March 15 1946

Dear Charles:

I have been in the country for the past two weeks, and got back to
the city Wed., to find waiting for me, among other things, a notice
to appear at an appeal meeting in my C.O. case. So, that I have
been quite busy getting documents and witnesses together for the
hearing, coming up next Tuesday. This to explain why I haven't
written you sooner.

Among the "other things", I found the latest copy of View, and
it is in reference to this and to my connections with View, in general,
that I am writing you.

It is really some sort of remarkable ignorance, or "cliqueishness"
on your part, that such a display of perversity should stand out
like a sore thumb in this last issue: I refer to the reproductions
of Zumbo's death-sculpture. The artist isn't in the least interesting,
in our time. His treatment of death is no different, except in
medium, from that of a newsreal photographer in the war. With
the millions of corpses, and pictures of corpses, in the war
and in concentration camps in Europe, your insistence on reproducing
death, by unnatural causes, under the pretense of artistic
interest, is either just pure stupidity or mere perverseness of those
who still regard the divine Marquis as a figure of veneration.

All that stood for the "algolagnic sensibility" in the last
century has certainly come into its own in this century, most
certainly in the last twelve years. All the naughty dreams of
de Sade or Lautreamont are child's play in comparison to the
"Belsen girls" exploits and the cute elimination methods of Stalin.
The general, widespread appearance of the masochist-male and the
cruel, hard woman is certainly inline with Sacher-Masoch's
fantasies and Kierkegaard's cult of authority - both being part
of the same cloth in the end. The ordinary conventional American
girl - which brings to mind Miss Elizabeth Smart's "In Grand
Central Station I Sat Down And Wept" - might well give de Sade
the shivers if he could listen in to their grinding and whip-like
mentality. Obviously View's interest in reproducing and exploiting
the macabre and the freakish, in all the clap-trap of XIXth century
sensationalism, can't even begin to outdo the real horror which has
taken place in this war. So, that this can't be the real motive
of presenting the Zumbo pictures. You couldn't possibly be trying
to perform some sort of social duty, as the movies and newspapers
have shown us enough dead bodies, to awaken some realization of
what war or unnatural death is like. Furthermore, you just can't
excuse yourself by saying that they were presented merely for
"art's sake" at one; the accompanying article doesn't bear that out.

So, it becomes obvious, as in your other issues of the past six
months, that you are interested in death, in the macabre and in
freakishness of any kind because such things "thrill" you, and so
your logic goes, "thrill" some of your readers. But what is this
"thrill" but another manifestation of the most foul of modern
psychopathological states. It is in line with the thrill sadists
recieve by chopping-off tongues and setting dogs on pregnant women,

- 2 -

the thrill countless thousands derive in perverted, abnormal
sexual relationships (and I don't mean among fairies, but between
man and woman), and the thrill the ordinary scissor-bill derives
when he has a wet-dream with Betty Grable. You are in direct
relationship with everything that accounts for the basic corruption
of this generation and two before it; your magazine becomes a symbol
the unsatisfied, disorganized, perverted sensibility of our time -
that Reich has so thoroughly analysed. You, and the existentialists
have to be "thrilled" before you act, before you discover the
essence of your being, which you might discover to have no essence
after all! You can now be pround of adding another neurotic trait
to View: necrophilia.

I say to Hell with your corruption! You are a symbol, in the
avant-garde, of what is wrong with the world.

Needless to say, you can take my name off of your masthead. I may
have been doubtful of this before, but there would be little
sense now in my continuing to have anything to do with your magazine.
I could never really justify, morally, an article, review or
poem in its pages since I feel this way. As for my book, I wish
to revoke it from publication. Send the MS and Breton's letter
back to me soon. (You'll probably be relieved on this count, as
you have made no progress towards its publication anyway, for two
years now!)

Whatever excuse I can offer for my collaboration with you in the
past - my youthful anticipations and innocence - could never be
offered now.

Obviously the whole structure upon which View rests will collapse
in the near future with the final capitulation of capitalist
civilization, the remains of which are in their death throes
here in the U.S. Whatever your achievements, and I consider them
quite insidious for the most part, it is pretty obvious that your
magazine is nearing its end as any prominent force in the avant-
garde, if it ever was one in the first place! After all what
have you accomplished, except selling a few more Tchelitchew's,
introducing a few young poets and painters, who would have had
their recognition anyway, and helping to get a few more rich
bitches to buy up modern art?

Your flirtations with anarchism come at a time when the movement
has again caught the eyes of a few more young people than had been
the case for many years. But View has had nothing to do with this,
I assure you. Most of the 7,000 C.O.'s in prison, or out of prison,
are the avant-garde of a rising consciousness, and it was their
experiences with the State machine in wartime that was the main factor in
this turn towards libertarian concepts of the world. View was
certainly not a voice for them. Politics is the only magazine
I can think of (except for the C.O. or anarchist press itself) that
actually gave any serious attention to the anarchist aspect of C.O.
thought, which is beginning to represent most of the attitudes of
these young people. But View says its "sympathetic" to anarchism -
that's the perfect dilattante attitude for you to take, no other
one would be possible under your present set-up. But your days are
numbered, dear, and if anyone is left ten years from now, just think
how View will look to the eyes of the future!