This is a letter by physicist Richard Feynman to his university's student newspaper. I am a non-native english speaker and I have trouble understanding in what spirit this letter was written them, is it just casual sarcasm, or condescension, or what?
Answer
None of the above. Feynman (one of my heroes, by the way) was being ironic: telling the newspaper staff that they had violated all the rules of professional journalism by
- being casual rather than stilted (using a candid photo instead of a stiff, posed shot; spelling "says" as "sez", which is bad English but accurate slang)
- being considerate and humble (apologizing for taking up Feynman's time, rather than assuming that the interview was more important than anything else he might be doing)
- being "clear, comprehensible, well-written and accurate" and not putting words in Feynman's mouth.
If you read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman or What Do You Care What Other People Think? (both of which I highly recommend), you'll see that he had very little use for the self-importance of journalists, and much less patience for the innumerable interviews (especially after he won the Nobel Prize) in which he was constantly mis-quoted
and his scientific work mis-explained.
Essentially, he was thanking the interviewer for not being "professional", because he was sick and tired of professional interviews.
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