Marshall A. Best (1901-82) was editor and later chairman of the executive committee at the Viking Press.
To Marshall Best March 17, 1960 London Dear Marshall: Brooding about your letter, I can see the whole thing clear. You recommend me to the Ford Foundation, and my gay lark in Europe puts you in a tough position. But suppose it hasn"t been a gay lark? Suppose I have been dutifully suffering my way from country to country, thinking about Fate and Death? Will that do as an explanation? And if, here and there, I gave a talk in Poland and Yugoslavia, did I violate the by-laws?
All jokes aside, what I saw between Auschwitz and Jerusalem made a change in me. To say the least. And that ought not to distress the Ford Foundation. I"m sorry to cause you any embarra.s.sment, but there ought not to be any in my going to Europe and the Middle East for a few months. Now I"m coming back to write a book, and I see nothing wrong anywhere. I might have written a thousand pages in Minneapolis and thrown them all away. I know I"ve done the necessary and proper thing and it annoys me to be criticized for it.
All best,
To Alice Adams April 9, 1960 Tivoli Dear Alice- They held your letter for me till I got back from Europe where I had gone for five months to get over the shock of divorce. This time it was done unto me (as I had done unto others). All this marrying and parting amounts to idiocy. n.o.body will do well, n.o.body is well. We all prescribe suffering for ourselves as the only antidote for unreality. So-I"ve emptied bottles and bottles, and now I"m going to dig in at Tivoli, my feste Burg, feste Burg, my asylum, and reconsider everything all over again. my asylum, and reconsider everything all over again.
Love,
To Susan Gla.s.sman May 5, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dear Susan: No, I haven"t forgotten to write, only I"ve been so pressed, harried and driven, badgered, b.i.t.c.hed, delayed (and even-in Maryland-taken into custody by the State Police) that I haven"t even had time to sit down and cross my legs. Till now, in Tivoli. Good old Tivoli. There are so many ghosts in this old joint that my own, in new sheets, are like laughable freshmen. Come, we"ll cut the gra.s.s and play croquet with spooks.
Love,
To Stanley Elkin May 13, 1960 Tivoli, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Elkin: I approve very highly of your story and am sending it on to the other editors with the hope that they will share my admiration for it. I"ll let you know their decision as soon as I know it myself.
Sincerely yours,
P.S. I particularly liked the grocery on 53rd Street and the employees and shoppers, but I was not at all sure that the last pa.s.sages really bore the acc.u.mulated weight. It is too easy to float to a conclusion with the support of certain Jewish symbols. I am a little bit suspicious of the use you make of them.
Elkin"s story was "Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers." It would appear in Perspective Perspective rather than in rather than in The n.o.ble Savage. The n.o.ble Savage.
To Herbert and Mitzie McCloskey [n.d.] [Tivoli]
Dear Herb and Mitzie, I"m sure you made the right decision abt Mpls. Time to bust out. It had given you about all it could give. Anyway, change is one of my elements-money for Morgan, fire for phoenixes and salamanders, and new addresses for me. Ergo! Ergo!
I"ll spare you the sad details of my visit to Mpls. I crept back to Tivoli, where I"m by myself, with too much on my mind to fill the solitude yet. I"m winding up the play The Last a.n.a.lysis The Last a.n.a.lysis. I am getting ready to write a novel. Now that I"ve been thrown out of middle-cla.s.s security I can"t avoid being a writer. Though I"m one of the finest avoiders in the land.
Greg and Adam are fine, and I"m not too bad. I miss all of you. I hope you"re all well and have had an end of bad news. Send me a note or at least a copy of the Soviet book. Now the gov"t. admits espionage, I don"t see why they didn"t supply you with material.
Much love to all of you.
On May 1, 1960, a U-2 spy craft had been shot down over Sverdlovsk by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. President Eisenhower initially claimed that it was a weather plane. When Khrushchev announced a week later that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was alive and the aircraft mostly intact, Eisenhower was forced to acknowledge that the United States had been conducting espionage flights. McCloskey and John E. Turner had just published their book The Soviet Dictatorship The Soviet Dictatorship.
To Susan Gla.s.sman May 31, 1960 Tivoli Dearest Susie- Guilt smote me when I got back. The train looked seedy. I might at least have gone on it with you. I suppose I was exercising my power of autonomy. Anyway, love is better to feel than guilt. In future, I"ll try to be reasonable though human.
When I returned the Ashers arrived. They might have phoned en route!
Susie, we had a beautiful time. A beautiful time is its own reward.
Immer dein [ [61],
To Susan Gla.s.sman June 9, 1960 [Tivoli]
I"m a little bit miserable today. Lillian H[ellman] admires what I"ve written but insists it"s not a play. Well, perhaps it"s not. It"s a pity to have wasted so much time, but (I"m great at finding compensations-it"s so Jewish) I wasn"t fit fit to write anything else last year. to write anything else last year.
And then, one more reason for misery. I think Sondra is getting married [to Jack Ludwig] in October, which makes her conduct throughout even worse. She didn"t have to try to demolish me in order to re-marry. Ach! It"s not a great deal, but it"s something and temporarily it depresses me.
You un-depress me. I feel better already, Susie. [ . . . ]
With kisses and only slightly sad smiles.
Yours,
Sondra Tschacbasov and Jack Lugwig would not marry in October, or ever.
To Susan Gla.s.sman June 15, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dearest Susie: The Burroughs [novel, Naked Lunch Naked Lunch] is shocking for a few pages and then becomes laughable because it"s so mechanical. Grand Guignol. It doesn"t have much human content, and I think it"s just the other side of all the "niceness" and "cleanliness" and "goodness" in the country. On one side the scrubbers and detergent-buyers, and on the other the dirty boys, equally a.n.a.l. Black and white are the colors of paranoia, nothing in between. If I"m using clinical language, it"s because Naked Lunch Naked Lunch forces it on me. It"s clinical. And that would be all right if it were the beginning of something. Raskolnikov must have been crazy, but he was more. Here there isn"t more. But I was glad of a chance to read it. Do you want it sent back? forces it on me. It"s clinical. And that would be all right if it were the beginning of something. Raskolnikov must have been crazy, but he was more. Here there isn"t more. But I was glad of a chance to read it. Do you want it sent back?
The trouble I have reading your letters brings me to this machine. My handwriting is nearly impossible, too.
Yes, it took me an awfully long time to grow up, but I take comfort from Vol. II of [Ernest] Jones on Freud which begins "In 1901 Freud, at the age of forty-five, had attained complete materity, a consummation of development that few people really achieve." So there, I can"t even spell spell maturity. One of these days I"ll tell you all about my therapeutic adventures. Of course I sat in a box. It removed the warts from my fingers. maturity. One of these days I"ll tell you all about my therapeutic adventures. Of course I sat in a box. It removed the warts from my fingers.
All week I"ve felt like a man who is trying to fill a test tube under Niagara. It"s not a bad simile. The rain has bent everything double for three days and I feel very wet and peevish. But your letter this morning was a very fine stimulant.
Immer dein,
To Leslie Fiedler June 24, 1960 Tivoli Dear Leslie: I"ve just read your [Karl] Shapiro piece in Poetry Poetry, and I really think you"re way out. How you got there I don"t know but it"s time to come back. I"m in earnest. You have a set of facts entirely your own, and you interpret people"s motives most peculiarly. What is this "marketable" Jewishness you talk about? And who are these strange companions on the bandwagon that plays Hatikvah Hatikvah? It"s amusing. It"s utterly wrong. It"s (I don"t like the jargon but it can"t be avoided here) Projection. What you think you see so clearly is not to be seen. It isn"t there. No big situations, no connivances, no Jewish scheme produced by Jewish Minds. Nothing. What an incredible tsimis tsimis [ [62] you make of nothing! You have your own realities, no one checks you and you go on and on. You had better think matters over again, Leslie. I"m dead serious.
Fiedler had just published "On the Road; or the Adventures of Karl Shapiro" in Poetry. Poetry.
To Susan Gla.s.sman June 29, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dearest Susie, All present and accounted for. I think I"ve found the right channel and I"m feeling very cheerful. That is, I"m too busy to dwell on being cheerful, but I must be cheerful somewhere below, in the engine room. More soon.
With Sondra, I"ve had the regulation four-bladed duel about seeing Adam, and after being stabbed only a few times I am being allowed to have him for a week in Chicago, in August. I"m getting off easy. (She doesn"t bleed except in the natural course.) Is Augie March Augie March such a drone? Hmmm! I don"t know, myself. I made the discovery in it about language and character from which such a drone? Hmmm! I don"t know, myself. I made the discovery in it about language and character from which Henderson Henderson arose but arose but Augie Augie itself is probably crude. My itself is probably crude. My Ur-Faust Ur-Faust. In the evening of life, about thirty years from now, I may amuse myself by doing it right. I still love Grandma, Einhorn, Simon, Mimi!! And Mintouchian. And the eagle.
To Susan Gla.s.sman July 4, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dearest Susie: No, nothing at all wrong, only the unusual usual. Toil, tears, sweat and business-wriggling: I seem to be a great operator on a small sector. That is, I"ve always lived like a sort of millionaire without money. Never any question of "neediness" on the one side nor of greediness on the other. Somehow I"ve managed to do exactly what I like. There are certain philosophers (Samuel Butler, if he is one) who say we really do get what we want. Question: Can we bear it when we get it? That"s the question that"s the beginning of religion.
No, darling, I"m very well. I hope you are, too, and that you look forward to the 15th as I do.
To John Berryman July 4, 1960 Tivoli Dear John- Not bad, now. I"m divorced and better for it. One madness at a time. It"s the least Justice can allow us. And I"m writing something, too.
Savage #2 has gone to the printer, and very good, though not as good as it would have been with the Taj, which we had to lay over till has gone to the printer, and very good, though not as good as it would have been with the Taj, which we had to lay over till #3 #3, so you"ll probably appear with Vachel Lindsay and me instead of D. H. Lawrence and Louis Guilloux.
Are you really coming to visit me in Tivoli? It"d be a great event. I am not likely to be in Mpls. much. Perhaps to see Adam now and then, though if that is "played" on me, or if my veins are going to be used to string Sondra"s harp, the child and I will not see much of each other.
Don"t you think the Bennington alumnae a.s.sociation owes us both wound-stripes?
Say h.e.l.lo to McCloskeys. And write down those squibs for [Savage] #3 #3. What did you think of #1 #1? You"ve never said.
Transcontinental blessings,
To Edmund Wilson July 30, 1960 Tivoli, N.Y.
Dear Edmund- I understand from Monroe Engel that you like the n.o.ble Savage n.o.ble Savage. This encourages me to ask you for a contribution. I think you would find yourself in good company.
With best wishes,
To Susan Gla.s.sman September 1, 1960 [Tivoli]
Baby, I know you"re going through all kinds of difficulty, enough to account for all the strange phenomena. It is all the more important now that I should not lose my bearings, too, and you should not be displeased by my holding on to them. One of us must, if we"re not both to be overboard. I do have myself in pretty good order, and I can help you when you come East. Much that seems very difficult to you will look fairly elementary to me, and as long as we keep this balance we needn"t fear panic on all fronts. The move East is not not so hard. Towards your parents you"ve always had an independent bearing but you"ve never been independent in naked fact. Well, that"s not so difficult. What will be more formidable will be making a life of your own in a strange city, but that"s not too awful either, once you"ve seen the world. And you so hard. Towards your parents you"ve always had an independent bearing but you"ve never been independent in naked fact. Well, that"s not so difficult. What will be more formidable will be making a life of your own in a strange city, but that"s not too awful either, once you"ve seen the world. And you have have seen it, and it"s the world you"ve got to cope with, not NYC or Chicago. Besides, in me you have a friend. I"ve never refused my friendship, now have I? I said I wasn"t going to write a letter, and I"ve gone and done it. Shows how much I know my own mind. But I"ve got myself tranquil at the center, somehow. Maybe it"s my convalescence. And it doesn"t even bother me to be ignorant of my next moves. seen it, and it"s the world you"ve got to cope with, not NYC or Chicago. Besides, in me you have a friend. I"ve never refused my friendship, now have I? I said I wasn"t going to write a letter, and I"ve gone and done it. Shows how much I know my own mind. But I"ve got myself tranquil at the center, somehow. Maybe it"s my convalescence. And it doesn"t even bother me to be ignorant of my next moves.
Be my sweet and balanced Dolly.
To Alice Adams [n.d.] [Tivoli]
Dear Alice - I"m very sorry to hear of this, and I hope you"re better. I always have more to say about life when it"s myself that"s in trouble. The most useful thing perhaps I can say is that I"ve always had a great liking for you and thought you very vital, a woman evidently built to make it.
Sometimes what I"m sorriest about and most puzzled by is this feminine belief that one makes it in love, only in love, and that love is a kind of salvation. And then women, and sometimes men, too, demand of each other everything-everything! And isn"t it obvious by now that no human being has the power to give what we require from one another. When I saw that, the external world began to come back. My great need had made it almost disappear.
I hope the worst of this is over for you, or will soon be: I hate to think of you suffering. Never mind what I said earlier. I said that for myself. For you I"d prefer something else.
Yours very affectionately,
To Alice Adams September 10, 1960 [Tivoli]
Dear Alice - The only sure cure is to write a book. I have a new one on the table and all the other misery is gone. This is the form any refusal to be unhappy takes now, and I suppose it saves me from a merely obstinate negative. Because it isn"t merely for oneself that one should refuse a certain alternative. It"s also because we owe life something.