Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

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To the Editor:

I disagree with Rachel Moran that “Buying Sex Should Not Be Legal” (Op-Ed, Aug. 29).

The way to actually prevent a 14-year-old from being lured into the sex business is to legalize it, regulate it and tax it. By doing so, you can monitor and protect under-age woman from going into the trade.

At the same time, by legalizing it, you allow consenting adults to pay for a service that they feel they need and for women to earn a living in a manner they can choose, or not. It is time we stop telling people how to live their lives, while at the same time enforcing protections for the youths who do need it.

PETER G. HILL

Weston, Mass.

Beautiful Loser (1975). This song came out in the year of my high-school graduation. I never liked it. It seemed simplistic, and not nearly hard enough for my headbanging friends and me. I learned how to play it yesterday on my acoustic guitar, and I must say that I have a newfound appreciation for Bob Seger as a songwriter and singer. The chords are quite beautiful.

Proponents of a complete legal prohibition on abortion might raise a fraction less ire if they argued for prohibition plus child-support and thereby manifested some recognition of the suffering that results from prohibition tout court.

(Rosalind Hursthouse, "Fallacies and Moral Dilemmas," Argumentation 9 [November 1995]: 617-32, at 626 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: I've never understood this argument. Why does my saying "Stop killing your babies!" commit me to providing for those babies, should they not be killed? Doesn't that put the would-be murderer (i.e., the pregnant woman) in the position of telling the rest of us, "Either I (get to) kill my baby with impunity or the rest of you must support him or her." How is that not coercive? Why should this woman get to impose that choice on us? Why is she not responsible for her behavior? Looked at differently, the argument assumes that abortion is morally permissible and then presents the woman as offering the rest of us a choice (how very nice of her): either support my baby or I'll kill it. But this begs the question, which is whether abortion is morally permissible. Imagine a would-be murderer saying to society, "Unless you provide for me for the rest of my life, I'm going to kill people at will." Wouldn't we reply, "No, you're not going to kill people at will and we're not going to provide for you for the rest of your life, either"?

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Seven-Inning Felix (16-8) pitched well yesterday, throwing 102 pitches in eight innings to get the victory over the last-place Oakland Athletics. (So much for Moneyball!) He's on track for 18.5 victories. If this keeps up, I'll have to change his name to "Eight-Inning Felix."

If you love the American West or its history (or both), as I do, you'll enjoy reading Evan S. Connell's book Son of the Morning Star. This book, which took Connell four years to write, was published in 1984 by North Point Press in San Francisco. Apparently, Connell had trouble finding a publisher for the book, though he was, by that time, a prominent novelist. It may have been thought that nothing new or interesting could be said about George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) or the Battle of the Little Bighorn, so much having been written in the previous 108 years. This was a mistake. Connell's book was a great success, both as a book and as a made-for-television movie (starring Gary Cole and Rosanna Arquette). The book is still in print. I purchased it in cloth (hardback) on 21 May 1985, not long after it was published. Today I finished reading it. How funny is it that the book sat on my shelf in four apartments or houses for a period of more than 30 years before I read it?

The book is hardly a celebration of Custer either as man or as military officer. But it's not a mindless indictment, either, as so many books about Custer seem to be. Connell simply tells the story, from beginning to end. Actually, that's misleading, because the thing that strikes you immediately about the book is that it's not linear. Connell begins with the discovery, by white soldiers, of the bodies of Custer and his men and horses on a sun-baked hillside in southeastern Montana. From there it winds around and around, as if by free association, until every aspect of the event has been covered. We learn everything from how Indian arrows were made to how the Indians and soldiers were dressed on 25 June 1876 to what Custer said to his wife Libby the last time they saw each other to what the battlefield looks like today (or rather, in the early 1980s). The cliché is that a particular book is so interesting that it can't be put down. It's not a cliché in this case. I did, however, limit myself to 10 pages of reading per day, since I have other things to read and do. There were many days in which I wanted to keep going after I reached the 10th page, but I resisted the temptation in order to prolong the joy.

I must admit that the book has given me a fuller understanding of Custer. Like every other human being, past or present, he was complicated. He loved his wife, his brothers, and his dogs, but was occasionally cruel (sometimes inexplicably and infuriatingly so) to the soldiers under his command, to his fellow officers, and to Indian dogs and ponies; he was outgoing and withdrawn by turns; he was a man of action but also of contemplation; at West Point, he finished last in his class, but he read widely and wrote continuously and well; he was at home both in New York City, enjoying an opera or a play, and in the wide-open spaces of Kansas, Texas, or Montana; he was cultured and crude, disciplined and impetuous, modest and vain, loyal and disloyal. By all accounts, he experienced every human emotion, from fear to anger to love to guilt to pity to joy to hatred. If I erred, it was in thinking too highly of Custer. I now have (I think) a more balanced view of him and of his times. I plan to read many more books about Custer during the years I have available. I have at least one more visit to the battlefield in me, having been there three times (in 1964, 1989, and 2014). Who knows? I may even contribute to the literature. One would think that there is nothing left to say, but that's what people thought in 1984 when Connell published his book. I, for one, am glad he persisted.

Addendum: Robert M. Utley, who has written a great deal about Custer and knows the man as well as anyone, wrote the following in 2004:

Although I resented the best-sellerdom of Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star, which captured the public in ways I still fail to comprehend, George Armstrong Custer had been much kinder to my reputation and bank account than the Lincoln County warriors.

How Utley could fail to comprehend the success of Connell's book is mind-boggling. The book is riveting! It is written with a novelist's eye for detail, not an historian's eye for structure or grand narrative. If you read the first page of Connell's book, you will not want to put it down. Try it and see.

To the Editor:

Human behavior and motivations are varied and complex. To say that all workers want “meaningful work” denies this reality. Some workers only want extrinsic rewards (money, recognition), while others are intrinsically motivated (the knowledge that they did their personal best). Some workers meet their personal needs outside of work and just use work to pay the bills. Others hide from family obligations at work. The Gallup survey that Barry Schwartz cites notes only worker dissatisfaction, not its causes. Who is to say that all the respondents were dissatisfied for the same reason?

JOHN MIRAGLIA

Old Bridge, N.J.

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