To the Editor:
I must tell you how much I enjoyed Rabbi Weiner’s portrait of Mr. Setzer (“A Mystic Philosopher on East Broadway,” November). I met our mystic of East Broadway on the WPA Writers’ Project in the 1930’s. He inspired one of the most interesting characters of my novel Red Ribbon on a White Horse. . . .
Rabbi Weiner has caught the innermost essence of an actual man that embodies the race— the truth of a character that transcends fiction. Let us hope that Rabbi Weiner’s prose-poemportrait may lead to a Guggenheim Fellowship for Mr. Setzer. For if ever a scholar, a poet, an artist was worthy of a fellowship, it is he.
Anzia Yezierska
New York City
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