I approve highly of your idea of segregating the intellectuals—in large well padded asylums—The only way for them to escape would be for each man to commit an act—a grimy fleshly bedrock act. Devil a few of them would ever reappear.
I have followed up the chain of scholarly references purporting to prove that the Dark Lady is accused of having gonorrhoea, and it is even feebler than I expected.
Throughout the fall of 1953, Malcolm Lowry sent his editor at Random House, Albert Erskine, a series of increasingly erratic, digressive, peculiar (and playful) letters concerning his work-in-progress, tentatively entitled October Ferry to Gabriola. Lowry’s deadline for Random House was November … Continued
Below, D. H. Lawrence writes to editor and close friend Edward Garnett (husband of Constance) regarding Paul Morel, a 400-page drama that, by the end of the year, would become Sons and Lovers. (A month later, he would write Garnett: “I wrote it again, … Continued
In 1919, passions inflamed by the emergence of the U.S.S.R., the French author and Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland sent an appeal to the “intellectual workers of the world,” attempting, ultimately, to wrest from them a firmer—and more public—commitment to the … Continued
Thornton Wilder first met Gertrude Stein in 1934, when the latter was lecturing in Chicago on the topic of her new work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. They maintained a frank and adoring correspondence for ten years afterward. TO … Continued
Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize in 1946; thereafter, he spent the majority of his time letter-writing, estimating that his daily correspondence occupied some 150 manuscript pages. Below, Hesse responds to a letter by Felix Lützkendorf, who had written a … Continued
Below, after a night of long drinking, Ernest Hemingway attempts to assuage F. Scott Fitzgerald’s concerns regarding a perceived slight from Gertrude Stein. TO F. SCOTT FITZGERALD October 24, Paris, 1929 Dear Scott: Your note just came and am utilizing … Continued
Below, William S. Burroughs writes to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac from Tangier, discussing writing, withdrawal, and sexual violence. “Letter A,” referenced in the post-script, was comprised of “the beginning of Chapter II of the Interzone novel,” which was … Continued
Below is the last known letter written by Dawn Powell, who died of colon cancer in St. Luke’s Hospital on November 14, 1965. John F. “Jack” Sherman, Powell’s cousin, was among those by her bedside at the end. TO JOHN … Continued
