The Luck of Friendship

by James Laughlin

  Well, we are pressing forward with the book, which should be ready soon, and then all can see for themselves how good it is.

  Bob showed me the new poem, the one for Frank [“A Separate Poem”], and I think it is extremely beautiful. Knowing the circumstances, I am particularly moved by it. But even if I didn’t know the inside story, I would rate it high among your poems. David [Ford] tells me that there will be no problem about fitting it into the end of the new edition of Winter of Cities, as it just fits. I have typed out a fresh copy of it, which is enclosed for you, and I will keep other copies for you here, in case you need them. I hope I have gotten your markings for the spacing correct. If anything looks wrong, please mark it up again and shoot it back to me by airmail, so we can catch it in the proofs for the book.

  I gather from Bob that, for the present at least, you would prefer not to go ahead with that idea I discussed of letting the Graphic Arts Center of the Pratt Institute do a handprinted portfolio with illustrations by some fine artist on this particular poem. But we can talk about that later. They are very keen to do something of yours in this elegant format, and perhaps there is some other text that would be suitable, or they could settle on one of the stories. I don’t think they want to do anything that is very long because of the handprinting aspect. They would, of course, consult with you about the suitability of the artist to be chosen.

  As Bob may have told you, Ann’s mother passed away the end of last week, so we have been much occupied with that. It was, as they say, “for the best,” as she had a mass of ghastly ailments and certainly wasn’t enjoying life at all. A really wonderful woman and we will miss her sorely.

  As ever,

  James Laughlin

  « • »

  untimely closing of Milk Train: A revival directed by Tony Richardson opened on January 1, 1964, and closed in less than a week.

  the new poem, the one for Frank: TW wrote “A Separate Poem” for Frank Merlo. It was added to In the Winter of Cities when that volume was published as a paperbook in 1964.

  David: David Ford was ND’s production manager at the time.

  143. TLS—1

  3/6/64 [Key West]

  DEAR JAY AND BOB:

  I have a big favor to ask you in regard to the book of Milk Train. I’ve thought about it almost continually and it seems to me that inserting the “errata” slip is not an answer. I think the only answer is to insert new pages in the unbound books. The “errata” is too big and too damaging to be solved by a slip in the book, it is too terribly embarrassing to me and to you as the publishers of the book and of all my other books. This play is the last long play that I can possibly write, but it is an important play, and not just to me. It should not be degraded at birth. Please don’t let it be.

  What I suggest is that you withhold all royalties on this book, I don’t need them, don’t want them, I only need and want—desperately—a book that is the book of the play that I wrote over a period of several years, under the most awful difficulties, a play that tore me to pieces but which I did manage to create on paper regardless of its two disasters on stage.

  It seems to me that it should be possible to insert the corrected pages as quickly as the “errata” slip, and that if I abjure royalties on the book-sales till its full cost has been recuperated, the just thing for you to do is to use for distribution the unbound copies and have them bound with the new pages, not the slip. A friend of mine who works in a New York bookshop tells me that “errata” slips are usually torn out of a book by the bookshop managers, since they discourage sales.

  We have been together such a long time and we are not just business associates but trusted friends. Psychologically the mutilation of my last play in print is like a “coup de grace.” Please don’t let it happen. It would leave such a terrible scar. I have read so many of your books and there’s never been a printer’s mistake of any consequence in them before.

  If you think I am making too much out of this, it’s because you don’t understand what I have been through these past two years, or more, and what I know is before me. But I know you must know that I devoted my life to my work and it isn’t right for it to end with an “errata” slip that can’t possibly clear up the errors.

  [ . . . ]

  Audrey told me that the publication date was the twentieth of February and it seems to me that setting it, now, in April, is, at least from my view-point, too much a delay. Can’t it be earlier than that?

  I will be in New York very soon, on my way to Europe, and if we can get together, I hope that something in this letter, or between the lines of it, will have persuaded you to make certain that the book goes out as a thing worth respecting. Yours,

  10.

  « • »

  insert new pages in the unbound books: In a letter dated the same day, MacGregor wrote to TW that the manufacturer was taking responsibility and that instead of printing an errata slip, all copies from the warehouse and elsewhere that could be recovered would be sent to the bindery to have the four pages removed and corrected pages tipped in.

  144. TLS—1

  [before March 12, 1964] [Key West]

  DEAR BOB:

  I am very grateful to you for coming to the same conclusion as I did, in my letter crossing yours, about what to do with the book. I think it’s the only thing that we could do, we couldn’t let the book go out with an errata slip that would be so embarrassing to us both.

  Please do try to push the insertion of the new pages ahead as fast as possible. I know there will be a problem of page numbering. When I make insertions in a script I use the addition of alphabetical letters such as 42A, 42B, 42C, 42D and so forth till I arrive at the following number. I don’t think such an expedient would compromise the book as I dare say everyone knows that this play was beset with very special problems.

  I am very ill and am starting north tomorrow. Mother is apparently in about the same condition as she wrote me yesterday that she had a nurse with her. So I am going to go north by way of Saint Louis. I feel that this will be our last meeting, and I think that I would feel awful if I didn’t see her again.

  How I hope that I will see this last long play come out as soon as possible without mistakes in its printing, it would mean so very much to me now!

  I saw nothing wrong in the proof of “A Separate Poem.” As for the publication of Summer and Smoke and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, I would rather see the latter play put first because I think it is better, I mean put first on the cover and inside, too. I don’t think the cover should say “Two Versions.” I think the explanation of the two versions should be on the cover-flap or in a short introduction that one of us could write, saying that this was the re-write of the play that I had hoped to have performed in England, but that couldn’t be performed because, by the time I arrived, the original version was already in production.

  I’m afraid I couldn’t stand more than four days in Saint Louis: then will fly on to New York: after that, London, Rome, or Athens. I plan to give my brother my power-of-attorney so that I won’t be plagued with all that cheque-signing. I will be traveling alone, apparently no other way, but I have an old friend in Europe that I can turn to.

  Frederick was pleased with the cover design for his poems and I think his anticipation of their coming out keeps him happy, as it should. He understands, he says, as well as I do why it is wrong for us to try to go on together. We can’t help each other any longer, and if we tried to, we would probably do nothing but hurt each other. Sic transit.

  Affectionately,

  Tennessee

  « • »

  the publication of Summer and Smoke and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale: During rehearsals for the original 1948 Broadway run of Summer and Smoke, TW was in Rome writing a new version of the play he called The Eccentricities of a Nightingale but he arrived in New York too late for the new script to be used, so he put his revision away. The dual edition of Eccentricities and Summer and Smoke was published by ND in 1964.


  145. TL—1

  May 1964 [Key West] [received June 1, 1964] [New York]

  DEAR BOB:

  Thanks for the books. I’m back in Key West trying to decide, what, if anything, I ought to do or where I ought to go next. Marion [Vaccaro] is here with me but she’s got to leave tomorrow and I might leave with her as this is not a happy place to be alone in. I guess no place is a good place to be alone in.

  It seems that The Eccentricities of a Nightingale is going out on the summer circuit, opening in late June and if possible I’ll come up and take a look at it, and also at the final version of the film, Iguana, which is going to open in Lincoln Center. Any excuse to keep on the move is welcome. It’s already getting oppressively hot here.

  Did you take a look at the crazy “novella” [The Knightly Quest]? You didn’t mention it, so I’m wondering if you think it’s a possible thing. Audrey didn’t seem to realize that it was meant as a fantasy, but that is probably due to the difference in styles between the time when I first worked on it and my later attempt to complete it.

  Yours,

  Tenn.

  « • »

  146. TL—1

  June 12, 1964 [New York]

  DEAR TENN,

  Bob gave me your novella, The Knightly Quest, to read, and I wanted to write you to tell you how much I liked it, how exciting I found it. You make those characters, who are fascinating people, completely vivid, and you really do have a wonderful narrative gift. I hope you will keep on writing a lot of stories because they really are unique and marvelous.

  I do urge you, if you feel like it, to do some more work on The Knightly Quest to put it into final shape. Where I think it needs a little more filling in is in the transition from the “real” part to the “fantasy” part. This transition seems to me a little bit sudden now and needs more detail so that it is more gradual.

  To move from the realistic to the fantasy requires great art, but you are the one who can do it, as proved by the way you carried it off so successfully in stories like “The Widow Holly” and “Yellow Bird.”

  I think also that the part about the plot to infiltrate and blow up the project needs a little more detail as you go into it to flesh it out. Perhaps a little more specific about how they are going to get in there and what they are going to do when they get in. But you will know best about this.

  I hope you will not mind my making these suggestions. It’s a really terrific story and I am so keen to have you finish it up so that we can publish it in due time, and make it just as good as it possibly can be.

  Not much news around here except the usual complaint about too much work, which is nothing new. I hope it is nice down there and that you are feeling better all the time. Do be sure to let me know if you come back to New York so we can have lunch or something.

  I hope that copies of In the Winter of Cities have reached you and that you like it as much as I do. I think it’s a beautiful little book. I am so happy that we have finally persuaded you to put the poems into paperback because they are fine poems and I know they are going to get around much more widely now that they are available at a price where the young people who go for poetry can easily afford them. The advance sale on this paperback was the best of all the paperbacks in the current list, I am told, and I think this is a very good sign indeed. I’m sure it will do well.

  With best from all here, as ever,

  James Laughlin

  « • »

  147. TLS—1

  12/16/64 [New York]

  DEAR JAY:

  It was nice of you to write me encouragingly about the two plays. They open early in March and I haven’t the least idea of how they will be received by the critics but I must confess that I have doubts and fears. Still, I think that absorption in another production, regardless of how it turns out, will help me to distract myself from the long period of depression I have been going through. It’s somewhat better now but there is still a good distance to go. I am going to an analyst again, and I find him better than the strict Freudian one [Dr. Kubie] that I went to a few years back, who was so strict and severe that he reminded me of my parents and I dreaded the sessions. This new one puts a bottle of whiskey on the table beside me and he tries to persuade me that I am a reasonably good person, despite my self-contempt.

  Did you know that Maria’s mother died lately? I think it is better both for Maria and the mother, who was completely helpless in a nursing home for several years, her mind so gone that when I last saw her she didn’t know me. I think that Maria would love it if you dropped her a condolence note, as she is still so very fond of you. Her address is #9 Gerald Road, London.

  My life is quite routine and uninteresting. I am sharing a duplex apartment, next to City Center, with the grandson of my grandmother’s sister. We go to the same analyst. His sister goes to him, too. I have finally decided that there is so much eccentricity in all branches of my family that I might as well resign myself to kook-hood forever.

  I hope all is well in your life.

  With love,

  Tenn.

  « • »

  the two plays: The money to produce The Mutilated and The Gnädiges Fräulein could not be raised in time and so the production was postponed for a year. They opened on Broadway under the collective title Slapstick Tragedy on February 22, 1966.

  a new analyst [ . . . ] grandson of my grandmother’s sister: Ralph Harris was the analyst, whom TW’s cousin Jim Adams had recommended.

  148. TLS—1

  3/3/65 [New York]

  DEAR BOB:

  I have missed seeing and talking to you. I feel that while I am still “not out of the woods” I should stick to a simple daily program of getting up about eleven AM, working till it’s time for my analyst appointment, taking a swim on the way home, having a drink when I get there and then going out to dinner in the neighborhood which fortunately has several good French or Italian restaurants. If I do more than that, I suffer from nervous exhaustion the next day. I felt sad about myself till I heard that the wealthy East Indian, Denishaw, has stayed in a silver bed for five years because his dearest friend died. He is now just beginning to get out of the silver bed, and a Baroness of some kind is taking us out to dinner tonight at a new place called “Ondine’s” where we can compare notes on neurotic seclusion, and how to escape it, if escape it we can.

  I thought it was rather mischievous of Mishima to write about my little book Grand and say nothing except comments on the binding and printing, but I suppose I had that coming to me as I failed to say a thing at all about Killed by Roses, which I enjoyed very much, I mean the pictures. Probably the text was even more beautiful and had I known the Japanese language I could have and would have been delighted to praise it.

  I have written a new ending to The Knightly Quest, it is in the style of the rest and is only two pages. The MS. is now 64 pages in type. Perhaps with “Grand,” “Man Bring This Up Road,” and “Mama’s Old Stucco House,” there might be enough material for a little book, with The Knightly Quest as a title.

  As Spring comes on, I long to get away from New York, but I have rented the house in Key West and really have no one to go abroad with. Perhaps “some enchanted evening” I will find someone. I am sure that Pangloss would assure me that this will come to pass.

  With love,

  Tenn.

  « • »

  my little book Grand: A short memoir of TW’s maternal grandmother, whose full name was Rosina Maria Francesca von Albertzart-Otte Dakin, was published in a limited edition by House of Books, New York (1964), and later collected in The Knightly Quest (see below), Collected Stories (ND 1985), and New Selected Essays: Where I Live (ND 2009).

  The Knightly Quest: The Knightly Quest, a Novella and Four Short Stories was eventually published by ND in 1967.

  149. TLS—1

  Sept. 26, 1965 [New York]

  DEAR JAY AND BOB:

  This is only to say hello. Nothing much to report except that I made a recording of
Hart Crane’s poems for Caedmon a few nights ago. I believe my reading voice has improved since I had that sibilant old bridge replaced. I have been asked to give a reading at the Poetry Center, a thousand dollars honorarium which is a nice bit of cash to pick up. I hope I have the guts to do it. My rental property in Coconut Grove was practically demolished by the hurricane down there. I don’t think the tenants had battened it up properly. And I don’t know how much insurance I have on it, the real estate firm is very vague about that, almost as vague as they have been about sending me rental cheques which is very vague indeed. So I need to pick up some of the hard stuff when offered a chance to.

  A little catastrophe here in my new apartment. I was taking out the novella one morning and it all fell on the floor and the pages have to be re-assembled. Somehow it seems like a colossal undertaking, but gradually it will be accomplished, I guess. I don’t think there is much more writing to be done on it right now.

  I finished a film-script of Milk Train, all with my own fat little fingers and it is now at the mimeographer’s. Columbia Pictures is interested in it. It seems to work much better as a film than as a play. I’ve also finished two more long-short plays [The Mutilated and The Gnädiges Fräulein] which are being mimeographed, too. I keep busy so that I won’t be so conscious of being in New York.