A Letter From The Publisher: Oct. 13, 1961

It is an axiom that how a thing is said is often as important as what is said. TIME places great importance on how it says what it has to say, for the felicitous turn of a phrase can do much to add interest, to clarify, to emphasize, to make clear or to entertain. Some examples from this week’s TIME:

“On a rope strung from the leaky roof hangs a paint bucket into which drops of water plunk like the tick-tock of doom.” See THEATER, Unwrapping Mummies.

“The Houses of the Three Little Pigs—one of straw, another of sticks, and a third of non-huffable brick . . .” See MODERN LIVING, Barnyard on Fifth Avenue.

“Science, beginning with Copernicus, has knocked flat the old, literal, three-story concept of the universe —heaven in the top floor, hell in the cellar, the earth in between.” See RELIGION, The New Heaven.

“They brought Lewis wealth and world renown, both of which were cosmetics for an unattractive man.” See BOOKS, Lonely Cameraman.

“Meanwhile the hero’s stupid, insensitive, greedy, cunning, loudmouthed, backslapping, drunken and even crippled slob of a father (Pat Hingle), the all-American marketype of the guy with the big business and the teentsy soul, reaches down to the bottom of his heart and comes up with a moldy collection of pragmaterialistic cliches.” See CINEMA, Love in Kazansas.

“But Von Doderer has failed to make his good document a novel, has done little more than preserve a number of variously interesting flies in an immense sea of amber.” See BOOKS, Tale from the Vienna Woods.

“In Hollywood, where $1,000 gifts are exchanged as casually as husbands and wives …” See MODERN LIVING, And Now, George.

“… Mayor Robert Wagner’s chicanery a la king luncheon . . .” See PEOPLE.

“In questions of air safety, definitive answers are as scarce as anti-gravity screens . . .” See SCIENCE, Happy Landings.

“Director Robert Rossen makes an uncouth theme sometimes ring true as a struck spittoon.” See TIME LISTINGS.

“In Edward Hopper’s painting, the nude is sculptured mood—a figure almost unbearably vulnerable to the dawning day, one more way for Hopper to show the emptiness of the crowded city and the aloneness of its people.” See ART, Shy About the Nude.