I don’t write so much now, I’m getting on to 33, pot-belly and creeping dementia. Sold my typewriter to go on a drunk 6 or 7 years ago and haven’t gotten enough non-alcoholic $ to buy another. Now print my occasionals out by hand and point them up with drawings (like any other madman). Sometimes I just throw the stories away and hang the drawings up in the bathroom (sometimes on the roller).
Hope you have “20 Tanks.” Would appreci.
[To Judson Crews]
Late 1953
You send out the only cheerful rejections in America. It’s nice to have the news behind those delicious photos! You are a pretty good guy, I’d rather imagine.
I was impressed with your last edition of Naked Ear. It smacked of aliveness and artistry much more than, say, the latest edition of The Kenyon Review. That comes of printing what you want to print instead of printing what is correct. Keep it up.
Met Janet Knauff yesterday. She has met you. Took her to the races.
[To Judson Crews]
November 4, 1953
I’ll be honest with you. You might as well keep those poems as long as you want to because when you do send them back I’ll just throw them away.
Except for the new ones on top, these poems have been rejected by Poetry magazine and a new outfit, Embryo. Favorable remarks, etc., but they do not think my stuff is poetry. I know what they mean. The idea is there but I can’t break thro the skin. I can’t work the dials. I’m not interested in poetry. I don’t know what interests me. Non-dullness, I suppose. Proper poetry is dead poetry even if it looks good.
Keep these things as long as you like. You’re the only one who has shown an interest. If I do any more, I’ll send them out to you.
1954
[To Whit Burnett]
June 10, 1954
Please note change of address (323½ N. Westmoreland Ave., L.A. 4), if you are holding up more of my wino masterpieces.
This piece rejected by Esquire is an expanded version of a short sketch I sent you some time ago. I guess it’s too sexy for publication. I don’t know exactly what it means. I just got to playing around with it and it ran away with me. I think Sherwood Anderson would enjoy it but he can’t read it.
[To Whit Burnett]
August 25, 1954
I’m sorry to hear, through a slip sent me from Smithtown a couple of months back, that Story is no longer alive.
I sent in another story about that time called “The Rapist’s Story,” but haven’t heard. Is it about?
I’ll always remember the old orange magazine with the white band. Somehow, I’d always had the idea that I could write anything I wanted, and, if it was good enough it’d get in there. I’ve never gotten that idea looking at any other magazines, and especially today, when everybody’s so god damned afraid of offending or saying anything against anybody else—an honest writer is in a hell of a hole. I mean, you sit down to write it and you know it’s no use. There’s a lot of courage gone now and a lot of guts and a lot of clearness—and a lot of Artistry too.
For my money, everything went to hell with World War 2. And not only the Arts. Even cigarettes don’t taste the same. Tamales. Chili. Coffee. Everything’s made of plastic. A radish doesn’t taste sharp anymore. You peel an egg and, invariably, the egg comes off with the shell. Pork chops are all fat and pink. People buy new cars and nothing else. That’s their life: four wheels. Cities only turn on one-third of their street lights to save electricity. Policemen give out tickets like mad. Drunks are fined atrocious sums, and almost everybody’s drunk who’s had a drink. Dogs must be kept on a leash, dogs must be inoculated. You have to have a fishing license to catch grunion with your hands, and comic books are considered dangerous to children. Men watch boxing matches from their armchairs, men who never knew what a boxing match was, and when they disagree with a decision, they write vile and clamorous letters to the newspapers in protest indignant.
And short stories: there’s nothing: no life. [ . . . ]
Story had meant something to me. And I guess it’s part of the world’s ways to see it go, and I wonder what’s going to be next?
I remember when I used to write and send you fifteen or twenty or more stories a month, and later, three or four or five—and mostly, at least, one a week. From New Orleans and Frisco and Miami and L.A. and Philly and St. Louis and Atlanta and Greenwich Village and Houston and everyplace else.
I used to sit up by an open window in New Orleans and look down at the summer streets of night and touch those keys, and when I sold my typewriter in Frisco to get drunk on, I couldn’t stop writing, and I couldn’t stop drinking either, so I hand-printed my crap out in ink for years, and later decorated same crap with drawings to make you notice them.
Well, they tell me I can’t drink now, and I’ve got another typewriter. I’ve got a job of a sort now but don’t know how long I’ll hold it. I’m weak and I get sick easy, and I’m nervous all the time and guess I’ve got a couple of short-circuits somewhere, but with it, I feel like touching those keys again, touching them and making lines, a stage, a set-up, making people walk and talk and close doors. And now, there’s no more Story.
But I want to thank you, Burnett, for bearing with me. I know a lot of it was poor. But those were good days, the days of 438 Fourth Ave. 16, and now like everything else, the cigarettes and the wine and the cock-eyed sparrows in the half-moon, it’s all gone. A sorrow heavier than tar. Goodbye, goodbye.
[To Caresse Crosby]
December 9, 1954
I received your letter from Italy a year or so ago (in response to mine). I wish to thank you for remembering me. It built me up some to hear from you.
Are you still publishing? If so, I have something I’d like you to see. And if you are, I’d like an address to send it to: I don’t know how to reach you.
I’m writing again, a little. [Charles] Shattuck of Accent says he doesn’t see how I can find a publisher for my stuff, but that perhaps someday “public taste will catch up with you.” Christ.
You sent me a pamphlet of a sheaf or something in Italian last year in your letter. You have mistaken me for an educated man: I couldn’t read it. I am not even a real artist—know I am a fake of some sort—sort of write from the bowels of disgust, almost entirely. Yet, when I see what the others are doing, I go on with it. What else is there to do? [ . . . ]
This factotum has another menial job. I hate it, but I have two pairs of shoes for the first time in my life (I like to doll up for the track—playact for the real railbird character). I have been living for the past 5 years with a woman 10 years older than I. But I have gotten used to her and I am too tired to search or to break.
Please let me have your editorial address if you are still publishing, and thank you again for being kind enough to remember me and write.
1955
[To Whit Burnett]
February 27, 1955
Thank