61.
1925:
Rapid City, Man. November 4,
1925
Dear Phelps,
Re Nellie : No, don't do anything. As often you hit the
nail: easy dignity. I'll drop her a line after a while, acknowledging
her courtesy in sending me the book.
Re Settlers : I don't know anything about it. Have neither
whether it's selling, nor seen the book. I'm sorry it's out:
to me those people lived. As you say, I need the shekels.
No, I don't believe the F.P. Review will help the sale. If
it were mad, tearing me all down, going after me with a shot
gun, it might. But it is a benevolent letting me down. - As
for the dedication: there are, in the book, some of the best
things that I can do: take those as meant by the dedication;
and drop the dross; it was meant that way; because what little
I still know of happiness - as an coldish man facing the
grave, and in ill-health - I find in my work; and my work
would have ceased had it not been for you.
In this correction I would also say that, apart from the
frenzy of work, there is one more thing which makes me forget
my plight, to talk art with people like yourself and Woodhouse:
that day stands out in my memory like the days of my youth
when the world lay there to be conquered. I have become weary
since then: disappointed in life, and in my own future.
I am hard at work as always. I want soon to go back to the
Daily Bread . Don't forget that that Ms. is in the awkward
stage when I have ceased giving things in the slow, plodding
way, almost day by day, which is my own, and when yet I have
not revitalized the essential lines as what to me is a short
story: the 80 000 word novel.
I have just done something like that with a novel which
originally had 100 000 words: "La Grande Passion" - an ironical
title. I've cut it to 22 000 words and am going to offer
it to Harper's. Yet, I have become doubtful again about Harper's.
In that little story, too, there is a married couple. And
the way that they find each other and lose each other is
too "realistic" in that special sense - sexually - to be
accepted by a magazine. Apart from that, I believe, it has
all the ear-marks for Harper's or any other high-class magazine.
Personally, I feel absolutely sure of myself in that story - as
sure as I felt about the two chapters "Mrs. Lindstedt" and "Bobby" in
the Settlers.
By the way - I think in the latter chapter it is a flaw
that is not expressly stated that Niels does not kill his
wife because he has heard what he has heard or because he
surprises her; but because his whole life has suddenly become
too much for him. It is the cumulative effect: the "last
straw" if you want.
Well, all's well,
F.P.G.
Ann? Mrs. Phelps?
I want to give Mrs. Phelps a little Ms.
all her own one day - I don't know yet what.
