The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/“A Series of Tragicomedies”: Mailer’s Letters on The Deer Park, 1954–55

Edited by J. Michael Lennon

Editor’s Note: The following 16 letters chronicle Mailer’s extraordinary effort to complete and publish his third novel, The Deer Park. As he says in one to William Styron, the process was “a series of tragicomedies.” The novel was finally accepted by Putnam’s and appeared on October 14, 1955. It became a bestseller, sold over 50,000 copies, and has remained more or less continuously in print. Random House will publish a selected edition of Mailer’s letters in 2008, edited by Lennon.

115. To William Styron

Mexico
August 18, 1954

Dear Bill,

I wanted to answer your letter immediately when I got it because I truly appreciated the “critique.” But I was mixed up in reading one David Riesman for an article I wrote for Dissent, and somehow the weeks went by. (As if I had to explain a phenomenon like that to you!)

Anyway, the amazing thing to me was how similar your reaction to The Deer Park is to mine, or at least would be if hypothetically someone else had written it, and I had read it. For in a way I admire it too, and I also don’t like it — don’t like it in the sense that I don’t want to write more books like it, and hope this is the last of its sort, for the thing is really too painful. There’s a kind of destruction of the value of life almost implicit in it. By now I feel quite cool toward it (maybe I’ll warm up when I read the galleys) and really feel glad it’s done, and at the moment at least I can face the critics with some equanimity — the sons of bitches. But in reading your letter I understood why I was so eager for your reaction — because it is truly amazing how similar are our standards and tastes about books considering how different we are. So I suppose what I wanted in essence was my own reaction, only via you.

The only thing which depressed me about The Deer Park is that somewhere along the way I missed the boat. I still think it could have been a great novel, with a great dryness similar say to The Red and the Black, but my imagination and my daring and my day to day improvisation dried up a little too much, and the result is the result. What makes me feel cheerful is that I think I’m coming out of a five-year depression where writing, just the act, became progressively more depressing. Of course I’m not writing now. But I do feel as if some kind of pressure is off. I suppose what it is that whether I end up mediocre, good, or great, at least I know I’m a writer, and I haven’t known it all these years.

When you wrote of your own depression I was going first to embark on a long lecture in which I furnished you with all kinds of valuable precepts drawn from my own depression and mastery of it, Hark! Hark! But a day or two’s reflection showed me how pompous it was. And also I remember how utterly disheartening was the comfort of my friends with all their remarks about what do you want to become a psychoanalyst for or a businessman, etc., why, boy, you don’t realize how much talent you have. And of course what put the knife in my heart was that finally I had to do the writing, not them, and they just didn’t know. So I don’t want to go on about how much talent you have, etc. cause that won’t cheer you. But I do want to remind you that the writing depression may not last forever, and that what you learn now and what you accomplish now (even if it be half as much at twice the effort) is going to represent later the years when we got iron in our spines and lead in our pencils. After all, we’re both like bullfighters who arrived too early. — The thing I love more and more about bullfighting is its panoramic violent extrapolation of the agony of the artist, the half-artist, and the never-will-be artist. Whereas all our dramas go on in wormy corners of the brain.

• • •

Mexico has been mildly pleasant, mildly boring. Maybe our house is just a little too nice. I put in a couple of hours a day studying Spanish which unfortunately with my dogged unpoetic mind (I’m serious) I approach like geometry rather than music so the progress tends to be muscular. Then I read novels or poot around. It’s pleasant if a little wasteful, but what keeps me in good spirits is that for the first time in years I have ideas for two novels instead of wondering what the next one would be. And so long as I don’t start to write them they stand powerful and eloquent in my mind.

Most of the time we see Lew Allen and Bette Ford, and Vance [Bourjaily] and [his wife] Tina. Lew is the same as ever, kind of remarkably good and sad and self-effacing and of course essentially reserved, and Bette is getting a little older and a little less arrogant and overbearing which of course makes one like her better, and Vance and Tina are the same. Close propinquity allows me to like Tina a little more and Vance a little less, Tina because I have the feeling that under the affectations and the ghost-like existence exists a fairly decent woman; Vance, because behind the amiable blandness is a kind of pokiness and lead-assed sluggish greed (under rigid control, of course) which makes it impossible to ever become close with him. He’s finally too competitive, too envious, too gloating over his little triumphs, and to my shame, I’m afraid he makes me the same way, at least when I’m with him. For a minor example Adele and I went with them to Puebla to see the town, got there at two PM, ate in a restaurant, and then they went shopping in a good souvenir shop. We left them several times to walk around the town a little bit, but they stayed in that goddamn shop accumulating until five-thirty, and then it began to rain, and we had to go home. So a two-hundred mile trip to a beautiful city was spent in a store. Also he’s so goddamn slow. But this is all chitchat bitching.

Then there are the bullfights which I love, and my daughter who gets under my skin because she is so utterly charming and sensitive on the one hand, and so unhappy, confused, and unaffectionate on the other, and all because of her peculiar situation. But we see her often, and have her out here, and sometimes there are fine moments. So in wishing you and Rose congratulations, I hope that you have a girl because the relationship at its best is extraordinary — which of course you were born knowing. And if you can stand Polonius giving more heavy advice, try to do a lot of work now, and be prepared and undismayed if it’s hard to work the first few months after your child is born. At least that was my weighty experience, and the lot of a few other tender ones like us. So here’s wishes she looks like you, Rose.

The news about Meloney was depressing if unsurprising, and I feel more and more that he really seeks prison with at least half of him, which indeed I can commiserate with — being three thousand miles away — for is there anything finally so horrible as to face one’s life with the understanding that it will go on as it has gone on before, and no apocalyptic storms are on the horizon? If you see him and he’s sober, give him my regards.

Right now we plan to come back some time around the beginning of November, although it could easily be a month either way, depending on whether the boredom here, which is so far half pleasant becomes too boring, or conversely if things pick up.

Do give my love to Rose, and Adele sends hers.

Abrazos,
Norm

116. To Eiichi Yamanishi, Japanese Translator

Mexico
August 27, 1954

Dear Eiichi,

I’m very happy that you liked The Deer Park, and as you say I think many people in America may be outraged when it appears. At least I hope so. The last paragraph of the book is I suppose my personal credo, and “the small trumpet of defiance” is about all that’s left in expression in the United States. As I told you before I trust you to make whatever arrangements you consider the best under the circumstances, and if you wish to translate A Time To Love etc. first, it’s perfectly all right with me.

Very little has been happening here. I’ve been studying Spanish, and Adele has been painting, but the days have been pleasant because I’ve found ideas for two new novels, and a few months ago when I finished The Deer Park I felt so tired and empty that I thought I should never have an idea again. By the way, as we did with Barbary Shore, I think it might be a help to you if I characterized the speech of the more important characters.

Eitel — speaks like an educated cultured man with considerable precision and grammatical correctness.

Sergius — Speaks well too.

Elena — Speaks with a certain coarseness, but it should not be exaggerated. The Japanese equivalent of someone from the middle class or the lower middle class would be right.

Lulu — speaks in a mixture of everything. She is self-educated, and speaks like an actress, that is, she is more interested in the sound and the emotions of what she is saying.

Teppis — Perhaps the most difficult to render, because I believe I have done something there which is unique in America’s literature, and yet very real. He is unbelievably pompous, and yet extremely vulgar. He both acts as a big-shot, a “public figure” and betrays his crudity every time he opens his mouth. He is also very rhetorical, fancy, over-ornate. The word faggola which he uses about Teddy Pope is a very [common] word in American slang. It comes from fag which is an ugly word for homosexual about the equivalent of Kike for Jew or Wop for Italian. But faggola is a very crude and yet fancy diminutive for fag. You may indeed have to make up such a word. I go to such lengths on this word to exemplify the problem.

Munshin — is very slangy, and uses the Hollywood argot of big words used correctly next to vulgar words. “I hear angel’s voices in the background — only not full of shit.” He is more intelligent and more educated than Teppis, a little less gross in language but essentially similar except that he’s younger.

Marion Faye: Speaks correctly and tersely except when he used slang. But he uses slang purposely, consciously. He is very economical in the way he expresses himself.

Dorothea Faye: Like a rough tough old actress. Speaks more like a man than [line missing]. These are of course only indications, and I have no idea whether the Japanese language contains greater or fewer distinctions of class and culture and idiosyncrasy in speech, but I thought you might be interested and that it would be of some help when you prepare to translate the book.

[. . .]

Do give my regards to your wife and children, and accept Adele’s and mine.

Warmly,
Norman

117. To Editors of One: The Homosexual Magazine

Mexico
Friday, September 24, 1954

Dear Editors,

So, here finally, is the “famous” article. I think it’s far from being extraordinary, as indeed I apologize somewhere in the course of it, but I imagine the important thing is that it’s a signed article rather than what it says. I hope it isn’t too long for you. James Barr mentioned something about the ideal length being between 500 and 1000 words, but since I’m irredeemably windy it’s gone quite a bit over that. If you want to trim just a little, I’m agreeable to cutting out lines seven to fifteen on page 2. I must request you, though, to clear any other cuts with me.

Now, something which you may find somewhat irritating. And I hate like hell to request it, but I think it’s necessary. Perhaps you’ve read in the papers that The Naked and the Dead has been sold to Paul Gregory. It happens to be half-true. He’s in the act of buying it, but the deal has not yet been closed. For this reason I wonder if you could hold off publication for a couple of months? I don’t believe that the publication of this article would actually affect the sale, but it is a possibility, especially since Gregory — shall we put it this way — may conceivably be homosexual. For that matter, there are times when I wish some deus ex machina would louse up the sale, but since other people besides myself are involved in the negotiations, I feel it would be fairer to them to make this request of you. I see that the December issue is all-fiction. Could you hold this then until the January issue? I ask for no longer time because the negotiations may well go on forever, and I certainly don’t ask you to hold this forever. But on the other hand, it’s quite likely that by January the deal will be closed. And even if it isn’t, by that time it will be time enough. If you want to hold it longer, that of course is up to you.

There’s no need for a token payment.

Now, for a title. I can’t think of one. Perhaps I will in the next few weeks, but in the meantime if you have any thoughts on it, would you let me know? However, please don’t print a title without consulting me first.

My wife and I will be at this address until October 12th. After that we’ll be on the road until October 20th. Post-October 20th, mail can be sent to me care of Charles Rembar, 521 Fifth Ave. New York, N.Y.

Sincerely,
Norman Mailer

118. To William Styron

Mexico
October 7, 1954

Dear Bill,

This’ll be comparatively brief since it’s our last week here, and along with all the other horrors of getting oneself together, is the business of back correspondence. Anyway, I just wanted to say a few things and leave real conversation for later — we’ll be back about the twentieth of October.

Mainly to give a salud for beginning your novel, and a commiseration to Rose who will learn that your previous depressions were gaiety compared to the GLOOM which is to come. Since you say it’s to be a big effort, let’s hope it’s a mountain, the peak of the century with (be honest, Norman,) no competition but a mountain I’ll do some day.

I know how you feel about the house, for I had a painfully strong yes-no set of reactions about the house I once owned in Putney, Vermont. That failed because it was too far out, and my first marriage was souring badly. But my advice on the basis of my character, not yours which I’d hardly pretend to know, is to take the house as something not necessarily permanent. What made me love and hate and finally flee the house I had was that I saw myself living in it the rest of my life, and that was a great error. Far better for me to have seen it as a potential long-term base of operations. Anyway, I know Adele and Susy and I will love it for your invited weekends. (My daughter, by the way, unlike most five years olds is more interesting than most adults I know, and there are times when I can talk to her for more than an hour without realizing how odd it is not to be bored. Maybe it’s because Susy has a Spanish accent.)

Vance is in New York now. Who knows why he neglected to send his book. Maybe fear, maybe he just never go around to it. Tina we’ve seen a great deal of since he’s left, and we really like her now, very much. Never thought I would, but there’s an awful lot to Tina, and deep-down she’s very good. I find myself sort of wanting to run interference for her. She’ll meet people, they’ll often take a quick dislike to her, as indeed I did years ago, and I find myself wanting to tell them “Look, she’s really a great girl.”

I’ve spent this summer reading all or almost all of our contemporaries, and my opinion of us (and incidentally From Here to Eternity) has gone up greatly. Most of them are just no goddamn good, and I cannot understand how people get so wild about Carson McCullers, say. Boy, I think what we need is better Personalities. We need a handle. Otherwise they’ll come to us like old Faulkner when we’re too old to do anything about being a celebrity but make idiots of ourselves. Of course now that Naked may be sold, I’ll probably become a celebrity. Actually I’m half disgusted with myself for getting into selling it. (The deal, by the way, is not yet made. Lawyers, lawyers, lawyers.) I’ll try to explain why I feel so queasy about letting it go. But that’s for when I see you and Rose.

Don’t bother to answer this, for indeed there’s no time. We saw George Mandel down here, and got to like him (although he gives me just a little pain in the ass cause he talks even more than I do and he is truly wild about you. Anyway, he said, “You know, Bill’s got just one little fault — he’s the biggest fucking hypochondriac that ever hit New York.) So, if he’s right, get your tottering liver into a chair, and work, m’bucko, work.

Love to Rose from Adele and me,
Norm

119. To Paul Gregory

128 Willow Street, Brooklyn, NY
November 1, 1954

Dear Paul,

I’ve been meaning to send you this letter for some time, but ever since Adele and I got back from Mexico, we’ve been apartment-hunting, furniture-hunting, etc, and are just now beginning to come out of the woods.

I write this with some hesitation because I’ve been a great meddler almost from birth, and often think I meddled too much with Harold Hecht on his abortive attempt to make Naked into a movie. But since Cy seems to feel that you’d be interested in these particular opinions, I’ll venture into something about which I know very little.

By the newspapers (for whatever information or misinformation they give) I read that you’d signed Bob Mitchum for Naked. Now, assuming it’s true, it occurred to me that you planned to have him play Croft, or possibly Red, or possibly Hearn. I have no quarrel with the latter two, and no quarrel with Mitchum whom I met once, and who seemed a good enough guy. But I’m a little worried about him playing Croft for two reasons. The most important is that Croft is a small man, and since a great deal of the dramatic action of the movie will revolve about his domination of the platoon (moral domination, spiritual domination, evil domination, what-you-will) I’m afraid that Mitchum by virtue of his height and obvious toughness will convey something quite opposite. He’ll be dominating the men just because he’s bigger and tougher than any of the others. The other reason concerns Mitchum as an actor. He’s often been excellent, but I’m afraid that he may have just a little too much pride about “walking” through a role. And I don’t know if he can convey the sort of fanaticism, overweening pride, the virtually religious intensity of a man like Croft. Of course, you probably know much more about this by now after shooting Davis Grubb’s book [The Night of the Hunter] where I understand Mitchum plays a mad preacher.

The actor I thought of for Croft is Brando. I don’t know how you and Charles Laughton feel about him, but generally he’s impressed me more each time out. Many people of course mentioned him to me in the past as being ideal for Croft, but since he has so little physical resemblance, I rather shrugged it off. However, his performance in The Wild One which contained and projected so much suppressed violence together with a certain “spirituality” made me feel that he could give quite a remarkable performance as Croft, and since he is a little man, little certainly next to Mitchum, Brando as Croft and Mitchum as either Red or Hearn would make for considerable dramatic excitement. Naturally, I have no idea if Brando’s available, if you two want him, if his salary would fit the budget, and a thousand other such things, but I throw it out for what it’s worth. If you’re at all interested, and haven’t seen The Wild One, I suggest you do.

I have a few very tentative other ideas on casting, but if Charles Laughton and you feel that you’d rather not have me increasing the complications on this, I understand only too well. Do give my regards to Mr. Laughton.

Yours cordially,
Norman

120. To Mr. Cole

320 E. 55th Street, New York, NY
November 16, 1954

Dear Mr. Cole,

I regret that I cannot answer your letter in the sort of full detail which would be of most use to you but I am very busy now, and so I hope the little I give you will be of use.

In the past the writers who influenced me most were probably the major American novelists of the 20s and thirties, particularly Dos Passos and Farrell, at least so far as The Naked and the Dead is concerned. However, Tolstoy (especially Anna Karenina) was perhaps the biggest single influence on that book. Barbary Shore was influenced very much by the ideas of a relatively unknown French novelist named Jean Malaquais (that is to say, his personal acquaintance rather than his works), and my last book The Deer Park which is to be published some time in 1955 has been directly or even indirectly influenced by no particular author I could name. Perhaps a vague link to Stendhal, another to [Alberto] Moravia, a little to [André] Gide, A little to [Marcel] Proust, but even in naming them I think I underline the connection too much.

At present the two contemporaries for whom I feel the greatest affinity are William Styron and James Jones. Not that I think the work of any of the three of us can be compared really, but they are good friends, and I believe it would be safe to say that our literary values as opposed to our themes and styles are often surprisingly similar.

The mention of Melville is well-chosen. I was thinking consciously of the mountain in Naked as a sort of symbolic equivalent to the white whale, and of Croft to Ahab, but the symbolic “ideas” were probably influenced by a book by the late F.O. Matthiessen called as I remember American Renaissance which treated the themes of Melville, Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Thoreau. I hope this is of some use to you.

Yours cordially,
Norman Mailer

121. To Basil Mailer

320 E. 55th Street, New York, NY
November 17, 1954

Dear Basil,

Thanks a hell of a lot for your letter which I shall treasure among other things as being the only letter I’ll get from someone in movie-making which is dispassionate — the same cold objective family blood must run in both our veins. Also, for a moment of really wild hilarity when I read it over just now. It’s your reference to Harry Watt, and how he’s like Eitel, and how Harry likes my books. And at that moment I realized, “My God, if Eitel really were a person, he would like my books too”. But I am delighted, seriously, that you liked The Deer Park, and I agree with you about the faults. I’m not absolutely sure (once in awhile I think it was right to do it the way I did it) but generally I wish that I had written it all in third person, or autobiographically for each person, but the fact of the matter is that I didn’t choose the form, but rather, to be a little pompous about it, the form chose me. Which is merely to say, that I just couldn’t write the book in third person, try as I did for a period of three or four months. And on the other hand, I didn’t feel the imaginative reserves or whatever to enter each person’s mind. Particularly, this was true of Sergius. Every time I tried to write him in the third person, he became even more colorless and lifeless, and since whatever little affirmation the book has comes in his final statement as an artist, and since I couldn’t give it to him in third person (there’s nothing more difficult to make credible than a young man who is going to be a good writer) I had to take the tortured path of having him write in and out of things, so that at least, at the end, the reader might (I’m afraid they don’t) see the total of the book as Sergius’ book, and therefore believe that he will be a good writer. But the problem is really larger. I’ve noticed in other American writers as well as in myself that as we get older, there seems to be a progressive failure of nerve (which phrase I just used in a letter to your father [Louis] this morning). When I wrote Naked I had the kind of ignorant confidence which had me ready to try anything. If Naked had needed the Shah of Brat-mah-phur to make an entrance, I’d have run to the library, read fifty pages on Hindu philosophy, and come back ready to enter the Shah’s mind. Now that I know more, I have less confidence, I feel I understand the world less, and what I’ve discovered is that to write a really good book in third person, the one thing you must have is a world-view, be it right or wrong, simple or complex. Without that, it becomes almost impossible to feel your material, dominate it, what have you, and so the tendency is to retreat to the first person, because there you need no overall view of life, you only need one person’s perceptions. Since The Deer Park demanded entering other people’s minds, its cockeyed form developed. In a funny way, taking realistic account of my infirmities as a writer, the form is organic, it grew out of what I was capable of doing during these particular years.

Anyway, I thought this might interest you. In a peculiar way, novel-writing reproduces in capsule the problems of making a good movie. The initial conception always has to deal with the productive realities, except that instead of a contract star whose acting is limited, and a producer whose eye is on the budget and schedule, and so forth, these external restrictions just sit in parts of the writer’s head.

The [Tallulah] Bankhead story, alas. It’s not true. I never met her. But I hear the story everywhere. Probably her press agent put it out. In irritation (because the story has me by implication shifting my feet and blushing to the ears) I spread a counter rumor. The new legend (all mine) has it that I retorted, “Yes, and you’re the young lady who doesn’t know how to.” This, too, has spread, although not as completely, but once or twice I have actually heard people say to me, “Your answer was wonderful.” Publicity marches on!

I’ll be very happy to send you a copy when the damn things are finally printed. If you ever want to go to Hollywood again, (as indeed who doesn’t) you’ll have to change your last name.

Commiserating with you on the Advertising Films, and hoping you get something of your own soon —

Yours,
Norman

122. To Robert Lindner

320 E. 55th Street, New York, NY
November 29, 1954

Dear Bob,

Just a shortie to tell you what a good time we had, and to let you know that there’s no news on the big thing yet. I’ve submitted it [The Deer Park] simultaneously to Knopf and Random House (please don’t mention Knopf, nor for that matter that I’m in the act of changing publishers) and in a funny way I’m hoping that both houses don’t want the book with equal enthusiasm–, mainly because I had to use such pressure to make them both agree to the simultaneous business that it’s going to leave me with an enemy when I turn one down. I’ll let you know as soon as there is news. Maybe by next Monday.

My inner life continues with much stimulation. I’ve gotten on to something in advertising which I believe is pretty big. It’s the old thing I discovered from Lipton’s [marijuana] that tremendous truth is to be found in the cliche if you crack open the shell. As a matter of fact I feel a little bit these days as if I’m a man from Mars. I walk around (even when I’m not taking Lipton’s) really listening and concentrating on what I hear. On exactly what is said. It’s amazing what one discovers if one only listens. And of course my great mental weakness in the past has been one of not concentrating. Now I feel as if everything I see, do, feel, and hear, is in italics.

By the way, I’m a little pissed off at you for your attitude on Lipton’s. Mainly at the element of condescension, the feeling that you know me. Like Gide I scream) Please do not understand me too quickly. If our activities were reversed, I would be extremely interested in what you had to say, and what you thought about it. And, by the by, I don’t ascribe magic powers to Lipton’s. For anyone to get a radically new insight, some sort of magic or catalyst — if you will — is necessary, be it love, liquor, psychoanalysis, religion, or what have you, and this happens to be mine. You can of course be right, and I think no better, hear no better, etc., but why be sure ahead of time? Do you know everything? Am I that simple? There exists the danger in you, Bob, and I say this to a beloved friend, that you can end up as some sort of avant-garde pater-familias. One is either truly radical or merely a liberal with muscles.

Anyway, when next I see you, I have three large subjects to expound on — 1) The artist and psychopathy, 2) Advertising and the modern state, 3) The illusion of psychoanalysis. Where and when did the German lecturer come to birth in me. But do remind me because I really have so much to discuss.

By the way, Dissent needs money. If you want to send them a few bucks, great, if you don’t, please do forget about it. I feel embarrassed mentioning it. Also, as usual we left half of ourselves behind. In this case, various items from Susie’s wardrobe. If Johnnie has run across them could we put you to the annoyance of mailing them?

My love to Johnnie. I miss all of you.

Con amor,
Norman

123. To Adeline Lubell Naiman

November 29, 1954

Dear Lubby,

You’re wrong. I’m not angry at all, and I’m not hurt — mainly because there was neither malice nor venom in your reactions. Only love. That’s true, and what more can one ask from one’s friends. As a matter of fact while I would quarrel here and there with some of your specific reactions, I think you hit the book well — at least it expresses very well what I feel about the book when I’m down on it. There are times when I think it’s very good, there are times when I think I failed completely. And when I do, I think less articulately along the lines you criticized.

Your sexual squeamishness vis-a-vis The Deer Park did bother me. If you react that way then God what a host of others will. You know, Lubby, I think it’s my blind spot. Outside of licking feet or supping on shit there’s almost nothing in sex which shocks me, and I find it very hard to understand why others are shocked. So the end of the Teppis chapter strikes me as necessary, absolutely necessary. I’ll explain why when I see you. Parenthetically, and secretly, it has caused me such a set of out and out fights at Rinehart that I may have to leave there yet.

On Eitel, I don’t know if you got exactly what I was driving at. Which of course can be my fault. I didn’t want to show him so much as a lost genius — the book is not a tragedy, but a horror tale — as rather a relatively decent man who can no longer act in relatively decent ways. There just isn’t the room left to be decent and independent. If one wants to be decent, one must give up all thought of being an individual as well. Which is indeed what Eitel does. That’s what’s so horrible about America today. It doesn’t destroy most people, it just injects them with a touch of zombie.

Anyway, as a favor to me, I wish you would reread the book when it comes out. Most of the people who’ve read the book twice like it better the second time. I think it’s because its groove is so peculiar that the reader fights it the first time.

The form. Ah. It ended up being the only way I could write the thing. And indeed the only burn I did was in your reference to Angus. The manly Mr. Cameron with his pipe and his Stalinism and his homilies. Sweet Lubby, I could have told you years ago that when a writer is at the height of his powers and confidence he writes in third person, and the reasons are a little more interesting and extended than what Angus gives. But writers are frail, and often suffer no confidence in themselves, and what is one to do during those years — do no writing at all? One does the best one can, and writhes in the form that permits one to write. I spent three or four months trying to do The Deer Park in third person, and it just wouldn’t go.

Your account of your own life made me sad. I won’t say more — indeed how could I since I really don’t understand you no matter how much I like you. But, Lubby.

My own life goes fairly well, in fact better than in years. To my surprise I have learned that I love Adele very much, much more than I thought, and right now I’m more content being married than I ever was living with her. Sometimes I think that while women are the ones who desire marriage, it is men who can accept it most easily.

I’d love to come to the party, but we’ve let too many things slide on the house, and anyway there’ll be small opportunity to talk. Can you ever ever get in? We have an extra bed now, and after Susy goes there’ll be beds for you and Lucky. Have a good party, and write soon, and know that nothing is changed. I mean it.

Love,
Norman