Below, Elias Canetti’s response to his brother’s (apparently trenchant, generally positive) criticisms of Auto-da-Fé. Elias Canetti was thrilled with the novel’s overwhelmingly positive reception, confiding to Georges: “ Since the publication of Auto-da-Fé, everyone who reads it considers me one of the most … Continued

A novel, like a letter, should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of morality and decay. […] You let the errors come. Let them remain in the book like our sins remaining in our lives. I hope some of them may be remitted. I’ll do what I can; the rest is in God’s hands.

  Below, Jack Kerouac responds to an invitation from Carolyn Cassady (Neal Cassady’s wife) to come west for the winter and take a job as an attendant at a local parking lot. In so doing, Kerouac also touches upon advances, … Continued

  Below, the fascinating fragment of a (now lost) letter from Marcel Proust to Robert Dreyfus, high school friend and renowned historian of the Third Republic. The identity of “Z.” remains unknown.  TO ROBERT DREYFUS November 29, 1913 Cher Robert, … Continued

Below, Nabokov responds to Hitchcock’s letter of 19 November with a few screenplay ideas of his own. Hitchcock would reply that his needs were “immediate and urgent,” adding that, while the second idea did not interest him, he found the … Continued

Below, a strange, roving, wonderful letter from Dylan Thomas to Kenneth Patchen, touching on everything from the charitable habits of the Welsh to Thomas’ desperate fear of being drafted into the British war effort. “As far as a country at … Continued