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Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/July 16, 1954: Difference between revisions
Lipton’s Journal/Correspondence of Robert Lindner and Norman Mailer/July 16, 1954 (view source)
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Dear Bob, | Dear Bob, | ||
I really enjoyed your masterpiece, and think that the grievous affliction of the lower lip had its one compensation in those pages of incomparable (shall we say Gregorian?) rhetoric. Anyway, Old Lippy, I hope this finds you in good health for I write in bad health. To begin with I developed the cruelest case of the piles driving down here, especially on those days through the Middle West and Texas where the temperature went above 100 and I did my seven hundred miles without stopping. And what a curious drive is that. Up at midnight and drive through the dawn (the best part) and then through the morning and the hot noon and the burning afternoon until we stop at four or five and collapse on a bed. Then, in Mexico where we arrived two weeks ago (after a week at my friend’s | I really enjoyed your masterpiece, and think that the grievous affliction of the lower lip had its one compensation in those pages of incomparable (shall we say Gregorian?) rhetoric. Anyway, Old Lippy, I hope this finds you in good health for I write in bad health. To begin with I developed the cruelest case of the piles driving down here, especially on those days through the Middle West and Texas where the temperature went above 100 and I did my seven hundred miles without stopping. And what a curious drive is that. Up at midnight and drive through the dawn (the best part) and then through the morning and the hot noon and the burning afternoon until we stop at four or five and collapse on a bed. Then, in Mexico where we arrived two weeks ago (after a week at my friend’s{{refn|An Arkansas native and novelist, Gwaltney (1921-1981) served in the army with {{NM}}, and introduced him to his sixth wife, [[Norris Church Mailer]].}} in Arkansas) I had to desert that liver diet until we found a house, and of course came down with one of my bitchy sore throats which has lasted a full week now and won’t go away until I get more of this home cooking—boiled beef and proteins etc. | ||
But the house we’ve found is really extraordinary. It’s an old Spanish colonial which is like a fortress, indeed looks like a jail from outside, and inside has the most beautiful garden, an enormous living room, with a ceiling over twenty feet high and old timbers exposed, and all kinds of rooms and balconies and a fabulous dining room which looks like something out of a Dutch painting—honey-colored woods, with green ceiling and massive but cheerful, and wonderful furnishings with Spanish antiques—a fine line of furniture in its time, and one great added charm which is all kinds of child’s surprises, so that you turn on a faucet here, and there in the garden a little fountain begins to flow, and orchids grow on the trees, and there’s a cobblestone patio in the back, and internal windows in rooms which look down on other rooms, and a solarium where you can sun bare-ass | But the house we’ve found is really extraordinary. It’s an old Spanish colonial which is like a fortress, indeed looks like a jail from outside, and inside has the most beautiful garden, an enormous living room, with a ceiling over twenty feet high and old timbers exposed, and all kinds of rooms and balconies and a fabulous dining room which looks like something out of a Dutch painting—honey-colored woods, with green ceiling and massive but cheerful, and wonderful furnishings with Spanish antiques—a fine line of furniture in its time, and one great added charm which is all kinds of child’s surprises, so that you turn on a faucet here, and there in the garden a little fountain begins to flow, and orchids grow on the trees, and there’s a cobblestone patio in the back, and internal windows in rooms which look down on other rooms, and a solarium where you can sun bare-ass of which there is no greater aphrodisiac—it’s cool, doc. And all for 1500 pesos a month or $120. But of course we had to look and look to find this place. | ||
Things at Rinehart turned out beautifully. Ted{{LJ:Amussen}} gave the book to the other young editors in the place and they all turned in enthusiastic reports and so Stan{{LJ:Rinehart}} would have had to buck his editorial department and instead retired into sulky silence, not even seeing me the last day I was there. And Ted plans to push the book in February—its new publication date. They accepted the book as it stood, and I in delight offered to take out the page on the orgy at which point Ted looked at me somberly, soberly, and said, “I sure wish you would, Norman.” So it’s out. And frankly I’m glad because it was bad writing as it stood, and the orgy will be larger now since people will imagine it. But the big surprise for me was Ted who stayed strong as a rock all through it as I believe I wrote to you. | Things at Rinehart turned out beautifully. Ted{{LJ:Amussen}} gave the book to the other young editors in the place and they all turned in enthusiastic reports and so Stan{{LJ:Rinehart}} would have had to buck his editorial department and instead retired into sulky silence, not even seeing me the last day I was there. And Ted plans to push the book in February—its new publication date. They accepted the book as it stood, and I in delight offered to take out the page on the orgy at which point Ted looked at me somberly, soberly, and said, “I sure wish you would, Norman.” So it’s out. And frankly I’m glad because it was bad writing as it stood, and the orgy will be larger now since people will imagine it. But the big surprise for me was Ted who stayed strong as a rock all through it as I believe I wrote to you. | ||