The Luck of Friendship

by James Laughlin

  So although it is a great, almost overpowering, professional setback for me, I don’t feel altogether hopeless about it.

  Your advice is good. I have nothing more to expect from Broadway and if I go on writing plays, it must be with an absolute uncompromising fidelity to myself alone, that is, quite purely from now on. They say, on good authority, that the life-expectancy of an American literary talent is about 15 years and I have already long-exceeded that mark, since I got my first pay-check for writing at sixteen and have written every day since that I was able to punch the type-writer keys and very few days when I wasn’t can be remembered. But I think the pressure of things to say is as great as ever, if not greater, but a lot of the native energy is depleted and the time has come to let up a little, shift gears, work under less steam. It would be a good thing if I could stop altogether for a while, but I find my daily existence almost unbearably tedious without beginning it at the typewriter. Frank and I plan to go abroad, this year, for a really extended stay, in fact we are planning to go all the way around the world, beginning in Italy, then Spain, then North Africa, then Greece and Istanbul, then Helsinki for a festival production of some plays of mine, then on from the near East to the Orient, to Ceylon and India and Japan. Thence back to America, when it will be necessary to start trying to “make a living” again, as I will have nothing left but my bonds by that time. Early next month I’m going to try my hand at directing a play. The play is Donald Windham’s family-portrait called The Starless Air, structurally inept but very true and poetic, and there is a chance, if this Houston try-out goes well, I might return to the States to stage it for Broadway about Xmas time: it’s about a family Christmas dinner in Georgia.

  May I start sending you short-stories for the proposed collection? I have them with me and am getting them in shape. They will have to be typed at your end of the line, and I think they ought to be sold by subscription only, since I want to include some, such as “Two on a Party,” that might precipitate an awful row in the present time of reaction.

  Ever,

  Tenn.

  « • »

  Atkinson: Brooks Atkinson (1894–1984), American theater critic for the New York Times from 1925 to 1960 and a generally positive advocate for TW.

  Anouilh: Jean-Marie-Lucien-Pierre Anouilh (1910–1967), French playwright.

  100. TL—1

  April 11, 1953 [New York]

  DEAR TENN:

  Thanks for your very swell letter. I’m glad that you have been encouraged by lots of letters from people who liked Camino. They are right and the dopes are wrong. But it all takes time. You must just be patient. The world catches up with good things slowly. You’ve just got to develop a tough hide. I went through all this with New Directions. For years almost all the reviews of all the books were ridicule and scorn. You just have to sit tight and pay no attention and believe in yourself. It may be harder for you because you had a lot of success fairly early in the game. That makes you even more vulnerable for them because they really hate anybody who is truly creative. Most of these critics, I think, are thwarted writers anyway. But thousands of people want and need what only you can give them, so just you stick at it. Don’t compromise. Just write what wants to come out of the heart of you.

  By all means send along the stories as soon as you can. But I don’t like the idea of a limited edition. No reason to keep the bulk of the stories from the wide public that would want them. Why not rather do a public volume and save the pieces that might cause trouble for a separate limited edition? Actually, I think that you may want to lengthen and extend “Two on a Party.” I know Audrey doesn’t like the piece, but I think it just makes her nervous. I think it is a terrific theme and you may want to develop it into a short novel, which could be the pièce de résistance of a limited edition which could also include “Hard Candy” and the one about the farmers in the South [“Kingdom of Earth”].

  I hope you’ll be keeping along on the poems, too. I like that idea of matching volumes of poems and stories.

  And PLEASE rush us the final version of Camino so that we can get it set up. Everybody is talking about the play and it’s a shame we don’t have the book out right now. I know you’ve had problems, but do try to let us get started.

  Re Gadg, nobody who really had a “natural love of poetry” could have behaved the way he did over his former Communist friends. There are limits. Gadg loves money and fame. I hope they make him miserable.

  Directing Donnie’s play sounds fine. I wish you would direct your own, so that people couldn’t keep changing what is in them.

  And going to India sounds fine. That was for me the great revelation of a lifetime. When you get ready to go there I’ll make you up a list of places and things and people. Maybe you will settle down there. I could very easily, I think, except perhaps for the heat and the food problems.

  Life moves along here like pieces of wood being pushed through a sawmill. This job is no bed of roses. I’m under constant pressure from reactionary Trustees who would like the magazine to be a kind of watered down Atlantic Monthly. I suppose they will knock my head off one of these days, but I’m giving them a battle. The reaction abroad is good, which is what counts for me.

  Best to Frank,

  [James Laughlin]

  « • »

  the dopes: He is referring to the New York critics who were nearly unanimous in their hostility toward Camino Real.

  Re Gadg: Elia Kazan testified before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) where he identified former colleagues as Communists. In doing so, Kazan angered and alienated many people in the Hollywood and the theater communities for decades.

  Donnie’s play: The Starless Air, which TW directed in Houston that year.

  India [ . . . ] revelation of a lifetime: In late 1952 JL went to India, taking Gertrude Huston as his secretary. Indian publishers had asked for Ford Foundation assistance in publishing Western books on a large scale, and JL went to assess the situation for the Foundation.

  This job: During his tenure at the Ford Foundation, JL was continually at odds with both liberal and conservative political forces (which had their own agendas), while he was dedicated (as always) to art.

  the magazine [ . . . ] watered down: Perspectives USA. JL did, in fact, prepare several supplements for The Atlantic Monthly on other cultures such as India and Burma.

  101. TLS—2

  [May 9, 1953] [Houston]

  DEAR JAY:

  I just got your letter and I thank you for your patience and understanding about this problem of getting the script ready for publication. Here is the introduction to the book [Camino Real]. I had meant to devote this AM, Saturday, to getting the book together, but last night a “crisis” occurred between myself and Windham. He accused me of “completely re-writing” his play [The Starless Air] while he was keeping “TV” and interview appointments, and have accordingly ruined it. It threw me into such a despondency I couldn’t sleep and this whole day I have been immobilized except for sitting and taking notes on an afternoon run-through. But tomorrow, Sunday, I really will buckle down to the script [Camino Real]. I’m sorry to say the “Bigelow script” was hopeless. It was just a typed up copy of the prompt book and simply couldn’t be published, as I say in this introduction. If I weren’t involved in this directing job I could turn in a much smoother script for publication. However this one that I will mail to you on Monday will only need a little brushing up which I could do from proofs when I get back to New York about the end of next week. Affectionately,

  10

  « • »

  introduction to the book: The “Foreword” for Camino Real. This essay had appeared, in slightly different form, in the New York Times, March 15, 1953.

  102. TLS—1

  Jan. 6, 1954 [Key West]

  DEAR JAY:

  I do hope this reaches you before you take flight to Europe as I wanted to wish you New Year and Bon Voyage and good luck with you know who. Fate struck me a hard bl
ow in a bad place. I came down with an exquisitely painful and, worse, depressingly sordid condition called “thrombosed hemorrhoids” and have been in the hospital with it more than a week. They were going to operate, then decided to see if it would clear up naturally, which it has done, though it may be that I’ll have to have the hemorrhoid veins taken out next Spring to avoid another attack.

  I would have mailed the stories (and a few poems of dubious merit) if this had not removed me from work. I’ll get them off in the next day or two. I’m being discharged from the hospital today and Grandfather and I are going directly from here to the airport to catch a plane to Miami. Frank came down to look out for Grandfather but, after driving the car down to Miami, will fly back to New York to pick up Mr. Moon and bring him down to Key West with us, all very complicated and expensive.

  I haven’t heard from Maria for a long time, the longest time she’s ever gone without writing me. I’m a little worried, though perhaps she just doesn’t know where I am.

  I’ll see you in the Spring.

  Ever,

  Tenn.

  « • »

  Mr. Moon: TW’s first bulldog.

  103. TL—2

  10 March 1954 [New York]

  DEAR TENN,

  I am ashamed to see how much time has passed since I have been meaning to write you—at least five days. The truth is I didn’t want to write at the office or through the Dictaphone because my secretary is new and I don’t know how discreet, and anything connected with Jay and Maria I put out of my mind there if only because of the intricate position of Gertrude in the office setup. I know you’ll understand! And during this period for one reason or another I’ve been almost pilloried to that office.

  I don’t presume to know what’s happening in London, despite all that Jay tells me, and like you I could not even dare surmise! What you say about whether or not they love each other truly is so very right, and of course love itself is a chameleon. I sometimes think that the tragedy of so many of us is that our sexual type is often not the type we can live with! I don’t mean to be suggesting anything here; I just never know, and always feel that I cannot judge other people’s problems, no matter how much sympathy and understanding and intuition I can bring to them.

  [ . . . ]

  Yours ever,

  Robert M. MacGregor

  « • »

  anything connected with Jay and Maria: JL and Margaret Keyser Laughlin had separated in 1951 and subsequently divorced. Although he continued his longtime affair with Gertrude Huston, who was still designing books for New Directions, marriage to Gertrude was not an option because of his aunt Leila’s and his mother’s disapproval. JL was captivated by Maria Britneva but also found her constant effervescence wearing. He feared she would not be the steady manager and calm haven for him and the children that he wanted on the home front. (See also note to JL’s letter to TW of 12/18/48.)

  SECTION XI

  JL: Well, Tennessee got quite annoyed with me when I broke it off with Maria because he wanted . . . he wanted it. He enjoyed the threesome trips around Italy with Gore Vidal. He enjoyed that very much. It took some of the heat off Tennessee of keeping her amused, you know. I could keep her amused or Gore could keep her amused, and he was angry with me for letting her down. But I think gradually he got over it, I think so. The person who really told me no was Jack Heinz’s wife Drue. They met her and Drue said, “James, I forbid you to marry that woman.”

  « • »

  Jack Heinz’s wife Drue: H. J. “Jack” Heinz (1908–1987) and JL were boyhood friends in Pittsburgh (even attending the same Presbyterian church). They reconnected as adults when Jack was the head of Heinz Foods of “57 Varieties” fame. They became skiing companions, and Jack Heinz was the only outsider allowed to own stock in the Alta Ski Lift Company. (The stock was returned to JL upon Heinz’s death.) Drue, born Doreen Mary English, Heinz’s third wife, had a keen interest in literature and after JL’s death [1997] endowed the James Laughlin Award in Poetry given annually by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for a second volume of poems by an American poet to be published in the upcoming year. She continues to be an active patron of the arts.

  104. TLS—3

  5/29/54 [Tangier]

  DEAR BOB:

  Frank says he mailed the proofs to you yesterday. I’m sorry about the delay. I didn’t realize you were in a hurry for them. I only came across one serious error, the omission of a phrase in “Hard Candy” which made a sentence meaningless, and I wrote the omitted phrase in the margin. Two or three stories are still here as I haven’t yet read them. “Mattress,” “3 Players,” “Violin Case,” <“The Vine,” and “Widow Holly.”> As you have correct Mss. on these 5 it will be easy to check the proof at your end. That is, if there is a need for haste. I felt so fatigued, so run down, when I got on the boat that I knew I would loathe the stories if I read them. So I put it off till the last day of the voyage, when I was beginning to feel recovered. I liked most of them, especially “Two on a Party,” which I almost wish were the title story of the book. Frank is disturbed over having both “Hard Candy” and “Mysteries of the Joy Rio” in the book. I think there should be a note stating that the latter is actually a first draft of the title story but that we felt there was enough difference to justify printing both. I think it might obviate some criticism, and criticism should certainly be obviated wherever possible, don’t you think? I wonder if obviated is the right word . . .

  Now please do me this favor. Don’t distribute the book anywhere that my mother would be likely to get her hands on it. That is, around Saint Louis. It must not be displayed in windows or on counters anywhere. Don’t you agree? Or do you? My mother’s reaction is the only one that concerns me. I think she would be shocked to death by “Two on a Party”—although it seems that she did get hold of “One Arm” somehow or other. It still makes me shudder to think of her reaction! She has aged greatly since . . .

  Isn’t it awful to have conventional blood ties? You just can’t break them.

  Soon as we landed in Tangier we found ourselves involved in the turbulent lives of the Bowleses. Jane is hopeless enamored of an Arab woman in the grain-market, a courtship which has continued without success for six years, and Paul’s Arab, Ahmed, has moved out of his house, at least for Ramadan, a religious period of abstinence like our Lent, which is now going on here. A cannon which shakes the whole city is fired at 3 AM announcing that eating, drinking, fucking must stop. It is fired again at 7 PM to signal the resumption of these practices, but Ahmed says that total abstinence is necessary in the third practice. Paul is languishing, liver trouble and paratyphoid came on him with Ramadan.

  It appears that we have inherited Maria for the summer. A letter was waiting for me at Gibraltar in which she declared that she was brutally jilted and cannot stay in London, as everybody is sending her wedding presents and congratulatory messages. She is on a Mediterranean cruise to escape this humiliation. But she proposes to get off the boat at Corsica and come to Rome as she can’t face London again under the circumstances. Funny as it does sound, I do feel sorry for her. Why did Jay propose to her if he wasn’t prepared to go through with it? I wanted to have a quiet summer. . . . Of course when she arrives I will be happy to have her with us as she really does brighten a scene with her unquenchable spirits and love of fun. Jay says he was frightened of her vitality. Perhaps someone should have held his nose and made him swallow it for his own good. I can’t see how, unless he is going to marry Gertrude after all, he will ever find anybody that will give him the lively companionship he seems to want and need.

  Ever & truly, Tenn.

  « • »

  Ahmed: Ahmed ben Driss el Yacoubi (1928–1985), internationally acclaimed Moroccan painter.

  she was brutally jilted: Unable to face a confrontation with Maria, JL simply left for India and Japan in mid-March of 1954 on business for the Ford Foundation, leaving everyone else including TW and MacGregor to pick up the pieces.

&n
bsp; 105. TLS—1

  12/3/54 [Beverly Hills]

  DEAR JAY:

  I was surprised as you by Maria’s arrival on these shores. She had abandoned the idea when I last saw her or had any communication from her on the subject. Exactly five minutes after I had opened and read your letter, in Kazan’s room here, the phone rang and it was Maria! I can’t imagine how she made the trip. She sent me back the traveler’s checks and the apartment deposit which I had sent her in Italy, fearing she might go hungry or something, but she got a small film job and some TV so I guess her situation improved. As I say she’s a person who always gives more than she gets, she wants to be on the giving end and seems to resent, well, not resent but decline if possible any material assistance that she can do without. The help she needs is artistic and emotional, not material, primarily. Of course I am sorry if her presence in America complicates things for you or makes you uncomfortable. If I were you, though, I would see her whenever you can and just keep things on a warm, friendly basis. She says she is trying to get herself TV work in New York and it may be that I can find something for her to do in connection with the new play [Cat on a Hot Tin Roof], I do hope so. I will be glad to see her, myself, as I miss her jokes and companionship when I get anxious or blue over something, which is only too often.

  Saw an advance copy of Hard Candy out here and it looks great. You will get a copy of the new play soon as we get the final draft typed up next week in New York. Now must have my swim and start packing.