As for his literary aims—both his and mine—they are so high at this point to be a little absurd. I personally am convinced he is a potential Chekhov, and as soon as he’s lived long enough to have something worth saying, he’ll prove it. My opinion, I cannot resist adding, is not to be disregarded as the half-baked prejudice of a fatuous young newly-wed, please. I may be very ignorant, as my husband repeatedly tells me, about a lot of things, but about writing I’m not. Swarthmore College, liberal institution that it is, graduated me with high honors and gave me Phi Beta Kappa for no other reason than that I was able to prove I knew good writing when I saw it. I am passing along this inconsequential bit of information for the frank purpose of impressing you. As far as I can see, Phi Beta Kappa isn’t good for anything else, and just now we terribly need to impress someone.
But I was talking about our literary aims. I am taking the liberty of sending you one of his latest letters to me. It is in answer to one of mine asking how we are going to help cure the World of Evil (that’s how young we are) I think he can speak better for himself than I can for him, and this letter contains the kernel of his thinking about our Future, and also a few motley ideas on which you may have some commentary. I want the letter back, please. If we hadn’t been so recently married, my sending it to you could be grounds for divorce; but things being as they are, I think I’m safe.
As I hope you will be able to divine from the letter, he doesn’t want to write drivvle; he wants to say something important. The idea in brief is that when we die, we want the world to be a little bit better in some respect or other, than it was when we were born, on account of (among other things) what we did and said while we were alive. And the only mode of expression which we feel congenial is writing. I realize that is a big order, but you asked for it, and you got. I think that he considers what he’s written so far pure drivvle. It is—if you’re looking for some Significant subject matter, on the other hand, one of the stories has an idea that will make people stop and think (if it’s printable; I doubt that it is), and the others have a warmth of expression and characterization that is appealing even if it isn’t exactly important.
The motivation behind these stories is our current philosophy that the end justifies the means. Just now we need money; we haven’t got anything but the G.I. Bill of Rights, and you can’t live the good life on that. If you can sell these to any magazine, no matter how pulpish, we’ll not be snotty. I do not honestly believe they are pulp material, but then I don’t know anything about the pulps. They haven’t enough plot, and they aren’t sexy, adventurous, glamorous, or even long enough for such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, the Cosmopolitan, and so on. My untutored opinion is that they are suitable for The New Yorker, Esquire, the Atlantic, and magazines of that general class.
About these fees. Does the reading, criticizing, and selling of a manuscript cost $3.00, plus 10% commission, and postage, which we are able to pay? Or is some one of these three plans compulsory to your getting the stories sold? Because if it is, we can’t afford you. We are both going to the University of Chicago when he is discharged, which will be shortly; there we are somehow going to have to live on $75.00 a month, plus the meagre Fellowship which I have a prayer of getting. You can easily see we won’t have $10, or $15, or $20 left over. Sorry.
I am anxious to hear your reaction to all this.
Sincerely yours,
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Love, Kurt Page 15