Nat Hentoff Ends His Column (In 1968, That Is)

A Departure
by Nat Hentoff

This will be my last weekly column in The Voice...

As for why I'm discontinuing the weekly review of the press -- which was an advocacy column, often pamphleteering, I suppose -- I was becoming more contentious than is good for self-knowledge. And other kinds. I expect I'll be back from time to time.

It seems fitting to include a few bulletin board items in a last column. "Liberation News Service is working on a book about the radicalization of the middle class that will focus on last spring's Columbia revolt. A contract has been signed and we expect the book to come out next fall. We are doing our own layout, experimenting with photography, montage, typography, graphic design. We have a lot of material on Columbia, but we need more good material: photographs, poems, cartoons, comic strips, drawings, dealing with aspects of the American scene -- students, politics, suburbia, ghettos, the hip life, the straight life, etc. We can't pay anything, but offer the opportunity for wide circulation of such material. Send material o Michael Steinlauf, 930 Amsterdam Avenue, New York City 10025. We can't guarantee return of material."

A while ago, I printed an excerpt from the Richard Cloward-Frances Fox Piven article in the New York Advocate, "Uncivil Servants." For a reply to that piece, you can write Edward Perlmutter, Legislative Representative, Social Service Employees Union, 932 Broadway, New York City 10010 (OR 7-3900).

And finally, J. Griffiths of Yale Law School has written a pamphlet, "The Draft Law: 'College Outline' for the Selective Service Act and Regulations." Its purpose, he writes in the preface, "is to serve as a general introduction to the draft law, primarily for those directly concerned. A careful reading of it should answer most of the basic questions about the draft -- that is, those questions which are both answerable and sufficiently general to be dealt with in a pamphlet such as this. Ideally, it should be used in conjunction with a program of draft counseling and legal advice." Copies are available at 50 cents each, or 40 cents each for 10 or more, prepaid. The price for large bulk orders can be arranged, and will be at cost. Address all orders to the Office of the Secretary, Woodbridge Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

That's it. I'm grateful to all those who have sent in leads and suggestions, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to follow through on all of them. There'll be no list of press awards this year; I give them all to Murray Kempton who keeps reminding me of all kinds of standards -- of writing and of spirit.

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]