28 February (1932): Sherwood Anderson to Charles Bockler
…I’m becoming more and more a communist. I think it must be coming nearer—an inevitable thing. I guess this time is good for all of us.
27 February (1933): Thomas Wolfe to Donald Chacey
Your letter also touched me up a bit and got me a little hot under the collar when you asked me if I was ever going to do it again, or if the old well had gone dry. I will tell you the plain truth to start with which is—I will be damned if I know myself…
26 February (1899): Anton Chekhov to Lydia Alexeyevna
Theirs is not writing, but chirping; they chirp and then sulk. And I don’t like the writer Avilova because she writes so little. . Women authors should write a great deal, if they want to master the art; just take these Englishwomen as an example.
25 February (1935): William Carlos Williams to Ronald Lane Latimer
This is what I’d say to our academic critics, if I were asked: …You are thinking of something very dead and likely to be smelly very soon—one of the first things that is done at an autopsy is to measure and weigh the corpse.
Four Short Essays From "The Hard Problem"
One time I was in therapy for being sad, and while I was there I learned about The Power of Positive Thought. I know this sounds like magic and/or fake and/or antithetical to the open-eyed truth telling to which we’ve all dedicated ourselves as writers, but if you would like to not kill yourself after years and years of sitting at a desk with little or nothing to show for it, it’s a really great option…
Micro-review: On Lonely Christopher's "Death & Disaster Series"
The result is a sharply integrated and commanding whole, a triptych of love, poetry and grief orchestrated around the time in which each section was written: the June before, the August during, and the months after his mother’s death.
24 February (1926): Federico García Lorca to Melchor Fernandez Almagro
I am not carried away by music, like certain young poets. I grant love to the word (!) and not to the sound.
21 February (1855): Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey
Charlotte Brontë met Ellen Nussey while attending the Roe Head school in Dewbury, Yorkshire, in 1833. The Reverend Brontë, believing Nussey to be a suitable companion for his daughters, allowed her to stay for extensive visits at the parsonage. She … Continued
20 February (1833): Nikolai Gogol to Mikhail Pogodin
Nikolai Gogol emerged on the Russian literary scene in 1831 with the publication of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. This initial success failed to cool his ambitions, as the letter below demonstrates. The play he writes about, Vladimir … Continued
19 February (1949): Jean Grenier to Albert Camus
The love dialogues are beautiful, maybe a higher tone than the others, and on a different level.