I’ve noted Americans and the California Dream to look up. Our last letters, like the ones before last, crossed—and I’ll write a quick line here as the result of a letter from Mary Lou. I have to be in San Antonio on May 2 (a Council on the Arts meeting) (the same day you have to be in New York, I see) and I’d told her maybe I could come the rest of the way to Santa Fe either before or after. She said in her letter that she wanted to ask you to come to see them at the same time, and she may be writing you. Since I know from your letter that if you could come, it would have to be on your way to NY, I could make it before San Antonio. And it would be nice if it turned out to be possible for all of us. But I’m not even truly sure I can make it at all—I think I can, but am so tired at the moment—a regular descent of both expected and unexpected things. Anyway, I wanted to mention it to you, just on the happy chance. Maybe you could persuade Margaret to come along on all. I’ve been re-reading some of her novels now appearing in new paperbacks, just started “Vanish in an Instant.” I’m reading the Faulkner biog. too. I think I agree fully with Walter in his Newsweek review. (I had to do a Times review which was an unhappy one—but a first book by a young author, I couldn’t bear down on it for that reason, yet couldn’t like it very well—hard to review a book you don’t like.)7
All the best to all of you, Duffy included—what kind of scholar is he making?
Love,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, March 24, 1974
Dear Eudora:
It isn’t very nice, or very sensible, to reject an invitation before it has been received, particularly when it’s an invitation one would dearly love to accept. But I have to confess, just to you and Mary Lou, that my blood pressure has been playing a few tricks on me again. Nothing to worry about—I’ve had this problem half my adult life—but it does limit the number of starts and stops that I can sensibly make. Though I’d much prefer to come to Santa Fe, and go no further, I feel I have to go to New York and then to Canada because I’ve promised to, and the third plan is probably more than I should attempt. I know it won’t be our last chance to get together. I very nearly accepted a brief “visiting professorship” at the U. of Arkansas because it seemed within distance of Jackson. But you wouldn’t have been in Jackson anyway.
I have been having good luck with the writing: the new book is beginning to come alive (my notes for it cover a period of fifteen years) though not yet started, and the old books continue to show signs of life. The idea of this Edgar gives me great pleasure—for some eighteen years M’s Edgar has been sitting lonely on the shelf. And the television movie is rather fun. If it goes into series, I’ll be paid royalties but will probably make no contribution except to read the scripts. They won’t be using my books for the episodes, but simply bought two books (Underground Man and Goodbye Look) in order to acquire the movie and television rights to Archer. I hope he proves to be worth it. I understand the initial movie is turning out well, and also that the series-or-not decision may be made in the next month by NBC, who will see the movie this week. Peter Graves, though he is identified as the star of Mission: Impossible (for six years), looks to me as if he will make a good Archer: he’s tall, lean, white-haired, athletic, middle-aged, not stuck on himself, a genuine actor (he was the German spy in Stalag 17) and keen on the role. The fact is, I picked him for it years ago, and though I had nothing to do with the casting, it turned out. Judith Anderson was whom I had in mind for Mrs. Snow, too. She plays it coldly, rigidly superior—the servant who judges—and may not be detected by the viewer. For Judith Anderson, I wouldn’t care!
Just to make everything clear, I should explain that The Ferguson Affair, not an Archer book, is also being worked up into a television movie by another group headed by the writer Wendell Meyes. And The Drowning Pool is being made into a “theatrical” movie by Fox, who will change Archer’s name. It never rains but it pours. (Of course these may not happen, in the end.)
I know Blotner—met him in Ann Arbor—and am sorry his book is being so badly received. But evidently he wasn’t quite up to his subject, or misconceived his duty to it, and stumbled in the detritus of scholarship. Still his work is indispensable, as Walter Clemons suggests.8 Love, Ken
P.S. Incidentally, Faulkner was kind to Margaret when they were at Warner Brothers in the forties—invited her to tea and talked about his work, saying he hoped Absalom Absalom might have been best. Also talked about Melville. K.
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, March 28, 1974
Dear Ken,
Thank you for writing me about it, but I don’t like the thought of the blood pressure making itself a bother to you—I hope it’ll soon be very much all right again. Of course you’re being wise not to complicate your already busy and far-flung trip in May. Take it easy till then, because it sounds very exciting and fine in New York—quite properly so. I was delighted at your view of it—to get the matching Edgar to finish out the pair for the home shelf. (His and Hers.) I wish I could be in NY to hear about the evening. The Council on the Arts always meets at the wrong time. In confidence, I’m trying to get off. They do many good things, and I am for them, but I belong in another part of the program—a reader of candidates’ books and projects, not a voter on the cmo money (can’t even spell it, much less vote it by the millions). I’m waiting now to be re-placed.
Will you get to go back into deep country again with your old teacher, in Canada? It sounded very beautiful when you told me about it before.
It really is pouring movies on you. It sounds just a wonderful descent of good things happening. If you like Mr. Graves and think he will do well as Archer, that’s the main thing, isn’t it? It would be wrong all the way if they tried to start otherwise. It must have been a lot of decisions and conferrings and ponderings you’ve been called on for—but now that so many things all coming at once are settled and happily, you can just let them go merrily about the work of it and not give it any worry yourself (I hope). So really lovely, to think of all these good things happening.
And just at the time when it’s nice to have that peaceful feeling—when you are ready to start a new book. Like coming to the place you’ve been looking for to spread out your picnic and enjoy your feast. No, it’s not possible to talk about a book beforehand. Let me wish you luck though. (15 years is your magic number, isn’t it?)
Your letter with the clipping in it crossed mine to you, but I thank you for it now, and was glad to be filled in on The Underground Man from both it and from what you described. I would feel exactly the same about Judith Anderson. I thought of her in The Chill—I can see her in those scenes, and in the last one, at the last line, her face. (Is she—she must be—a reader of yours? Probably of very long standing.)
How was the 11-year-old fan? Don’t forget to tell me some time what he was like, and how he and young Jim got along and what Jim said about him, it sounds promising.
Mary Lou will be sorry you can’t come this time. I’m not perfectly sure I will be able to go either, as I told you—sheer weight of things I ought to be doing instead. You are right, though, that there will be other chances to meet. I am sorry about the Arkansas thing, but I have worked there from here, and it is fairly far. (But I wasn’t flying then.) If you do get a chance to come nearby any time, do let me know (ahead), and I will stay home, as I do actually most of the time. Today Reynolds phoned me about something and said he was getting ready to invite you to Duke to some kind of seminar thing, and would invite me to it also—he’d talked to me about this a good while back and probably to you too. So that might be a nice time (it’s off in the Fall) to all three meet and would (perhaps) be easy. Wait and see.
It’s so beautiful here! All green now, the dogwood out, wisteria, climbing roses, everything. Birds—I wish I knew enough to tell you.
Take care.
Love,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, April 2, 1974
Dear Eudora:
Thank you for your concern
about me and my blood pressure. But you don’t really have to be concerned, since I have learned to live with it, and have developed a system of early warning signals, which I pay attention to. I have a good doctor and see him regularly, and he regards me as a model patient. There are even certain advantages: e.g., I get off jury duty. The disadvantage is that I don’t get around quite as freely as I did when I was younger, or see my friends as often. But that is a common human condition.
Every two weeks we have a writers lunch here, as I’ve told you—it’s been going on for well over fifteen years—and today at lunch Barnaby Conrad asked me if I knew of any brilliant women writers who might be willing to come to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, which Barnaby founded with great success last year.9 Knowing that you had been to California and liked it and intended some day to come again, I took the liberty of mentioning your name. I wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t taken part in last year’s conference and found it a pleasant experience. The conference is held in Cate School, a beautifully situated private school near Santa Barbara. You would be housed in an excellent hotel, could stay as long or as short a time as you liked, and do as much or as little as you liked with the students. The time is some time around midsummer. Barnaby will be writing you in a day or two. If you should feel like making the journey, it would be a chance for you to see California, this part of it anyway, at its best, and above all for us to see you. Margaret would love to get to know you. But of course you will be governed by the needs and occasions of your own life. And as I quite easily predicted in my last letter or so, there will be other chances for us to meet, if this one doesn’t work out. I’m bearing in mind what you say about the prospect of a seminar with you and Reynolds: in company like that, who would object to being outclassed?
You’re right in thinking, I believe, that you belong at or near the creative end of the art business, rather than at the financial end, though I suppose sometimes financial levers have to be used. But there’s no substitute for the books, or for the feeling that you have for them. Your approbation opened up my life, for example. (But now I have to close it down again and go back into the underground-man business. Fortunately I can take my dog Duffy with me: he sits and keeps an eye on me when I write, and then reminds me when it’s time for our walk on the beach. Great rolling breakers these last few weeks, which kept me out of the water for the most part. Today was crystal clear, a perfect spring day, and we went for a walk with Bob Easton in Skofield Park near his house. A rapid mountain stream roars through the middle of it. We walked around the park three times in measured ecstasy.)
I have some questions to answer. My 11-year-old fan never showed up, but his parents did. They had neglected to mention that their son was in Boston. So I wrote him a letter instead of talking to him.—I don’t know whether Judith Anderson is a reader of mine, but she looks and talks like one. She’s a woman I admire, seventy and still pitching. Her Medea, which she played in our local theatre (and of course all over the world) was the most powerful performance I ever saw. She’ll make an excellent Mrs. Snow, I believe. About the rest of the show, we won’t know until we see it. These TV movies are shot in three weeks instead of three months, say, like regular movies; and the difference shows. Don’t be too disappointed if it is rough. But I think they have given it a very good try. Underground Man will be shown on NBC television the evening of May 6. No, I had nothing to do with the script except that it was based on the book. The script was arrived at in a peculiar way. Four leading TV writers were commissioned each to do his own script. Then they picked the best one, Douglas Heyes’s. I thought he managed to get the core of the plot into his brief hundred-page compass. We haven’t heard yet if Archer will “go for series,” but should within a couple of weeks. I honestly don’t care much, one way or the other. Books are my trade, and I’m staying with this one. As you say, there’s nothing like the peace of starting to get into the writing of a book.
I’ll be in Canada when the movie is shown on the air, but hope to catch it. Probably won’t see my old teacher this time. He’s remarried and moved to his wife’s house in a nearby city. I’m glad he’s no longer alone: Roy Dickson was my best teacher, and he considered me his best pupil. Wonderful to know him all my life.
Love, Ken
Please give my warmest regards to Mary Lou. K.
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, April 13, 1974
Dear Ken,
I was so glad to get your letter, and thank you for your reassurances about your health. I was reassured, and to know that the good doctor and the good judgment and good sense can take care of it is the right kind of reassurance.
May 6 NBC is written down, and I am also alerting lots of people around here who would want to be sure to see The Underground Man. You’ll have to see it, Canada or no Canada! I think that’s the night after I get back home from my Council on the Arts meeting in San Antonio, which will fit just right for my own chance to see it. I am anxious to. If it goes off well, and leads to more good things, how fine that will be. (Celeste Holm will be in Jackson a week from tonight to give readings at Millsaps College, and I plan to go. Mentally casting her in Underground Man, whatever she’s doing.)
It gives me both delight and disappointment that the Santa Barbara Writers Conference is going to be in June. Delight that through your thoughtfulness I was asked (I duly received the invitation from Mr. Conrad) and disappointment that I’d already planned to be in Europe that month. You remember John and Catherine Prince—they asked me a long time ago if I’d drive with them through France, and I found I could both go and come by ship, and made a tentative reservation on the Michelangelo and the France respectively, and I guess I will go—it’s really not any more final than the reservations (except the Princes have made them for me too in their itinerary plans) but now this lovely chance to come out there arrives to make me wish that nothing would be keeping me from it. I’m sure you knew it was just the kind of thing I could do fairly easily and with no pain, as far as the work went—a nice assignment and a nice list of people, too—and of course the main reason to come, the fine chance to see you and Margaret. Thank you for thinking of it. I’ll have to tell Mr. Conrad that I can’t come this time, but I’ll sort of hope he’ll ask me again. Or you will.
It’s the kind of thing Reynolds has asked you and me to do that I really don’t do at all, not any longer. I hope I won’t be missing another chance to see you when I don’t go to Duke? Reynolds really does know I have stopped visiting campuses and giving lectures and going to classes and reading manuscripts and staying a week!—I quit about 8 years ago, having done my full share of that, and finding I just couldn’t write and do that too. Can you? I wrote Reynolds I had been saying a steady no to such invitations and that to say yes to Duke would make my excuse no longer true or valid to use again. I told him I’d gladly come some time just for a night, to read to the students, and not take pay for it. If you should be accepting, I would time it to be able to see you there, if agreeable to all.
The Santa Barbara arrangement would be, on the contrary, just what I’d like. —Well, I still think there’ll be other chances. Don’t you?
I’ll be seeing Mary Lou—finally decided I could manage it, because the free trip as far as San Antonio wouldn’t probably happen again—and when we talked on the phone just a while ago, she asked hopefully if you might be able to join us—she had put off asking you till I let her know for sure about my own dates, which is why you haven’t heard from her direct. She was so sorry when I told her you couldn’t, and disappointed, and sends you her best. It isn’t too incautious, is it, to count on another chance, as I do, that we’ll still get to meet? Have a wonderful trip up to get your award—I’ll have it in mind as I sit on a barge in the river in San Antonio on that night eating my supper.
It’s raining and raining here—all green outside, and if the rain slacks up the birds begin to sing. It sounds wonderfully beautiful where you walked in Skofield Park, three times around.
Good lu
ck on all you do, and love,
Eudora
My respects to your dog Duffy, who does well, doesn’t he?
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, Santa Fe, April 24, 1974
Dear Eudora:
Just a note to thank you for your most welcome letter. I’m so glad you felt that the trip to Santa Barbara which Barney Conrad and I suggested was the sort of thing you’d like to do if you weren’t otherwise occupied. I like the quick spontaneous meetings, just as you do, and have no desire to resume the academic life. I did go out to the University today, though, to hear Kevin Starr (Americans and the California Dream) talk about more recent cultural developments—which he’s dealing with in his second volume—and was happily surprised to hear my name come up. When only a few short years ago the detective story was considered beneath the notice of anyone who wished to be thought genteel. I talked to Starr briefly afterwards and we’ll meet again, probably here. He’d like to live in Southern California, for his purposes as an historian, and in fact would like to give up Harvard and teach in Santa Barbara. Who would not? (I speak from knowledge of Harvard, which I once attended, as Gatsby attended Oxford, under Navy auspices). A year from now, if our Writers Conference survives (and it seems to be), I hope you’ll be able to visit it and us. Meanwhile I know how you’ll enjoy Europe with the Princes, not to mention Santa Fe with Mary Lou and her friends, to whom my best, please. I know I would have, too, and was most pleased to be asked. I feel as you do, however, that the kind of week-long schedule that Reynolds proposed, which would play hell with both my work and my blood pressure—much as I’d like to see him again, and will.
Meanwhile There Are Letters Page 23