Get well serenely, you too
To you both all best
from your old
friend Thornt
292. TO RUTH GORDON AND GARSON KANIN. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Private
P.O. Box 144 Douglas Arizona
Jan 14. 1963
Dear Kays:
I’ve been here 7 months.
x
It AGREES with me.
x
But le petit train-train74 of my life makes me a poor letter-writer.
x
Tallulah and Estelle W. are playing Tucson at the end of the week in HERE TODAY.75
x
I’m half tempted to go up and sit with them until four in the morning. But I’d better not. That’s a different world. I’m not ready to reopen that door yet.
x
Judith comes soon. Macbeth-scenes and Medea.76
x
And Celeste Holm. Road shows are reviving. Some agent sends them out, starting in L.A.
x
I enclose a glimpse of my activities. Note: I don’t see a soul until long after sunset.
x
I found the last surviving honest garage mechanic and now my car goes like a dream.
x
I love hearing from you, but gee I have nothing to recount in return.
Love and kisses
Thornt’
SOCIETY NOTES
by our Douglas correspondent
A shower was given for RUSTY (barman at the Tophat) and his bride, at MIKE’s on Route 80 in Silver Springs. Beer, dancing, and clandestine gambling were enjoyed by over 90 guests. …. Among the presents were…..a can of Crosse and Blackwell’s kippered herrings and a can of coffee for percolating, from the Professor.
x
On Saturday night Louie (engineer) and Pete (highway patrol) and the Professor crossed into Mexico and had dinner and danced and smooched at the Copa. They then went on to visit a house of ill-fame, where the Professor’s Spanish was much in demand. All of the gentlemen returned to their homes at four in the morning, their virtue intact, but leaving most tender regrets with the beautiful young ladies.
x
Vera R., waitress at the Palm Grove, has gone to the Douglas Hospital for an operation. Among her callers was the Professor, who was not admitted to see the patient, but whose flowers were much appreciated.
x
The usual Stein Night (second Fridays) was observed at the Crystal Palace Saloon in Tombstone. Beer and tacos were much enjoyed by 85 guests. The beautiful “Duffie” (Miss Duffield) behind the bar was pleased to welcome her shy admirer, the Professor.
x
Mr. J. L. whose travels for electronic gadgets bring him frequently to Douglas received the help of the Professor in writing a letter to council and judge requesting that his alimony be reduced. Mr. J. L. hasn’t a bean; he lives in a trailer while his wife and two sons enjoy his six-room house. The Professor believes Mr. J. L. to the effect that he had never offended his wife in any way. She and another woman concocted a story about how he had struck her cruelly on six different occasions. Tie that!
x
Mrs A … B … a winter guest at the Hotel Gadsden again closed the bar (“one o’clock, ladies and gentlemen, thank you”) in deep conversation with her friend the Professor. There are now not many chapters in Mrs B’s life which have not been imparted to her attentive friend.
x
Dawson’s on the Lordsburg road is becoming more and more a place of entertainment for our Young Married set. Miss Winnie Shaw—former waitress at the Gadsden<,> now cook at her brother’s Hamburgateria—laughingly persuaded the Professor to dance with her. The crowded floor was soon cleared as the other dancers stood against the wall and watched the charming couple with admiration. Miss Shaw was told by her parents that she was related to the English dramatist George Bernard Shaw, which in view of her lively ripostes is not hard to believe.
x
293. TO CATHERINE COFFIN. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed: 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Yale
P.O. Box 144 Douglas Arizona
Feb 7. 1963
Dear Catherine:
Many thanks for the records. I’m perfectly delighted with them both—the Mozart Quartets and the Landowska. My collection is still so small that each of them has its own particular invitation; I have the feeling that I’d lose that pleasure in them if I had, as some of my friends have, a whole wall of them.
I suppose Isabel may have told you that the New York representative of Ricordi—music publisher of Verdi, Puccini etc—has entered into a 5-year agreement with Louise Talma to promote The Alcestiad. Schirmers has just published her Etudes. She’s playing her new Passacaglia and Fugue next week at a concert in honor of Aaron Copeland at the Gardner Museum in Boston and the new Violin Sonata somewhere else and other performances are cracking on radio and in concert halls. I’m a good picker.
The Hindemiths were thrown into a consternation that I didn’t fly to Europe to hear the first of The Long Christmas Dinner in Mannheim or the second in Rome and now that I’m not flying to New York.77 Well, I’ve never attended the premières of my own plays. Shucks, it’s the public that’s on trial, not the authors. Hindemith’s opera is a jewel; it will appear everywhere; I shall be catching its 500th performance somewhere.
“How vainly men themselves amaze To win the Palm, or Oke, or Bayes; And their uncessant Labours see…”78
That’s the hermit’s beads. “Shouts in the distance.” I’ve just got a letter from Jerry Kilty. The Moscow Ministry of Culture has approved the dramatized Ides of March. It has been accepted for production in Warsaw; Turino-Milano-Roma October to December; London (with John Gielgud) in June. Paris in October.79 I presume it’s the same text that had a bad reception in Berlin. I wrote some new scenes for it; then my will-power broke down. It’s tedious work to rewarm yesterday’s porridge; and one can put no heart into putting patch-patch-patch on to a framework that was never designed as theatre. Had I intended to write a play on that lofty subject I would have gone about it differently in every detail.
x
I hope the worst of your winter is over—the famous winter of 19621963. Here, again erratic, we have plunged into full spring. We are in the 80’s by noon. Oh, how wonderful the sun is—and the moon no less so these nights. I now have quite an acquaintance in town, through I still havent been in a single home. There’s a Judge Hanson, 75—still on the city bench, who was born in Denmark. An omniverous reader and in small small way (he was director of the YMCA here and in Texas for years) a collector of pictures. Years ago in a second hand store he picked up a portrait of Walt Whitman (it was in Philadelphia) which he thinks is by Thomas Eakins. He’s consulted some experts and has a pile of documents but as yet no full assurance. If it is an Eakins of Whitman, think of what value it would have in the national interest. I’m to see it this week for my expertise! Often when the bars close at one we rakes cross over into Mexico where they don’t close if there’s still one customer sitting up straight,—Louie, the town engineer, Eddie, the Federal A.A representative at the airport; Rosie the elevator girl at the Gadsden; Gladys (great company) the cook at the Palm Grove and her sister Mrs Hert, an attorney. Well, well,—I’m the oldest by 30 years but nothing tells me so. The ladies drink margaritas, a tequila daiqueri that<’s> sipped from a champagne glass the rim of which has been dipped in salt. My best friend is Harry Ames who’s been going through a terrible time—the chicanery and general bitchiness of his father’s partner’s widow has ousted him from his Round-UP bar and liquor store,—a long Balzacian story. Harry’s wife Nanette has been crying for weeks. Harry will land on his feet, though. Harry and Nanette are college graduates—all of the above-named are except Rosie and Gladys,—but that doesn’t mean, ahem, that the conversation turns on T. S. Eliot and Boulez.
Well, I’m going to play myself KÖCHEL 46580 which I shall henceforward identify with you,—except t
hat I don’t want to associate you with any of those passages of “glimpsed unfathomable dejection,” wonderful though they are. Give my love to all in Bill’s house and to Massachusetts and Long Island.81
your devoted cavaliere servante
Thornt’
294. TO ISABEL WILDER. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Yale
P.O. Box 144 Douglas Arizona
March 17. 1963
Dear Isa:
Well, the opera thing is over.82 I know I would have found it very hard to live through. The easy thing about the Frankfurt occasion83 was that it was a beautiful professional performance. It’s as hard to be complimented as to be blamed for a performance when you know that some one or more elements in it (the recent Mr Antrobuses, or the actor playing St. Francis) absolutely deform the work. I’m tranquil about blame or praise if the work was adequately represented. Otherwise your lips are sealed; you’re not allowed
Heigh-ho.
I wrote those people who wanted me to find an agent for the Nebraska play, and the inquiry about the long poem translated from the German—I got out of them both prettily. I signed the book for publisher of the Penguins. N.B. The last line of The Matchmaker is six words short there, too.
I had a dinner party last night. Harry Ames who has lost his bar the ROUND-UP, has no job; and his wife and mother. His father was what in Brooklyn would be a saloon-keeper but here in the West was a sort of city father, the most admired man in town, a hand in politics, friend of all the governors and senators—even of Isabella Greenway.84 And his widow has the carriage and taste in dress of the best
Well. I won’t stew about any longer but come right out with it that I’ve written what must be 90 pages or more of a novel.86 I can’t describe it except by suggesting that it’s as though Little Women were being mulled over by Dostoievsky<.> It takes place in a mining town in southern Illinois (“Anthracite”) around 1902. And there’s Hoboken … and Tia Bates of Araquipa, Peru, transferred to Chile87…… and theres the opera-singer Clare Dux (Swift)88 …and Holy Rollers….. and how a Great Love causes havoc (the motto of the book could be “nothing too much”) and how gifts descend in family lines, making for good, making for ill, and demanding victims. You’ll be astonished at how much I know about how a family, reduced and ostracized, runs a boarding house. But mostly its about familial ties, and oh, you’ll need a handkerchief as big as a patchwork quilt. The action jumps about in time, though not as schematically as in The Ides. The form is just original enough to seem fresh; its not really like usual novels.
This morning I was doing a passage (Sophia’s nightmare) and was so shaken that I couldn’t go. I’ve had a headache ever since.—It’s terrible, the book!
All this since Christmas. I didn’t venture to mention it earlier because project after project has wilted away. But I’m darn well certain now that this is here to stay. I think it was the record-player that set things in motion, some Mozart and some organ works of Bach. Nothing I’ve written has advanced so fast, but it doesn’t worry me. Between the lines there’s lots of “Wilders”.
To think that that stroll that you and I took about Hoboken should have made such an impression on me! I must find out what kind of trees those were—lindens?
There’s melodrama in it, too, and a trial for murder.
So that’s the secret.
And you can imagine how my mode of life here now suits me.
I’m distraught on the two days of the week when I have to get out because the cleaning woman comes; I could eat glass with rage because I’ve mislaid my reading glasses; I postpone the boring necessity of taking my drivers test. I’m only ready for interruptions after sunset. I don’t work at night—twice it led to two sleepless nights—I, who never have any trouble sleeping. (You should read the account of Mrs. Ashly’s insomnia!)
Every new day is so exciting because I have no idea beforehand what will come out of the fountain-pen.
I hope Alice lives to read it; she has gently implored me to do a novel for a long time.89
love
Thornt
295. TO HAROLD FREEDMAN. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed P. O. Box 144 / Douglas, Arizona) Private
Last days at
Nov 18 1963
Dear Harold:
It puts me in a very funny position to have to repeat to kind well-wishers that I think The Alcestiad is not a workable play. It makes me look like someone fishing for more and more compliments.
I don’t mind having a failure but I hate to involve others in a failure.
Mr. Strasberg90 wrote me about the play, but (confidentially) his interpretation of the first two acts was miles from what I meant and his recommendation for the rewriting of the last act was unbelievable. That’s not his fault, but mine. As I wrote Cheryl91: it’s a pan of rolls that didn’t get cooked through in the oven.
It’s too bad.
The only way I can pull myself out of this awkward position is to do another so that these well-wishers can forget poor Alcestis
I’ve written Isabel that I’m not yet ready to return to urban civilization. I need one more year in some village, probably abroad. My new novel (not announced yet) is approaching its final draft. Then I’ll “go theatre” again.
I’m sorry to be leaving the desert. It’s done a lot for me.
But so will a change. Including (oh Lord!) a change of food. Can you imagine living a year and a half with almost never an attractive bit in
But I’m well and cheerful and grateful to Arizona (the State where WATER is GOLD. You should hear the political thinking in the bars that I frequent! I was told the other night—in a fist-beating roar—that the late Mrs Roosevelt did more harm in the world than TEN Hitlers.) A woman working in the Douglas Telephone office asked an acquaintance “Who is that Mr. Wilder? Is he a communist?<”> Her thinking goes like this:
He makes $8 long-distance calls (once a week to Isabel, yet <).>
He doesn’t own a phone.
He makes them through the central office so that they can’t be traced.
He has a funny accent and even in August he wears a necktie
Q.E.D.
Please give my affectionate best to Sam and Elza.92 and love to Sam<,> May and Bobbie93
from
Thornt’
TNW receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson in the White House, December 6, 1963.
TNW receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the White House, December 6, 1963. Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of LBJ Library.
296. TO AMOS TAPPAN WILDER. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Private
Dec 29 1963
Dear Tappie:
D’une elégance! D’une beauté94
And particularly welcome now—can you guess why?
Not only are they warm and comfortable, but they are of this elegance.
For the next few months, perhaps the whole year, I must live (as so often before) on boats and in hotels.
Nothing impresses the stewards on boats and the chambermaids in hotels like a luxurious pair of pyjamas to spread on the bed every night.
I’m sorry to say it, but there’s no snob like a servant. And I’m sorry to say it, but there’s no ill-clad down-at-heel bum like your uncle. So now you’ve given me a chance to hold up my head and get a little more considerate service. Thanks, many thanks.
x
As you are beginning to think about writing a novel, here are some suggestions that would be of use to some young writers—but every writer is different and they might not apply to you at all:
Don’t begin at the beginning. Begin at some situation near the middle of the work that is livest to your imagination.
In fact, don’t begin a novel; begin a note-book toward a novel.
This notebook contains not only scenes and bits of conversation that may find their place in the novel; but make it a sort of journal wherein you talk to yourself about the novel (objectify your thoughts about it, by writing them down.)
Lots of novelists waste time and “poetic” energy and courage (the most important ingredient of all) by not deciding early what kind of novel it is. In some novels the reader simply hears and sees what happens; in others he hears the author’s voice explaining and analyzing what’s going on. The two methods may be combined but must be evenly distributed. You can’t indicate for 30 pages that you know all about Jim and Nelly and then withdraw and merely exhibit Jim and Nelly for the next 30.
You’re a Wilder. Fight against the didactic,—the didactic-direct.
When you are about one-third through your work, you will pass through a phase in which you despair of it, you loathe it, you loathe yourself, etc. Any work—a sonnet, a short story, or an epic poem. Always happens. Expect it. Be ready for it.
The theme of a work should express some inner latent question in yourself. It is best when this is so deeply present that no one else would recognize it. Without this you will become bored with writing.
It’s a subtle help not to give your characters run-of-the-mill names. Unless you deliberately wish to render the run-of-the-mill nature of their lives. Not “Jim” and “Nelly”—but an occasional “Ludovic” or “Thomasina.”
Happy hunting.
Again thanks—and love
The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder Page 57
