9 September (1963): François Truffaut to Helen Scott
I now no longer think of anything but the film and making a good job of it.
Staff
Staff Picks: Print Favorites
This October, the American Reader is going (almost) all print. In celebration of this shift, the editors have put together an unranked list of twenty of our favorite stories, poems, plays and essays that have appeared in our print edition over the past two years.
8 September (1852): Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels
You will have observed from my letters that, as usual when I am in it myself and do not just hear about it from afar, I am wading through the shit with great indifference. But what’s to be done? My house is a hospital, and the crisis is getting so disruptive that it compels me to give it my all-highest attention. What’s to be done?
5 September (1951): Vladimir Nabokov to Edmund Wilson
I love to complain—this is why I am telling you all this.
4 September (1982): Václav Havel to Olga Havlová
Yes: man is in fact nailed down—like Christ on the cross—to a grid of paradoxes: stretched between the horizontal of the world and the vertical of Being; dragged down by the hopelessness of existing-in-the-world on the one hand, and the unattainability of the absolute on the other, he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness.
3 September (1927): Sherwood Anderson to Gertrude Stein
I did not want to write anything that was not fun doing. I knew that if I went on trying to make my living by it I would soon be a hack.
2 September (1916): Willa Cather to Dorothy Canfield Fisher
It’s blooming full-blooded ignorance that makes the bright show, after all. And, my dear, whether it’s a wheat-thrashing or an opera, it’s the Bright Show that I love.
29 August (1967): Graham Greene to Christopher Sykes
He said, ‘He had no right to bring his mistress to Carol Reed’s house for dinner.’ I said, ‘But I had my mistress with me.’ Evelyn’s reply was, ‘That is quite different. She is a married woman.’
28 August (1926): Rebecca West to John Gunther
It isn’t, as my family has always conspired to make me believe and as H. G. in his sadism loved to tell me, that I am a neurotic who cannot stand up to life, but that I am healthy and I have been preyed on by neurotics till they have bled me nearly white. So there we are. I feel better, but accursedly alone.
27 August (1962): Ted Hughes to Vicky Watling
Marriage, of course, is a bloody monster, but it eats up many little snakes.