Author Archives: Christina Athanasiades

To the editors: Reading [Jack Helbig’s] critique on my play Back to the Nest [October 25] I wasn’t upset by your description of it as “utterly unbelievable play,” since I didn’t expect you to know enough about life and about human nature. There are even worse offspring than Genevieve in real life, and you had […]

To the editors: With regard to the bottle-deposit ordinance I read about in Mr. Peter Friederici’s article “Environment: No Deposit, No Return” [March 3, 1989], which ordinance Joseph Phelps, a Chicago parks commissioner, has proposed in order to reduce broken glass in the parks, since I can remember (which is about thirty years ago) this […]

To the editors: As I read Joy Calhoun’s article “First Person: Why Victor Can’t Read” Reader (June 16, 1989), I thought that the story she had chosen for reading to the children about a father and a son who came to earth to fish, as not appropriate. More so, since even Ms. Calhoun herself (as […]

To the editors: Why was it necessary to point out that Diana Spinrad, the director of the play A Girl’s Guide to Chaos, is Reader’s own [Reader’s Guide to Theater, April 28; reviewed November 25]? Not that I don’t look forward to being informed about a director, yet, the fact alone that Ms. Spinrad is […]

To the editors: When I moved to Chicago, almost four years ago, I started reading avidly the local newspapers and travelling extensively in it, wanting to learn as fast and as much as possible about the city in which I’ve decided to spend the rest of my life. Especially I wanted to learn about the […]

To the editors: After reading the two letters (Reader, August 12, 1988) in response to my letter on Twain (Reader, August 5), I had to rush this letter to you. I want to prevent you from publishing similar offensive, scatological expressions against me; it is beneath the dignity of any decent person to resort to […]

To the editors. I’ve enjoyed very much Mr. Robert Hurwitt’s critique on Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 1: 1853-1866, in fact, on Mark Twain, Reader [“Reading: Semisincerely, Mark Twain,” July 8]. As I’ve taken graduate college courses on Mark Twain and read all his works, except his lectures (shows that were on the regular billboard of […]

To the editors: While reading the article “Child in the Streets,” Reader (July 1, 1988), I realized almost from the very start that this kid (pseudonym Timothy) does not exist. Not the way he’s described, anyway. Perhaps, the author, hearing about all the problems the teenagers today are going through, from bits of information had […]

To the editors: Reading in Cecil Adams’s column “Straight Dope,” Chicago Reader [May 6, 1988], the letter about the novels of yesteryears in which the ladies swooned easily, I wondered as to what period were the novels the writer of the letter had in mind. To begin with, the novel was not invented until the […]

To the editors: Lawrence Bommer could have done better in his giving us some feedback [Theater, March 11] on Arthur Miller’s powerful play All My Sons, presented at the Center Theater. As it happened that Arthur Miller is one of my favorite playwrights, however, I couldn’t miss seeing it. The theme of dirty practices in […]

To the editors: Reading the [“First Person: A Waif at My Door”] story in the February 26 issue of Chicago Reader I was filled with horror and sadness by the way the kindness of people is exploited by clever individuals. But then as I read on to the end, I started wondering why the credibility […]