Show of Shows

To the Editors:

TIME'S excellent article on Nicholas Nickleby [Oct. 5] only begins to describe the perfection of the Royal Shakespeare Company's ambitious endeavor. The richness of the production is unforgettable and beyond price. Perhaps the most exhilarating moment of the entire day came at the curtain call, when an obviously overjoyed company appeared to be dumbstruck by the deafening cheers from the standing audience.

Ernest Spieler

Bristol, Conn.

After reading your review of Nicholas Nickleby, I decided to fly to New York to see it. It is all you said and worth every penny, including the $300 it cost to make the trip.

Michael Herbert Shadick

Minneapolis

What is this nonsense about giving up Halstons and dinners in Manhattan to pay $100 for a seat to Nicholas Nicklebyl I need that money to buy groceries. The ultimate irony is that this ticket price is being perpetrated in the name of Charles Dickens, a champion of the poor.

Marlene H. Phillips

Boise, Idaho

The remark "If the show plays to empty seats, the failure will not belong to the Royal Shakespeare Company or the importers but to the Broadway audience" is as ridiculous as the exorbitant $100-a-ticket price. While your article notes that Nicholas Nickleby was a smash in London, it does not mention that there theatergoers could pay a measly $14 a seat.

Clifford Seixas

East Williston, N. Y.

Dream House

I greatly enjoyed Lance Morrow's Essay "Downsizing an American Dream' [Oct. 5]. While he recognizes the frustration of those who can't afford the type of home their parents owned, he neglects the plight of those whose parents were forced or chose to live in apartments. I am a second-generation rent-paying apartment dweller who has reconstrued the American dream to be a lofty one-bedroom, with Betamax and Jacuzzi, overlooking the lights of midtown Manhattan.

Lawrence Savell

New York City

The belief that man's condition can always be improved upon is unique to Americans. Does this mean we are spoiled? Not unless literacy, culture or political activism spoil us. These pursuits are denied to many of the world's citizens. Must we too be deprived of them or risk being labeled spoiled?

Stephen Ivins

Hayward, Calif.

The suggestion that I should be grateful for not living as the Mongolians, Brazilians or Soviets do, or that I am overprivileged because I live in a cramped, ugly row house with nosy neighbors, reminds me that 40 years ago my grandmother told me to eat my spinach because "poor children were starving in China."

Hazel M. Sheehan

Bridgeport, Pa.

My eyes widened at the statement that friends, even strangers, are buying homes and sharing them. True, we Americans may be spoiled, but our homes are our refuge. This amenity is what separates us from the unpredictable world.

Tamara L. Gorski

Milwaukee

Arguing over AWACS

It is time to treat the Saudis like the friends they are. To continue to alienate and insult potentially friendly Arab nations by withholding AWACS planes [Oct. 5] is the height of stupidity.

Christopher A. McGall

Cupertino, Calif.

The Saudis should understand that Israel's many supporters in the U.S. are not all American Jews. They comprise a broad cross section of Americans who are concerned not only with the Soviet threat but with the implications of selling a multibillion-dollar arms package to a country that in 1980 declared holy war against Israel. The Israeli lobby will never get my vote, but the Israeli people shall always have my support.

Ronald Harp Jr.

Fairfax, Va.

Curbing the Court

In his Essay on the federal courts [Sept. 28], Frank Trippett makes the common mistake of assuming that the primary job of the Supreme Court is to decide constitutional issues. The Constitution does not say which branch of Government has the final word on matters of interpretation. The Supreme Court assumed that power for itself in the famous case of Marburyys. Madison. Nevertheless, Congress, which is the most democratic branch of the Federal Government, has every right to challenge the court on this matter. It should decide what is the supreme law of our land.

Richard F. Riley Jr.

Durham, N.C.

Your Essay says that the Moral Majority is pushing Congress to bring pressure on the Supreme Court to stay away from certain issues--notably abortion and religion. It also states that "judicial independence has been indispensable to the workings of U.S.-style democracy." What makes you think the Moral Majority wants any sort of democracy? They want to establish a U.S.-style Geneva, where Calvin rules.

Tim Symonds

Burford, England

Your Essay correctly points to the New Right's attempts to force its narrow views upon the nation. The proposed legislation to limit federal court jurisdiction over broadly defined states' rights issues will be a mistake. These efforts to legislate around supposedly unpopular Supreme Court decisions only intensify my disdain for the New Right.

Luke R. Stellpflug

Madison, Wis.

Critical Differences

I basically agree with Critic Richard Schickel's review of Neil Simon's movie Only When I Laugh [Oct. 5]. I too found myself "strained" by the bombardment of simplistic one-liners and disappointed by the film's lack of substance. However, I thought Mr. Schickel's attack on Neil Simon and Marsha Mason downright vicious. Marsha Mason does possess the very "natural charm" that Mr. Schickel says she lacks. In a masterly way, she portrays a vulnerability and human fallibility with which so many of us can identify.

Linda N. Carter

Dayton

Right Track

While Japanese and French experts provide safe rail travel at 100 and 236 m.p.h. [Oct. 5], Reaganomics cuts Amtrak, instead of searching for improved ways to move people.

John A. Jones

Chapel Hill, N.C.

The energy consumed on the new train per passenger mile is half that of automobile travel and a quarter that of air travel, according to the French. Since trains between New York and Washing ton run on electricity, they could be powered with domestic coal. Who, then, benefits from the Reagan Administration's cutbacks in Amtrak?

Allen Hazen

New York City

Fowl Season

In "Bad News for the Birds" [Oct. 5] your portrayal of attitudes toward the possibility of closing the hunting season would have us believe that hunters will ignore the danger of Endrin. I am an ardent wildfowl hunter who worries more about the long-term effects of the poisoning of birds on the ecosystem than I do about putting a duck on my plate. Many hunters will voluntarily hang their guns up this season until the verdict is in.

David J. McEldery

Plains, Mont.

Good as Gold

It is hard to believe that informed men, especially Congressmen, can seriously consider returning the U.S. to a gold standard [Oct. 5]. Tying the money supply to gold is throwing monetary control out the window and counting on the shiny metal to steer the economy. The Fed's fine-tuning of the money supply is the only intelligent way to tame the drastic fluctuations that naturally occur in the economy. Raymond Testa Valley Stream, N. Y.

Gold's allure does not stem from "a wishful notion that financial stability can be achieved in a fixed mechanical way, rather than by trusting human beings." The fixed mechanical way of the gold standard works by having faith in the decisions of every buyer and seller in the market, rather than the arbitrary and often capricious will of bureaucrats and politicians.

Robert B. Crim

Naugatuck, Conn.

Remember Kosciuszko

Your story about Congress conferring honorary citizenship on Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg for saving Hungarian Jews [Oct. 5] says that Winston Churchill was the only other non-American similarly honored. However, you should have mentioned that Congress, acting under the Articles of Confederation in 1783, expressed its gratitude to Poland's Tadeusz Kosciuszko for his services during the War of Independence. American citizenship was bestowed upon him, along with a pension and a titulary promotion to the rank of brigadier general.

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