LETTERS
327
passwords reminds one of Mencken's
summary of religion: Let us have filith
in God, who has always fooled us.in the
past.
Sincerely yours,
HERBERT
J.
MuLLER
Tasco, Mexico
-Rahv
and
I have had many talks to–
gether, and I agree with most of what he
said in his editorial. But to agree that
Marxist leadership has shown serious
weaknesses in our time and that "a com–
plete theoretical overhauling" is long
overdue, this is not to thereby underwrite
bourgeois democracy. I am not at all
im–
pressed with the record of Messers. the
democrats in fighting Hitlerism. For a
fuller exposition of my views on these
matters I refer the reader to my article in
this issue.-D.
M.
FOR THE RECORD
Sirs:
For the sake of the record, I wish you
would be so good as to publish the fol–
lowing in your correspondence column in
your July-August issue:
I had thought that, from the nature of
my manuscript and from my letter which
accompanied it, you would find it quite
obvious that "A Goat For Azazel" was
not "a story."
It
is, rather, a chapter from a carefully
documented biographical study of Cotton
Mather, a Boston Congregationalist min–
ister of the mid-seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. I drew all the ma–
terial for "A Goat For Azazel" from his
own account of the episode as published
in
his "Magnalia Christi Americana."
There is good reason to doubt the accu–
racy of some of his statements, but I wish
to
repeat here what I wrote in my letter
to
you explaining the sources of the man–
ucript: "I have added no fictions of my
own."
With my best wishes,
Sincerely yours,
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Baton Rouge, La.
WUSEUM TRUSTEE OBJECTS
Sira:
Mr. G. L.
K.
Morris has chosen to at–
tack the Museum of Modern Art from
the angle of the American abstract paint–
er. In this letter I have no room to answer
some of the statements he makes, but I
do wish to draw attention to the extra–
ordinarily limited point of view taken by
Mr. Morris.
The Museum of Modern Art is not in–
tended for painting ouly, but Mr. Morris
seems to be interested only in that. In the
fields of films, library, sculpture, ballet,
industrial design, and travelling exhibi–
tions, ·the Museum has done work of great
.importance, with the greatest competence,
and with much experimental direction.
He makes practically no mention of this
fact or, least of all, does he mention that
the Museum's direction inspired the hold–
ing of the Wheaton College Competition,
1938, and the Smithsonian Museum Com–
petition, 1939, and
in
many other ways
have been most forward-looking in the
field of building and architecture. He re–
fers in a depreciating way to the tem–
porary quarters in an old private house
at 11 West 53rd Street, as "baroque";
which it was not.
The importance of painting is great,
but painting is only a small division of
art, and it would appear that Mr. Morris
cannot consider "modern art" as any–
thing else. Painting is, in fact, becoming
more and more a
less
important element.
At the present time the Museum of
Living Art at New York University in
Washington Square, also the Art of To–
morrow Museum, at 24 East 54th Street,
as well as the annual exhibition of the
Abstract Artists group, amply provide
opportunities for these painters to dis–
play and have the public conveniently
see, this particular branch of "contem–
porary art." The Museum of Modern Art
will continue to exhibit some of the bet–
ter abstract work, and experiments in the
field of films, industrial design, architec–
ture, sculpture, etc., as in the past.
Very truly yours,
PHILIP
L.
GooDWIN.
GEORGE MORRIS REPLIES
.
I do not agree with Mr. Goodwin that
a point of view is "extraordinarily lim–
ited" which expects an institution calling
itself "Museum of Modem Art" to ex–
hibit the serious contemporary develop–
ments
in.
painting and sculpture. Of
