Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/August 19, 1954: Difference between revisions

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 Dear Bob,
-I’ve been sort of saving up and looking forward to this letter, and in fact meaning to write to you for some time now, but I got side-tracked into doing an article for ''Dissent'' which began as a book review of ''Individualism Reconsidered'' by David Riesman, and ended up going to fourteen pages, and including [Riesman’s] ''The Lonely Crowd'',{{refn|A canonical study of American character published in 1950.}} and all in all getting ambitious. So three weeks were devoted pretty exclusively to that.
+I’ve been sort of saving up and looking forward to this letter, and in fact meaning to write to you for some time now, but I got side-tracked into doing an article for ''Dissent'' which began as a book review of ''Individualism Reconsidered'' by David Riesman, and ended up going to fourteen pages, and including ''The Lonely Crowd'',{{refn|David Riesman’s canonical study of American character published in 1950.}} and all in all getting ambitious. So three weeks were devoted pretty exclusively to that.
 We’ve been having a quiet time here, Adele{{LJ:Adele}} painting, and I studying Spanish a couple of hours a day, and readings novels with an occasional trip thrown in. I think normally a life so inactive would pall, but I’ve been getting a succession of ideas for a long novel and a short novel which have been exciting me—how exciting ideas always are before you have to start shaping them to words—and so a lot of these quiet days have passed with considerable internal excitement. However, I do miss the rhythms of New York at times—and the excitement of talking to good friends at my three hundred word a minute rate. The friends we have here are all nice enough, but on the home lot I’m afraid they’d belong to the second string.
-In reading your letter I see you’ve been having etwases too. Eppis is an etwas. But truly there ought to be a better word than etwas for something so marvelous, and there are times when I think that outside of screwing at its happy best, there’s no kick like an etwas.
+In reading your letter I see you’ve been having etwases too. Eppis{{refn|Unknown.}} is an etwas. But truly there ought to be a better word than etwas for something so marvelous, and there are times when I think that outside of screwing at its happy best, there’s no kick like an etwas.
 I was very pleased to read the news about “The Jet-Propelled Couch,” and I’m delighted for you. The sign of how good it is that ''Harper’s'' got off their fat ass of precedent to print it. And of course we salute the passing of the third floor labia. What’s the matter, Ginso, you wanta lose your practice scoring your patients?
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 It seems as if the deal on ''Naked''{{refn|The film version was sold to a production company run by Charles Laughton and Paul Gregory. It was not completed and released until 1958, and received generally tepid reviews.}} is going to go through, and to Adele’s amazement, I feel absolutely flat about that. I suppose what depressed me is that at least half of me, hopes for the day when I’ll be poor, faced with the real realities of life, and therefore able to write better. Which is probably nonsense, but the ideas and passions of college, like art in a garret and traveling the wide world of adventure die very hard, don’t they ''amigo''?
-Everything seems routine now at Rinehart on ''The Deer Park'' that just as it was hard to write, so will its publishing life be full of episodes and near-catastrophes. Now the bitch is in England, where they like it, but as I understand from Cy, Cape [English publisher of ''Barbary Shore''] wrote Ted [Amussen] something to the effect that I sure was a novelist but that little old ''Deer Park'' might need “a fig-leaf or two.” Fig ’em. I mean it.
+Everything seems routine now at Rinehart on ''The Deer Park'' that just as it was hard to write, so will its publishing life be full of episodes and near-catastrophes. Now the bitch is in England, where they like it, but as I understand from Cy, Cape{{refn|The English publisher of ''Barbary Shore''.}} wrote Ted{{LJ:Amussen}} something to the effect that I sure was a novelist but that little old ''Deer Park'' might need “a fig-leaf or two.” Fig ’em. I mean it.
 About my health—it’s fine. After a month of laying off completely, I’ve been drinking sparingly and feel no compulsion about having to have stuff. Of course we haven’t been meeting many strange people and that could be part of it too. Incidentally, it just occurs to me, I think it would be better, Bob, if you don’t mention the marijuana because you know how that kind of story will spread about me.