More Letters of Note

by Shaun Usher

  All provisions, lumber and plaster are very expensive so that I go as economical as possible. Plaster costs five dollars per barrel in Miles City so I use flour paste wherever practicable.

  Please advise me what disposition to make of the outfit at end of season. I should not advise another seasons work in this immediate locality and it would seem to me a good plan to explore the Musselshell river at end of season. I propose to work out all material in immediate vicinity and then ride out Crooked Creek thirty miles east of here if nothing more shows up in Hell Creek.

  Will make sections through to Missouri River as soon as these three specimens are out of the way which will give you data from Powder River to the Missouri River a distance of two hundred and seventy miles north and south and from Miles City to Porcupine Creek a hundred and two miles east and west.

  The invertebrates I have collected will be a valuable acquisition. There is a small bed of leaves nearby which I calculate to collect also.

  With regards to the Museum staff I am

  Sincerely yours,

  Barnum Brown

  P.S. Advise me regarding freight of fossils.

  Letter No. 104

  ENERGY EQUALS MASS TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT SQUARED STOP

  BUCKMINSTER FULLER TO ISAMU NOGUCHI

  1936

  In 1936, renowned sculptor Isamu Noguchi was in Mexico working on a 72 ft-long public mural when he hit a snag: for some reason, he couldn’t precisely recall the famous formula, E=mc². Rather than risk a mistake, he decided to seek advice and wired his good friend, Buckminster Fuller — a world-famous architect and great admirer of Albert Einstein — for clarification. Rather than just respond with the equation, Fuller went the extra mile and soon sent a magnificent telegram to his friend in which he also explained it in 264 words.

  WESTERN UNION

  Isamu Noguchi Care Greenwood 66 Calle Republica Coumbia Mexico City

  EINSTEINS FORMULA DETERMINATION INDIVIDUAL SPECIFICS RELATIVITY READS QUOTE ENERGY EQUALS MASS TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT SQUARED UNQUOTE SPEED OF LIGHT IDENTICAL SPEED ALL RADIATION COSMIC GAMMA X ULTRA VIOLET INFRA RED RAYS ETCETERA ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY SIX THOUSAND MILES PER SECOND WHICH SQUARED IS TOP OR PERFECT SPEED GIVING SCIENCE A FINITE VALUE FOR BASIC FACTOR IN MOTION UNIVERSE STOP

  SPEED OF RADIANT ENERGY BEING DIRECTIONAL OUTWARD ALL DIRECTIONS EXPANDING WAVE SURFACE DIAMETRIC POLAR SPEED AWAY FROM SELF IS TWICE SPEED IN ONE DIRECTION AND SPEED OF VOLUME INCREASE IS SQUARE OF SPEED IN ONE DIRECTION APPROXIMATELY THIRTY FIVE BILLION VOLUMETRIC MILES PER SECOND STOP

  FORMULA IS WRITTEN QUOTE LETTER E FOLLOWED BY EQUATION MARK FOLLOWED BY LETTER M FOLLOWED BY LETTER C FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY ELEVATED SMALL FIGURE TWO SYMBOL OF SQUARING UNQUOTE ONLY VARIABLE IN FORMULA IS SPECIFIC MASS SPEED IS A UNIT OF RATE WHICH IS AN INTEGRATED RATIO OF BOTH TIME AND SPACE AND NO GREATER RATE OF SPEED THAN THAT PROVIDED BY ITS CAUSE WHICH IS PURE ENERGY LATENT OR RADIANT IS ATTAINABLE STOP

  THE FORMULA THEREFORE PROVIDES A UNIT AND A RATE OF PERFECTION TO WHICH THE RELATIVE IMPERFECTION OF INEFFICIENCY OF ENERGY RELEASE IN RADIANT OR CONFINED DIRECTION OF ALL TEMPORAL SPACE PHENOMENA MAY BE COMPARED BY ACTUAL CALCULATION STOP

  SIGNIFICANCE STOP

  SPECIFIC QUALITY OF ANIMATES IS CONTROL WILLFUL OR OTHERWISE OF RATE AND DIRECTION ENERGY RELEASE AND APPLICATION NOT ONLY OF SELF MECHANISM BUT OF FROM SELF MACHINE DIVIDED MECHANISMS AND RELATIVITY OF ALL ANIMATES AND INANIMATES IS POTENTIAL OF ESTABLISHMENT THROUGH EINSTEIN FORMULA

  BUCKY

  Letter No. 105

  I THINK YOU’RE A DAMN FOOL

  NORMAN MAILER TO HIS FATHER

  November 17th, 1949

  When 23-year-old Norman Mailer left the US Army in 1946 with three years’ service behind him, he immediately began writing his first book. In 1948, The Naked and the Dead was published to widespread acclaim from critics and readers alike, a war novel that would sell hundreds of thousands of copies in a matter of months and make a home for itself on the New York Times Best Sellers list for more than a year. His success was instant. A year after the book’s publication, with film rights recently sold and praise still ringing in his ears, Mailer received a letter from his father, with news of yet another gambling debt. This was his reply.

  Novelist Norman Mailer in Massachusetts, 2000

  7475 Hillside Avenue, Los Angeles, California

  November 17, 1949

  Dear Pop,

  If I ever had any doubt as to where I got my writing ability from, I know now finally that it comes from you. Your last letter was a masterpiece in which every line and every word is perfect — I doubt whether I have ever written two pages as good as that myself.

  However, being a practitioner of the written word myself, I have come to understand a little about the emotional processes that go into writing, and so I find that I cannot accept your letter completely. For while it is a masterful document of the English colonel writing to his son about one of those bagatelles — a gambling debt — I finish it by reminding myself that you are not an English colonel but a Jewish accountant in Brooklyn, and that it is time you grew up.

  I must confess that I have little hope in this direction. If I had I’d probably spend a great deal of time upbraiding you — I would scream about the three thousand dollars, would appeal to you as a grandfather (the money represents two years of college for Susan), would complain as a son (I figured out today that when I work in Hollywood for a thousand dollars a week, it represents after paying agent’s and lawyer’s fees, income tax, and subtracting living expenses, no more than three hundred dollars each seven days are saved. Thus this sum represents ten weeks of very unpleasant work to me.) But actually, I’ve always understood you better than Mother. There’s no use upbraiding you because your eyes look away, your mind wanders, and your mouth gets sullen. One’s a fool to nag a little boy.

  So I’m not going to nag you, and I’m not going to frighten you, and I’m not going to scold you — I’m going to lay down several principles, and I’m going to hold to them until hell freezes over.

  1) I am not going to pay the three thousand dollars to you. First of all the debt may well be a few hundred dollars less, and you put it in round figures to give yourself a little stake. I will pay it to the gambler or gamblers you owe it to, and I will also inform them at the same time that your credit will never be honored by me again, and they will be suckers to have you owe them ten bucks. So your next step, old boy, is to inform your creditors that they must write to me, and I will honor your debts — this time.

  2) You are going on your own power to include Mother in your banking account with Mailer and Troll. If you don’t do this, I am going to get another accountant. I’m fucked if I’m going to pay a fee like $1750 for the year, and have Mother get none of it. Apropos of this I would suggest that you’re not really too clever. You have great talents at facing people at the penultimate moment and staring them down — as viz the time out here when you succeeded in making me feel ashamed of myself for considering the fee too high. Your performance was masterful that night, and I tip my hat to you, but I would also remind you that the memory of that evening is now dictating some of the tone of this letter. So that in the long run you were quite foolish.

  3) You are not to consider this $3,000 as a debt to me. God Forbid. You would then go out, and try to win it back, and would find yourself owing me six thousand dollars.

  4) If you start fooling around with the accounts of people like Flieg, I shall probably let you go to prison, but in any case I shall never speak to you again. And I shall tell Barbara everything.

  5) I suggest that you sit down and attempt to understand a few fundamentals. You are never going to be a rich man, and if you could only realize that that is not important, and that you are loved by several people, you might be much closer to finding some internal peace. However, I offer this with no hope. You are a very neurotic man and I rather suspect that you almost enjoy the secret anxiety of carrying such secret debts and burdens as long as poss
ible, relishing them the way a masturbator retires into the privacy of his own cock. But in any case whether you can work it out or not, I am giving you fair notice that I will never pay another gambling debt of yours. I am not soft like Mother, I have no illusions about you, and if every penny that is given to you has to be watched, I will not be afraid of your resentment, and bullied into giving you freedom again. You ought to understand by now, Pop, that I am not soft like Mother, that I am not at all sentimental, and that I can be ruthless if I have to. I lay down these conditions merely because I may not have the money in a few years, and I don’t care to go into debt for anybody. There is no morality in this. I think you’re a damn fool (the persistent question in my mind is Why doesn’t he ever win?) and I am merely annoyed that I should have so stupid a father. (If there’s any hope left for you it is that you will go off into a corner and indulge in masturbatory daydream about how you will show me some day. Because you never will. Face it.)

  If I were a very healthy man I would give you a thousand dollars a year purely for gambling, much as one gives an alcoholic his quart for the day.

  The purpose of this letter is to impress upon you indelibly that this is the last time. If you think Dave was hard in the past, don’t try me again. I say this not because I consider myself a superior moral being to you — my own vices are quite the equal of yours — but because the situation is intolerable, and I do not intend to be burdened with it for the rest of my life.

  When you answer me, I’ll respect you more if you cut out all of the charm and all the English-colonel-writing-to-his-son kind of bullshit, and act as if you are writing to the man who understands you best in the world, and regards you with the distant sympathy we always feel for people who are exactly like ourselves.

  Your son,

  Norman

  Letter No. 106

  THE GREATEST MUSICAL PLEASURE I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED

  CHARLES BAUDELAIRE TO RICHARD WAGNER

  February 17th, 1860

  Early-1860, thousands visited a grand Paris venue known as the Salle Ventadour in order to enjoy the music of Richard Wagner, an immeasurably influential German composer who was was in town to conduct three concerts featuring extracts from his various operas – they included The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin, and Tannhäuser. One member of the audience who was particularly taken with the shows, despite having been previously unfamiliar with Wagner’s work, was noted French poet Charles Baudelaire. In fact, he was so impressed by what he deemed “the greatest musical pleasure [he had] ever experienced”, that a few days after the last performance, he wrote Wagner a letter.

  Dear Sir:

  I have always imagined that however used to fame a great artist may be, he cannot be insensible to a sincere compliment, especially when that compliment is like a cry of gratitude; and finally that this cry could acquire a singular kind of value when it came from a Frenchman, which is to say from a man little disposed to be enthusiastic, and born, moreover, in a country where people hardly understand painting and poetry any better than they do music. First of all, I want to tell you that I owe you the greatest musical pleasure I have ever experienced. I have reached an age when one no longer makes it a pastime to write letters to celebrities, and I should have hesitated a long time before writing to express my admiration for you, if I did not daily come across shameless and ridiculous articles in which every effort is made to libel your genius. You are not the first man, sir, about whom I have suffered and blushed for my country. At length indignation impelled me to give you an earnest of my gratitude; I said to myself, “I want to stand out from all those imbeciles.”

  The first time I went to the Italian Theatre in order to hear your works, I was rather unfavorably disposed and indeed, I must admit, full of nasty prejudices, but I have an excuse: I have been so often duped; I have heard so much music by pretentious charlatans. But you conquered me at once. What I felt is beyond description, and if you will be kind enough not to laugh, I shall try to interpret it for you. At the outset it seemed to me that I knew this new music, and later, on thinking it over, I understood whence came this mirage; it seemed to me that this music was mine, and I recognized it in the way that any man recognizes the things he is destined to love. To anybody but an intelligent man, this statement would be immensely ridiculous, especially when it comes from one who, like me, does not know music, and whose whole education consists in having heard (most pleasurably, to be sure) some few fine pieces by Weber and Beethoven.

  Next, the thing that struck me the most was the character of grandeur. It depicts what is grand and incites to grandeur. Throughout your works I found again the solemnity of the grand sounds of Nature in her grandest aspects, as well as the solemnity of the grand passions of man. One feels immediately carried away and dominated. One of the strangest pieces, which indeed gave me a new musical sensation, is the one intended to depict a religious ecstasy. The effect produced by the Entrance of the Guests and the Wedding Fête is tremendous. I felt in it all the majesty of a larger life than ours. Another thing: quite often I experienced a sensation of a rather bizarre nature, which was the pride and the joy of understanding, of letting myself be penetrated and invaded--a really sensual delight that resembles that of rising in the air or tossing upon the sea. And the music at the same time would now and then resound with the pride of life. Generally these profound harmonies seemed to me like those stimulants that quicken the pulse of the imagination. Finally, and I entreat you not to laugh, I also felt sensations which probably derive from my own turn of mind and my most frequent concerns. There is everywhere something rapt and enthralling, something aspiring to mount higher, something excessive and superlative. For example, if I may make analogies with painting, let me suppose I have before me a vast expanse of dark red. If this red stands for passion, I see it gradually passing through all the transitions of red and pink to the incandescent glow of a furnace. It would seem difficult, impossible even, to reach anything more glowing; and yet a last fuse comes and traces a whiter streak on the white of the background. This will signify, if you will, the supreme utterance of a soul at its highest paroxysm.

  I had begun to write a few meditations on the pieces from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin that we listened to; but soon saw the impossibility of saying everything. Similarly, this letter could go on interminably. If you have been able to read it through, I thank you. It only remains for me to add a few words. From the day when I heard your music, I have said to myself endlessly, and especially at bad times, “If I only could hear a little Wagner tonight!” There are doubtless other men constituted like myself. After all, you must have been pleased with the public, whose instinct proved far superior to the false science of the journalists. Why not give us a few more concerts, adding some new pieces? You have given us a foretaste of new delights--have you the right to withhold the rest? Once again, sir, I thank you; you brought me back to myself and to what is great, in some unhappy moments.

  Ch. Baudelaire

  I do not set down my address because you might think I wanted something from you.

  Letter No. 107

  I KNOW WHAT TASTE IS AND WHAT VULGARITY IS

  TENNESSEE WILLIAMS TO JOSEPH BREEN

  October 29th, 1950

  In 1947, A Streetcar Named Desire premiered on Broadway to rapturous applause, glowing reviews and, the following year, numerous awards. Written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Elia Kazan with a cast that included Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, it ran for two successful years with few alterations. In 1951, a film version hit the big screen, adapted by Williams, directed by Kazan, and boasting largely the same cast. It went on to win four Academy Awards. But it wasn’t all plain sailing. In 1950, the year before its release, the film ran afoul of the Motion Picture Production Code, who deemed a “pivotal” rape scene to be in breach of their guidelines. In response, Tennessee Williams wrote to the code’s administrator, Joseph Breen.

  Dear Mr. Breen:

  Mr. Kaza
n has just informed me that objections have been raised about the “rape scene” in “Streetcar” and I think perhaps it might be helpful for me to clarify the meaning and importance of this scene. As everyone must have acknowledged by now since it has been pointed out in the press by members of the clergy of all denominations, and not merely in the press but in the pulpit - “Streetcar” is an extremely and peculiarly moral play, in the deepest and truest sense of the term. This fact is so well known that a misunderstanding of it now at this late date would arouse widespread attention and indignation.

  The rape of Blanche by Stanley is a pivotal, integral truth in the play, without which the play loses its meaning, which is the ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal forces in modern society. It is a poetic plea for comprehension. I did not beg the issue by making Blanche a totally “good” person, nor Stanley a totally “bad” one. But to those who have made some rational effort to understand the play, it is apparent that Blanche is neither a “dipsomaniac” nor a “nymphomaniac” but a person of intense loneliness, fallibility and a longing which is mostly spiritual for warmth and protection. I did not, of course, disavow what I think is one of the primary things of beauty and depth in human experience, which is the warmth between two people, the so-called “sensuality” in the love-relationship. If nature and God chose this to be the mean of life’s continuance on earth, I see no reason to disavow it in creative work. At the same time, I know what taste is and what vulgarity is. I have drawn a very sharp and clear line between the two in all of the plays that I have had presented. I have never made an appeal to anything “low” or “cheap” in my plays and I would rather die than do so. Elia Kazan has directed “Streetcar” both on the stage and the screen, with inspired understanding of its finest values and an absolute regard for taste and propriety. I was fortunately able to see, in “rushes”, all but the last three scenes of the picture before I left California. Mr. Kazan has given me a detailed description of the scenes I didn’t see as they now exist on the screen. I am really amazed that any question should arise about censorship. Please remember that even in notoriously strict Boston, where the play tried out before Broadway, there was no attack on it by any responsible organ of public opinion, and on the screen the spiritual values of the play have been accentuated much more than they could be on the stage.