Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘A Classicist’s Works and Days’
It is good that Victor Davis Hanson takes note of the posthumously published memoir, “Of Farming and Classics,” by the legendary University of Chicago teacher and translator David Grene [Arts & Letters, “A Classicist’s Works and Days,” January 31, 2007]. But Mr. Hanson is wrong to suggest that Mr. Grene did not play a major role in training and shaping significant scholars and “public intellectuals” — whatever the latter might be.
The current January 29 issue of the New Republic finds the leading Slavicist Joseph Frank referring to “my teacher David Grene” in discussing Ivan Goncharov and Samuel Beckett. Allan Bloom was a Grene student and Grene was one of Bloom’s eulogists in 1992. That these men as well as classicists James Redfield and Marc Cogan, constitutional philosopher George Anastaplo, and many other outstanding teachers and writers — all of whom earned their doctorates from Grene’s beloved Committee on Social Thought — range widely in their studies and approach texts with great care is a tribute to a remarkable — and remarkably modest — man.
ANDREW PATNER
Chicago, Ill.
‘Decline and Fall of the Mark’
James Gardner states in “Decline and Fall of the Mark” [Arts & Letters, January 30, 2007] that elegant pre-war hotels like the Mark “came into being at a time when it was more profitable to rent by the day or the month.”
Some of these hotels, however, which include the Mayfair, the Plaza, the Barbizon, the Mayflower, and the Mark (formerly the Hyde Park) were originally residential hotels.
When you consider the growth of small boutique hotels and now the return of luxury residential hotels, one might suggest that we have gone full circle historically speaking.
Consider the old Knickerbocker Hotel. The new owner of the former hotel plans to convert the building back to a hotel with all its former splendor and glory. Our past could be the future for New York hotels. And that might be a good thing.
ROBERT SHANLEY
New York, N.Y.
‘Imagining a War With Iran’
It is disturbing to see a smiling Youssef Ibrahim alongside his column “Imagining a War with Iran” on the front page of the Sun [International, “Imagining a War With Iran,” February 2, 2007].
We’ve already gone to war unnecessarily and unsuccessfully with Iraq. Who, other than military men or warmongers would want to contemplate this scenario now?
MIKE LATZER
Closter, N.J.
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