Letters of E. B. White
Page 62
Joe’s visit with his family turned out well. The weather had chilled a bit, but was bright, and I don’t think (or I didn’t notice) that any of the White children thought it was anything but very hot, as they swam about five times a day. (I did my swimming about a month ago, when it really was hot, and will resume in another month, when heat returns to Florida.) Anyway, it seemed much more like Christmas to have the family here, and they all seemed in good form. I am very lucky and I am grateful for my blessings. Thanks again for your gifts.
Love,
Andy
• In 1967 the animation team of John and Faith Hubley became interested in acquiring the motion picture rights to Charlotte’s Web. White knew and liked the Hubleys and was inclined to favor their proposal. Alexander Lindey was the lawyer who represented White in the negotiations, along with Jap Gude, who had become White’s agent for film rights during the fifties. From the correspondence it is evident that White wanted more control over the material than movie companies are disposed to grant. A contract was signed, but in the end the Hubleys were unable to get the backing required and the project fell through.
To ALEXANDER LINDEY
[North Brooklin, Maine]
May 22, 1967
Dear Al:
Your proposed terms of contract sound all right to me, all twelve of them.
I’m not sure I understand 3b. In addition to a fee of $20,000, the Hubleys will share in the alleged profits, won’t they? (You’ll have to excuse my ignorance in these matters.)
In 4, I don’t know what “merchandising rights” means. Does this refer to my right, subsequently, to make other deals, or does it refer to objects of merchandise—dolls, pigs, sweat shirts? Again excuse ignorance.
There should probably be a clause somewhere prohibiting the publication in book form of the screenplay or of any other adaptation of my book. When Disney made “Mary Poppins” he got out a book, “The Walt Disney Mary Poppins.” I’m against anything of that sort.
I’m catching the mail with this letter. Tomorrow I’ll try to get off another note to you, clarifying my desires about my “right of approval.” This seems likely to be the touchiest and haziest of all the elements of the agreement.
Sincerely,
Andy
To ALEXANDER LINDEY
[North Brooklin, Maine]
May 24, 1967
Dear Al:
The purpose of the “right of approval” clause is two-fold: it should protect me from a motion picture version of “Charlotte’s Web” that violates the spirit and meaning of the story, and it should protect the Hubleys from obstructive behavior of an author. The movie will be their creation, not mine, and they will naturally want to get on with it in the way they feel it should go. I believe they are sympathetic with and agreeable to my desire to have a look at the screenplay, see sketches of the principal characters, and hear the principal voices. This shouldn’t be either difficult or expensive.
I want the chance to edit the script wherever anything turns up that is a gross departure or a gross violation. I also would like to be protected against the insertion of wholly new material—songs, jokes, capers, episodes. I don’t anticipate trouble of this sort; the Hubleys have already expressed to me in a letter (as well as verbally) their desire to produce a faithful adaptation, and I believe them to be sincere in this.
This approval business is sensitive, though. Artistic temperaments and pride can easily get on a collision course. In the elaborate papers sent me by Jap Gude, for instance, it says “Owner shall have the right of approval, not to be unreasonably withheld.” (Italics mine.) I don’t know at what point a man’s opinion, or stricture, becomes “unreasonable.” What may seem reasonable to me may well seem unreasonable to the Hubleys. This is the joker. We will just have to work it out between us as best we can.
I will give you an example of what I call a “gross” violation. In my book, Charlotte dies. If, in the screenplay, she should turn up alive at the end of the story in the interests of a happier ending, I would consider this a gross violation and I would regard my disapproval as reasonable.
Good luck!
Andy
To HOWARD CUSHMAN
North Brooklin
21 June [1967]
Dear Cush:
On this first day of summer (temperature 50°, mean little NE wind from the cold sea, rain falling, Chinese fallout sifting gently down onto bean and broccoli in the neat green rows) I sit cozily indoors, thinking of all the things I’ve ever known—which includes your unanswered letter about Snow White and the dear dead days. Incidentally, it seems to me that the most damning thing that can be said about Barthelme’s piece1 is that it went completely out of my mind as soon as I had finished reading it, and I haven’t thought of it since, except on the occasions when you threw it at me. A writer should take care to be memorable, and I can’t remember Snow White. For that matter, I can’t remember Moby Dick, either. I can remember “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” which should place Mistress Parker ahead of Melville but probably doesn’t. The picture is confusing. I never read Joyce and was interested to discover that you hadn’t either. Once, when my head was pretty bad, I picked up Ulysses and gave it a go but found out that it was simply making me horribly nervous, and I never went back. And I never understood why the slightest fuss was made over G. Stein, whose contribution to letters strikes me as very close to zero. Barthelme looks like a straight writer compared to her. So every generation has its oddballs, who strike attitudes and often strike out. Most prose today, it seems to me, is not greatly different in style from the prose of our salad days. I’ve just read “The Secret of Santa Vittoria”; except for a few passages that are more explicit than what was around in the Twenties, the book is straight going and derives from Hemingway, without H’s lack of humor.
I think you are worrying the notion that K and I “accept” things that you reject, and that this is because we have lost our balance through overexposure to all kinds of writers and writing. I don’t accept anything at all unless I happen to like it, and I doubt that I have been exposed to any more litry folks or litry products than you have. I am a non-reader of contemporary poetry in a big way—it gives me a pain in the (excuse it) arse. But I keep my eyes, and I trust my mind, open, and once in a while I stumble on something that I wouldn’t have missed for the world, like Sissman’s “In and Out”—a fine poem though not in the rigidly lyrical school. Ogden Nash is a gifted poet who has sometimes written lyrically (and well, too) but has mostly written the rambling couplets that made him deservedly (I think) famous.
All of us of our generation feel a great longing for the romanticism and the lyricism and the discipline of the writings that we cut our teeth on. I am in a constant state of lament for the casual yet exciting and disciplined columns of Adams and Morley and Marquis, which were where we could raise our little heads and have our moment of triumph. The day started on a higher level, and we laid down our morning paper exalted if not exulting. Seen in perspective, though, some of the well-loved figures of those days have shrunk with the passage of time. Dotty Parker died on Page 1, but except for a handful of sterling short stories her contribution to letters was slight and she herself knew that she was not much of a poet. I haven’t read a word of Dreiser in years, but I have an idea that if I were to return to him and his works I would fwow up. Thomas Wolfe is interesting (to me) more for his correspondence than for his novels. I find his books hard going, but the letters he wrote were revealing and full of immense feeling and the joy of life and the terror of same. Fellows like Woolcott have dwindled till they are almost lost to view. I haven’t even spelled his name right. Two l’s, wasn’t it?
My uneasiness about modern writing is not because of its being experimental but because of its abandonment of the responsibility of good taste and its acceptance of the inevitability of complete disclosure. This I find worrisome. When freedom of expression is abused, and things become disgusting, then freedom of expressio
n is endangered. People will stand just so much, then they want the clamps put on. I think we are getting perilously close to the clampdown. The movies are not going to be happy till they present the sex act in living color, and this is where the trouble is going to start and where the new Victorian age will bloom. . . .
Yr lucid and disciplined old friend,
Andy
To J. G. CASE
North Brooklin, Maine
June 28, 1967
Dear Jack:
Since April I have been wanting to thank you properly for the photo copies of Will Strunk’s book. I was enchanted by his markings—so tidy and in the hand that I remember well. As you say in your letter, nothing is heavy or blurred or in any way disorderly. There just wasn’t any disorder in Strunk, or any irresolution.
His handwriting seemed to me, a student, admirable, and I made an effort to ape it, but without much success. I wanted to be able to write frequent as he wrote it, but still can’t manage it. And I was interested in his rare, which begins with one kind of an “r” and goes on to another.
One of the markings that I found most satisfying was “Enc. Brit. (without pay).” That has Strunk’s imprint, unmistakable. And, in the Charles Lamb, his pouncing on “In a degree beneath manhood,” which he changed to “To an unmanly degree.”
I hope you are enjoying life along Third Avenue. It was a thoroughfare I found congenial years ago, in my Turtle Bay phase, but on recent visits it has seemed foreign territory and I stroll up and down in a thin cloud of depression laced with diesel oil.
We had no spring here at all and have gone straight into summer. Lilacs and apple blossoms were confused by the whole business and blew their lines. I seized the moment to reactivate my barn; I have sheep, lambs, geese, chickens, and the fastest pig in Hancock County. My goose has sat for 28 days and is even now hatching her goslings, in a nest in the tieups. The gander, in anticipation of new responsibilities, chose to spend last night at the pond, drinking. And I must make a bedside call right now—a routine check. There is nothing (to me) more delightful than the details surrounding a hatch of goose eggs. The young are as green as grass, and they immediately begin playing their flutes, an enchanting sound.
Please pardon these bucolics, and thanks again for the Strunk items.
Yrs,
Andy
To FRANK SULLIVAN
North Brooklin
Aug 22 [1967]
Dear Dr. Sullivan:
I am enclosing two dollars which I wish you would place upon the nose of a needy horse in the running of The Sullivan (“the run for the posies” as I believed it is called).1
I am not fussy about which horse you select for me. I did awfully well on my first bet in 1922, in Lexington, Kentucky. . . . I have done little betting since, as I like to quit when I am ahead. But I have a sentimental interest in The Sullivan that can only be assuaged by naked risk, which is why I am asking this favor of you.
With all best wishes from Katharine S. White and myself on this occasion, and in the hope that the day finds you well dressed, in good health, and good spirits,
Yrs faithfully,
Andy
(Dr. E. B. White)
P.S. If this letter arrives too late for the event, you may spend the money on drink, with all its attendant evils.
To FRANK SULLIVAN
North Brooklin, Maine
September 13, 1967
Dear Frank:
K and I loved your letter. I feel bad that my bet failed to reach you in time for the event—the mails out of here cover the first fifty miles by dog-sled, which I believe is pulled by Chihuahuas. I also feel bad that the race was not called “The Sullivan,” instead of the Frank Sullivan. Would have been a better name. The trouble with the “Frank Sullivan” is that it suggests that there is more than one Sullivan in this country, which is ridiculous on the face of it. . . .
Your admission that you “can’t walk more than a few blocks” makes me feel that you are not challenging yourself enough. When I discovered that I couldn’t walk more than a few blocks I immediately broke into a trot—which is what the Reader’s Digest had been telling me to do all along—and it works very well. Creates a pretty scene on the streets and brings the roses back to your cheeks. You are not running enough, for a man of your years, and very likely you are drawing too many breaths, too. That’s another thing I learned from the R. Digest—cut breathing down to about four times a minute. I have felt a whole lot younger since I stopped breathing. It drains your strength, breathing does. Along with my philosophy of “challenge” for the elderly, I have instituted a lot of incidental nonsense around here. I acquired a seven-weeks-old mongrel puppy from an adoption home, and there is nothing that beats a puppy for keeping a man’s blood coursing in his veins. I have to get out of bed much earlier, for the first feeding, and then I have to clean up the feces, that are often cleverly hidden. I also gave instructions a year ago to have a 20-foot auxiliary sloop built for my use, which was done, and this summer has found me facing the great challenge of fog, wind, and rain at sea, among these treacherous islands and ledges, and usually alone. I don’t know why, at my age, I continue to sail a boat under trying conditions, unless it is that I have a secret desire to be knighted by the Queen. Call me not Ishmael, call me Sir Elwyn.1
Just read your opening remarks in Corey’s new book2 and enjoyed them. I haven’t read the book yet—just poked about to find references to me. I have moments of hoping and dreaming that we will live to see another Golden Age, or at least Silver Age, when writers will be both gay and disciplined and when even newspapers will show an interest in the litry life. But I dream of a lot of things. Anyway, I’m glad I lived when you did, and some others I could mention. It was a privilege while it lasted. Why, it’s still a privilege!
Life here continues on its accustomed nutty round, with me dipping sheep and Katharine arranging flowers. (Read her upcoming pieces on flar arrangement in the NYer!) K suffers terribly from the mysterious skin ailment that has the dermatologists baffled and that keeps her, perforce, on a high level of cortisone. She gets tense nervously from the drug, and from not being able to wear the usual female under-attire, but she manages to raise lovely flower borders and occasionally write a piece—which is more than her little husband can say. Hell it is, I just sent a droll thing to the NYTimes, for their “Topics” column.3 Full of fun, 750 words of pure delight. K, I am sure, will write you. Meantime we send our love and best wishes for many happy (and vigorous) returns of the 22nd.
Yrs,
Andy
To HERBERT MITGANG
North Brooklin
5 Oct [1967]
Dear Mr. Mitgang:
You are the most active editor I have known, with the exception of Harold Wallace Ross.1 Every mail brings a pencil or a paperweight. And the last mail brought the marvelous explanation from Betty2 (give her my love before I forget it) for the non-arrival of the big hundred-dollar payoff. So I will continue to live in penury until the machine gathers its strength for the October go around, or orgasm.
I figured out today that the Times is paying me 131⁄2 cents a word, which is not as good as Calvin Coolidge was getting for the column he wrote in the Nineteen Twenties. He got 50 cents—I remember that. It stuck in my mind. I don’t know what they paid Eleanor Roosevelt for “My Day” but whatever it was, she was overpaid. Inflation would bring Coolidge’s take well up above a dollar a word—probably a dollar fifty, or two dollars. Coolidge was pithy but uninteresting. I also figured out today that “Topics” fills about 40 square inches in the paper, and would love to know what an advertiser has to pay for his 40 square. The differential would be a fascinating study for a mathematically-minded man like myself. I should have been a computer, with people feeding stray bits of information into me while I belched.
I dare the Times to write me a check today for $100 using a blank form. What are you? Mice?
E. B. White
To CAROLINE ANGELL
Sarasota
17 December [1967]
Dear Callie:
Through Grandma’s maneuvering, I think you will receive a copy of “Walden.” This is my Christmas present to you in this critical year of 1967. I hope you will get as much fun and instruction from the book as I did, at a somewhat later age.
Thoreau has been greatly misconstrued and been made use of by all sorts of groups and thinkers. He laid himself wide open to this, as you can see by reading his stuff—which is full of contradictions and cryptic utterances. But he was, I think, a good seer and prophet, and many of his sentences cover whole areas of modern life and the modern dilemma.
The way to read Thoreau is to enjoy him—his enthusiasms, his acute perception.
Much love and a Merry Christmas.
Andy
To MILTON GREENSTEIN
[Sarasota, Florida]
February 3, 1968
Dear Milton:
Please pardon the use of your first name but I feel we should be on a first name basis after the fish we have shared together.
Running “Here Is New York” as a 2-page spread in the Times is a flattering project but not, I think, a sensible one, either for Eastern Airlines or for me. Why didn’t Mr. Julian A. Rutick seek my permission before putting his agency to the considerable expense of setting the thing in type? Advertising men are surely dreamers. I don’t want to appear suddenly in the N.Y. Times as a copywriter for an airline. For one thing, I don’t fly. For another, I withdrew from the advertising world about forty-two years ago, for what seemed good reasons, and do not wish to return unless forced to do so by circumstances.
Moreover, “Here Is New York” is now a period piece. I re-read it tonight with pleasure but with a strong sense of the passage of time. Very little in the piece captures the city as it is today. I was writing about a city that has all but disappeared; to publish the piece prominently in the Times would be to bewilder or amuse the present inhabitants. When I return to New York, these days, I look around and cry “Where am I?”—like a frightened child.