Do you like Doris Lessing? For years I tended to slight her but as I read further into her it seems to me that her vision enlarges, and into what seemed a single theme she introduces a strange and wonderful variety of life, and what seemed coarse at first ends by seeming humane to me. Perhaps I’m learning something as I grow older. (Reading Golden Notebook, belatedly, and some of the stories.)
Certainly Jimmie is. He’s knocking himself out, qualifying for merit badges in the Boy Scouts and taking a strong bite on life. I never saw a more willing boy. Skateboarding around the pool tonight.
Glad you liked the hummers. Like other people who give a great deal, you’re so appreciative of very small things. I finally got my copies of the anthology, too late to send you one. It’s going well, by the way, and should sell out the first printing (10,000) in another month or two. Thank you again for your encouragement and help.
Love, Ken
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, January 25, 1975
Dear Ken
Wasn’t it lovely, to get to talk on the phone? It was such a happy surprise when you called, and thank you for giving me the message from Mr. Conrad—Thank you indeed for setting this in motion in the first place, and I hope I can do what they ask well enough so you won’t be sorry. Now I’ll wait patiently for Mr. C. to send me along the address, but it’s something that gives me pleasure even in January looking forward to Santa Barbara.2
It gives me pleasure to think your book’s going well, too—Many wishes—For its sake, anyway. How fortunate you didn’t have to interrupt it to go to Beverly Hills—and maybe for Archer’s sake too. We’ll never know now, I guess, but what happened to The Underground Man was pretty forbidding if that was any sign—He belongs on the page and in words that are all yours, and I for one feel better about him just where he is right this minute, in your “Portrait”—
Speaking of film, here is a piece out of a stranger’s letter sent to me by a friend in Texas about “Chinatown” (which I haven’t seen—have you?)3 Others may have said the same thing, of course. I didn’t see the Carol Burnett parody, either, hadn’t heard about that—sounds amusing, and it would have made all the Eudoras laugh—there ain’t many of us.
It made me feel reassured to have you say my review of Elizabeth Bowen’s last book seemed to speak my feelings. You weren’t reading it exactly as I wrote it, for they cut and took out quotes and transposed it somewhat, so I couldn’t know what effect was left. This was my fault, for I overshot my space, but I cared a good deal about the piece—it was personal with me, of course—I guess only the writer of the piece would’ve noticed what they’d (Sentence didn’t make any sense!) It did me good to have you say you found it an “expression of love and courtesy”—nothing could have comforted me more, in the circumstances—
I must try Doris Lessing again—Like you, I decided earlier in that she was clumsy & coarse, but unlike you I hadn’t given her a second chance—I’ll look into the Notebook—
I thought of you when I was doing another review, The Cockatoos by Patrick White, because didn’t you at one time say you thought of using one of his stories in your anthology? He’s a strange one and a powerful one, isn’t he? I’ll see if I can find a copy of my review, or better, a copy of The Cockatoos, if you’d like to see it. I am not quite certain I know the handle to pick those stories up by—But they are potent and heavy & throbbing stuff, like hunks of fallen meteors or something cast upon us from another orbit.4
I thank you for your thought of sending me your anthology, all the same, and it was your editor, after all, who did send it—Heavens, I must thank him directly—And I got some from the Book-of-the-Month Club too, for presents—I’ve just finished reading dear Agatha’s again—The book introduced me to James M. Cain, whom I’d never read—“The Baby in the Ice Box” was great fun, so I read The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity—both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I can remember, in the 30’s I guess, my mother, a great mystery reader, saying “That old James M. Cain! I wouldn’t give you 2¢ for all he’s written!” (Well, you know the times—she was reading S. S. Van Dine and Mary Roberts Rinehart along then) and strangely enough I didn’t take her up on it & try for myself. Till now.
Now Ken, you won’t be going east in February, will you? I’ve got to go to a Council on Arts meeting in Washington Feb. 6-10, and just might on the off-chance go to NY, and if you’re going to be there I’d want to know it. But I don’t look forward at the moment to ice & snow. The camellias & narcissus & quince are blooming here—The birds are singing—It must be balmier still where you are—
Love & luck,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, January 28, 1975
Dear Eudora:
That was a most interesting and multifaceted and delightful letter that you sent in answer to my phone call, and I got the impression that you are happy about coming to Santa Barbara, as happy as we are, almost, that you are coming. I enclose an ad from last weekend’s L.A. Times, which lists last year’s professional participants, many of whom will be turning up again. Everyone seems to enjoy it. I believe you will too, or I wouldn’t have suggested you come. You can do with the students pretty much as you choose—perhaps an informal talk (or formal if you like) followed by questions from the audience, which is what I did last year. And of course there are chances to talk to people at meals and in one-to-one encounters. Whenever you want to get away from the Miramar Hotel where the Conference will be held, you can retreat to my cabaña at the Coral Casino which is not far away, and enjoy a perfect solitude watching the sea. It will be such a pleasure for M and me to have you here for a while. (Guess who was at the Coral Casino yesterday! Ingrid Bergman, escorted by Baron Rothschild. I missed her.) The dates, as the ad says, are June 13-20.
Thank you for the clipping-from-a-letter re Chinatown, which I have seen (twice) and enjoyed but am not sure you would. The very beginning and the very ending are crude, and there is some crudity throughout. But the movie really moves and has a sense of life. I do think the writer (Robert Towne) got some help out of my books. The Drowning Pool, by the way, is now in the can but while it has its merits, to judge from the script, it’s far from being a Chinatown.5 These scriptwriters are so concerned to shock and titillate that they lose their seriousness, without which powerful drama is impossible. What makes Chinatown valid is its historical basis in L.A.’s great water war, which still continues.
Yes, I’m just as glad I missed the press conference in Beverly Hills the other week. Brian Keith has since recovered from pneumonia and announces that if the Archer show is a success he’s going to move it next season to Hawaii, where he lives. Fortunately I learned some time ago never to take television, or anything in the movie industry, seriously. I lie in ambush behind a screen of books, and occasionally throw a rock.
I am touched by your loyalty to the anthology and feel that it has served its purpose by introducing you to James M. Cain. He’s still writing, in his late seventies, and will have a new book out this year, with Knopf. At his peak he maintained the fastest narrative pace I’ve ever seen in the genre. The ones you’ve read are his best.
This letter is mostly chatter—backchatter to your letter. I must get in the fact, though, that my new pup Skye is the nicest dog I ever had, and possibly the smartest. He’s going on 8 months, black and red, 85 lbs.! Cold here—32° last night—but it will be warm in June. Happy days! Love, Ken
P.S.—Doris Lessing always disappoints me in the end, but The Golden Notebook has great things in it. She just doesn’t know where to quit or leave out.
K.
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, February 19, 1975
Dear Ken,
Thank you for your letter, which rode with me in the plane to Washington and back because I thought I could answer it there—(I like to take letters, and a book or two I’m already reading with me on a trip for continuity’s sake or something, do you?) But they (a Council on the Arts meeting) didn’t leave us time to ou
rselves. It was good to have your added words on the Conference—I do think it sounds enjoyable because of the people there—and for me because of where it is, and the prospects of seeing you again and getting to meet Margaret. It is so very thoughtful of you to say I might retreat to your cabaña at the Coral Casino when I want to get away from the crowd and just look at the sea—thank you for the kindness of that thought. It gives me a feeling of security.
Your book goes well, I hope. And everything else too. It must be a bit hard on you to have to follow the TV “Archer”—even if it were the best thing in the TV world, it wouldn’t be the real thing for you. I must say it isn’t right to me as a reader either. This “Archer” doesn’t use the mind, and he doesn’t use much of anything else either—he’s not in the least bit active. He’s lazy! The whole tension of one of your stories is a result of the concentration of Archer, which never drops or loses its force or direction, and he’s its sole agent—don’t those writers and so on know that? Oh well, you don’t need me to add my complaints. I hope it’s not too painful and distracting for you but it must seem so foreign to your books that it doesn’t connect very much at all—maybe in the light of the series so far it would be just as well if Brian Keith did move his “Archer” to Hawaii. (You could run an ad in the personal column that you are not responsible for the claimant in Honolulu.) I’ve seen them all and since they’re all different, I try to keep hoping they may hit the right note somehow. I did think they got Archer’s car right—Did they?
It’s been so mild here, everything’s leaping into bloom ahead of itself—even the oak tree is budding today—I can see a little kinglet finding this out now. It was cold in Washington, down in the ’teens. The best part of the trip was getting to go after hours to the National Gallery and have the great Chinese Exhibition all to ourselves. In the calm and peace of those halls when the chime of the nine temple bells were struck, the sounds might have been coming to you all the way from the fifth century BC. The famous star-part of the exhibition is the Flying Horse, whose touchdown from the air is only by one hoof, and that rests on the back of a swallow—Marvelous indeed but hardly anything there is not marvelous. Nothing they used, not any pot or cooking pan, or lamp, or anything in all those centuries, was not beautiful. I liked the little domestic things—two bronze leopards inlaid with gold—both would have fitted into the palm of the hand—curled up with the most catlike spines, and jeweled eyes in their masks—these were made as weights to hold down the silk sleeves.
I was interested in what you said about Chinatown (in the non sequitur sense!) and should like to see it—especially in connection with your own treatment of the scene. It’s what “Archer” ought to do, had the chance to do, & owes it to you to do. What’s on next for me is Murder on the Orient Express, which has just arrived in Jackson. What did you think of that?6
Did you get sent the galleys of Reynolds’ novel [The Surface of Earth]? I expect Reynolds wanted you to have them early, though I know you are busy and they are hundreds of pages long—I just got them and haven’t begun, just felt the weight—and am longing to begin.
With the spring I hope to do some work too—I feel there’s so much I would like to write simultaneously—there must be a word for that trouble, or joy—But I had better just get to it, a little at a time—
Love,
Eudora
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, Sunday [February 23, 1975]
Dear Ken,
Before it gets away from me—I had a dream last night that you were in, although I didn’t get to see you. The one I saw was Ring Lardner!—whom I never saw in the flesh—and the scene was Venice—I think it was Venice, Cal. (though it could have been Venice, Italy, only Venice I know)—strings of lights along the water’s edge, seen from the door. There beside me I recognized Ring Lardner. In the dream he looked something like [Canadian actor] Ned Sparks, remember him? He quoted Flannery O’Connor to the shoe clerk—commendingly—Then he told the shoe clerk he was in the city to meet you and was on his way to keep the appointment very shortly. End of scene—Isn’t that a good dream? I knew all through it you were moving around out there somewhere out of sight—what a piece of luck, I thought, to overhear what Ring Lardner said (again commendingly) to the shoe clerk. I woke up thinking I had something to tell you—Well, who knows, it might be a good sign—of something!
Love,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, March 5, 1975
Dear Eudora:
I don’t know what your dream means, either, but it was a lovely dream and it makes me happy. What more could a storyteller ask than to be associated with Ring Lardner, in your mind! Perhaps the dream had its source in our circuitous walk back to the Algonquin after Alfred’s party, when we talked about London and I quoted among other things:
Night and day under the bark of me
There’s an oh such a horde of microbes making a park of me7
which I think is one of the best couplets in the language, the American language, that is. And Venice is on the sea, like Santa Barbara, though a different sea. (It’s a less beautiful city than Venice, which I haven’t seen, I suppose, but it has its own persistent excellence, continually being enhanced, as Venice was, by the people who come here and create its beauty with their intelligent eyes and minds—a place takes so much of its beauty and value from the people who have been there—which is why I’m so glad you’re coming.) I forget whether you saw the television version of Underground Man, alas, but if you did you may remember that Archer lived in Venice, California. Now again, I’m glad to report, he doesn’t live in any part of television, the ill-fated series having been canceled but not before poor Brian Keith had facial surgery to beautify him for the role. No wonder he looked rather pained and distraught. I probably did, too, as I watched those pitiful episodes of Archer’s brief career on the air-waves.
Meanwhile the book is growing, approaching two hundred pages; it feels as if I’m coming to the end of something; I hope and trust it will mark the beginning of something else. This week we had a mini-beginning, when I found an abandoned puppy on the beach and brought her home—a sweet lively little silky terrier-type dog weighing about fifteen pounds who takes on my ponderous German shepherds in bloodless combat and in effect drives them into the sea. It’s pleasant to see two hundred-pound dogs (Skye is nearly that now) avoiding any violence or harm to such a midget. She’s a female, which helps. It was time Margaret had someone to gang up with.
Speaking of women reminds me of the novel I’ve just finished reading which, in spite of some of the language which you might find offensive, I really do recommend as an illumination of the present lives of intellectual young women: Gail Godwin’s The Odd Woman. It’s quite devoid of the heavy monocularity which you object to in Doris Lessing and is what I consider one of the best novels I’ve read in recent years. I hope you can read it because I’m eager for your opinion.
All well here in spite of days of rain, welcome after a rather dry wet season.
Love, Ken
P.S.—I neglected to answer some questions:
No, I didn’t much like Orient Express—I thought it dragged—but Albert Finney was remarkably forceful and spry.
I haven’t heard from Reynolds, but am most happy for him.
I liked Archer’s car better than Archer.
And that Chinese Exhibition sounds magnificent. I’d like to get to Washington—have never been. K.
Eudora Welty to Kenneth Millar, March 9, 1975
Dear Ken,
You’ve most likely seen this letter to the Times already, but I thought it was worth sending to you anyway. All goes well with you, I hope, and with the new book.
Did you happen to be looking at the national news the other evening when they (NBC) showed the unprecedented visit of Ross’s Gull to the U.S.A.? (Didn’t they say it was from Siberia?) A group of bird watchers on the New England coast was waiting for it to put in an appearance, and it did. The camera caught it too—a li
ttle gull, walking about unconcerned with the locals (gulls!), who were big & heavy by comparison. Of course if Ross’s Gull was coming to our shores, he was on the wrong side of the country to see (and be seen by) Ross—But I hope you were at your TV—
It seems I’m about to have something dramatized too—my short novel called “The Robber Bridegroom”—did I send it to you once, a sort of fantasy? It’s going to be a musical put on by John Houseman & his City Center Acting Company—a touring company—opening in July in Saratoga.8 I don’t exactly know what to expect—but I highly regard Houseman & feel lucky it fell into his hands. Maybe, unlike Ross’s Gull, it will be seen in Santa Barbara before it’s over. You could observe it in flight.
Reynolds is coming here next weekend on Arts Council business—we will be thinking & talking of you—
Love,
Eudora
Kenneth Millar to Eudora Welty, March 12, 1975
Dear Eudora:
That’s thrilling news about The Robber Bridegroom, Houseman being one of our very best directors. I hope it comes to Santa Barbara, but doubt that it will. We lack a theatre of adequate size, though once long ago I saw The Glass Menagerie there. By the way, I read The Robber Bridegroom when it first came out, with great delight.
Didn’t see the Ross’s Gull on TV—Margaret did—but I saw a picture of it. Today’s excitement here was an escaped lapis lazuli finch. Can that be right? It’s the way I heard it, anyway.
Thank you for the NYTBR clipping—I get mentioned in some surprising contexts. The new book is coming along, about 2/3 through the first draft. It’s less of a generational chronicle than usual. I don’t know exactly what it is but await the outcome calmly.
The Canadian producer of the movie being made in Canada from The Three Roads phoned from Toronto today to report progress and ask me to read the now finished script. The director is Peter Glenville (sp?) who did Becket, and it will be shot in Quebec in the summer with a French star as the female lead—one of Canada’s first big international pictures, he says. (Bret becomes a journalist, Paula an architect) Because of the Canadian aspect and because the book was written, really, out of my Canadian background, I’m rather excited about the prospect, the first time I’ve really felt thus about a movie.
Meanwhile There Are Letters Page 27