in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten. I remember exhausting rehearsals with Richard Strauss. He really was a very simple family man, entirely devoted to his temperamental wife—he was really a henpecked husband. I sang a lot of his lieder, and often his wife Pauline would listen. Sometimes Pauline would run to him, throwing her arms around him, saying with big sobs of touch ing sentimentality, "Do you remember, Richard?"—and he would have tears in his eyes, too. They were a strange couple. They fought like mad—needless to say, Pauline always started these fights . . . He said to me when I departed: "You have seen a lot which you will find strange in this house. But believe me, all the praises in the world are not so refreshing as my wife's outbreaks of temperament."

LOTTE LEHMANN Santa Barbara, Calif.

1954 You inform your readers that in my last book [The Doors of Perception], I "prescribe mescaline, a derivative of peyote, for all mankind as an alterna tive to cocktails." Snappiness, alas, is apt to be in in verse ratio to accuracy. I merely suggested that it might be a good thing if psychologists, sociologists and pharmacologists were to get together and discuss a satis factory drug for general consumption. Mescaline, I said, would not do. But a chemical possessing the merits of mescaline without its drawbacks would be preferable to alcohol.

ALDOUS HUXLEY Hampstead, London

1955 Many copies of the article you have published about myself have been sent to me. Your reporter has made a good job of it, and I want to express my gratitude for the successful representation.

C. G. JUNG Küsnacht, Switzerland

1956 In New York last month . . . I gave an interview to a representative of the London Sunday Times, who imputed to me opinions which I have never held, and statements which no sober man would make and, it seems to me, no sane man believe. That statement that I or anyone else in his right mind would choose any one state against the whole remaining Union of States, down to the ultimate price of shooting other human beings in the streets, is not only foolish but dangerous. . . . The idea can further inflame those people who might still believe such a situation possible. . .

WILLIAM FAULKNER Oxford, Miss.

Says Russell Warren Howe, New York correspondent for the London Sunday Times: "If Mr. Faulkner no longer agrees with the more Dixiecratic of his statements I, for one, am very glad, but that is what he said." — ED.

1957 WHY DO AMERICAN MOVIEMEN REQUIRE PITH HELMETS, SALT TABLETS, QUININE PILLS TO VISIT THE CAO DAI CAPITAL, TAYNINH [to film The Quiet American— TIME, Feb. 25]? THE CLIMATE IS SOMEWHAT SIMILAR TO A WASHINGTON SUMMER. PERHAPS THE INHABITANTS WERE MYSTIFIED BY THEIR STRANGE ATTIRE AND ECCENTRIC DIET.

GRAHAM GREENE London

American moviemen take about the same precautions in Washington.—ED.

1958 With your permission, I'd like to give my opinion of the Kokoschka picture of my sister. I think it's a hideous mess. As great an artist as this man may be today, he certainly goofed in 1926. My sister is a very pretty girl.

FRED ASTAIRE Beverly Hills

1959 I enjoyed reading about myself and my wife in TIME, but the nicest thing of all happened when a foreign