"members PROPERLY elected to either body deserve a salary, p apart from those few who deserve jail for protraction of wars and services rendered to the gunsellers among whom etc...

To avoid suspicion of merely trying to line one's own pocket but faced by the improper ( I dont say voluntarily rotten ) but improper use of nearly all American endowments, due to their being entrusted to apes who KNOW NOTHING about quality in art and letters, the SANE way to let an Institute ( or Aca USE money is that each member shd/ be free to spend his OWN honorarium on the cultural boost that he most respected.

¹ shd/ say that members of the institute might even gain respect of the Acad/ apart from the worst members improperly elected before you and I were admitted to the precincts BY more intelligent use of whatever they were allowed.

"rather than by huggermuggering the spending via a little committee of exjournalists/ which wd/ amount to merely one more Erskine/Aydelotte etc/etc. keeping the funds away from men who have the most talent.

Again obviously it is an outrage that the author of Life Along the Passaic River is not at least in the Institute.

The FIRST step for making such a body valid wd/ be the election of a few of the better writers/ Williams

"Marianne Moore, Cummings ( Enormous Room and Time, AND the poems )

Various writers have refused election, but they are in the main anarchic and destructive. Other has I suppose accepted fro motives not directly concerned with the building up of corporate integrity or raising the criteria of national cultur ( Such members as I have written to, are frankly contemptuous of the body as such. It has NO record worth mentioning. But that is no excuse for present members not starting at once to make one.

It is now impossible at this distance e to make out an act of accusátion as anyone outside the reach of a couple of American libraries is unable even to find out what the Academicians have perpetrated... let alone members of the Institute.

The last MEMBER I met was Henry James his communications to the BODY as it then was, were suppressed *present members whom I know personally or by letter have been elevated since I met them, so they had no inside views when I last saw them, in fact the subject never arose. It wasn't one that was ( or is ) discussed outside the charmed circle. But that is no reason why a country well along in the second centru of its existence should have little cohesion or devlop the mechanisms of an orga to fight crude mercantilism and the worship of cra

very truly yrs

13 Jan 58

My Dear Van Wyck Brooks

Despite the efforts of a paterlalistic and cow-milking
govt. all lunatics are not idiot, but the stupidest goon on this
ward, the one who bores his codetnuti with infantile questions
re/making a fortune on the stock exchange, dragged in a copy of
the " Times" of N.Y. with yr/ letter in it.

Aren't you thinking of the time of Agassiz
when Harvard was an University ?

Against yr/ claim, and having enjoyed the late
Porter Sergeant's protests against Ooozism,

I was simultaneously cheered
by a 50c. paper back, Short Stories, delected by Penn "Warren
and unknown.

Hope his poetry bk/ will be at a levl. BUT

while a literate has penetrated the book stall area for
harmless revelations in fiction

the histroy and econ proffs are contemptible .
there is easily available Del Mar / or Van Buren, or Benton
apart from the rebel Horton, who has NO commerical outlets.
of the six" advisors " only Pearson ( N.H. not Drew ) has done
any work/

Of course the series OUGHT to be required in all
curricula, starting in High School, possibly required for
college entrance.

The St Johns 100, is no more educative than Montaigne.
all books celebrated, only a few rotten, but not one put there to
teach the student anything particular for a given end.

the morass system of stifling by abundance.

Dave is trying to bring out our Unwobling Pivot. One
student reported that "Harvard HAS head of Coke.

But the damnbaits keep reprinting
de Toqueville . etc.

Billions of $ to hide 10 historic facts.

A little collaboration , or at least communication between
half a dozen literates COULD get some sanity into curricula.

Education bills in the hit whose, merely to help intake of
building contractors.

Even Congressional record not on sale on news stands IN
the Capitol

A weak local station radioed 15 minutes re/ brain wash

Chet Huntley puffs "the Reporter" etc.

The treatment of Italy STINKS, both here and in England.
the pusillanimity and small meanness would be incredible
if one did not consider the source

There is NO apparent effort to learn any truth about Europe.
Too long to type out, I wish you cd/ pass thru D.C. sometime or
other.

Also mention any intelligent man in the U.S. whom you trust
or with whom you can exchange a few moderate words.

Challenge to various profs to NAME any intelligent man on THEIR local
faculty up to now, in vain.

N.H.P. mentioned Warren after W's departure, at least I think it
was Warren who left Yale.

Quality of Editing at Calif. and Cambridge Eng. Univ.
shown by MrsProusts contribution to the abysmal Edward's Index.

(peachey a serious character, don't know how he is in that gallere.)

cordially yours