c/o American Express Co
11Rue Scribe
Paris

Dear Miss Stein:

I want to tell you with a great many thanks that I had the best time I have had alk summer while I was with you at Bilignin. I like always the country best and to listen to people talking well, especially when they talk about the people in one's particular hagiology. And always there is the thing that for a young writer to stay with a great writer is a terrible exciting experience. Staying with you was that for me, because you were so good to me, letting me do pleasant little things, and because I found you just as authentic and real as I had hoped I would.

You told me things about the business of writing which will help me a great deal, things which I already felt dimly in my mind but could not rationalize nor express. And you made me want to write just by the way you are: all the time I was with you I was wanting to be writing in a new way that I had never thought of before, not your way of writing, of course, but a way of my own that I had thought of because of you.

Here in Paris I was at first very confused and hot, but now I am getting settled. I saw M. Fay yesterday and have been working today on the books for PORTRAITS and PLAYS. I hope they will please you. I was sorry to write so slowly and badly in Bilignin, but it just didn't come fast those days. Also there was inside me a great deal of thinking about this new way of writing of my own which kept getting in my way.

I am quite convinced now that you are the important writer of this time, and I hope that the things you have written for yourself will have the same success as the things you have written for a popular audience. Certainly, I shall be working very hard to see that they do, because I think a wider reading of your work could really go a long way toward cleaning the debris out of our language. I know that after I have been reading what you have written, it is always very hard for me soon afterwards to use the worse clichés. Your words have a tonic effect on that in me which brings the words out.

Of course you will have a great success in America this fall, and you will love it. I am American and I like America better each time I come home to it. Always the best thing in being in Europe is the thinking how much more American I will be when I get home for having been away.

Now please tell Miss Toklas that I was too pc comfortable thanks to her and that I liked very much the flowers she put in my room and

right by itself. When I write it doesn't, unless I go
over it and change, and then in making it nice I often
make it wrong. That is the difference between being a
good writer and just wanting to write.

Then there is something else. When I
observe or something happens, I must wait usually a
long time before I know what part is important and
the part to write. I imagine that you when you write
know at once what is the essential part of a thing,
the part that has the movement in it that matters,
the part that is something in itself beyond just
saying the story of it. I hope I can get something
of this skill with practice.

I like Paris now very much; I have
here a wonderful quiet exciting life. I have had an
awful fight with my concierge, who doesn't like me
because I am tall and he small, but walking about
the streets in the cool sunlight is wonderful.

Monsieur Fay has been very good to
me. We finished the blurbs ( I hope they will work
out all right ) and he has promised to take me
around to see modern pictures. Will you have time
when you come back for me to see your pictures?
I should like ever so much, indeed really a great
deal more than that, to see them, but I don't want
to get underfoot when you are packing and planning.

chez Dissard, 191 Rue de l'Universite,
is where I shall be till October 1, when the regular
border comes in and I go out; but M. Fay will know
where I am after that.

I am trying to arrange in my head all
my ideas about your writing; this takes a good deal
of my time. You would never know how exciting it has
been for me to know you, or how many grand ideas of
all kinds you have started me thinking about. I have
not had such elegant mental explorations since I
gave up trying to understand Spengler. I don't "under-
stand" your work, but I feel terribly sure about it,
that is I am sure that I like to read it, that it is
as good writing as there is, and that it is good
writing for me to read because of what it does to
increase directness in my own writing.

with best wishes to you & Miss Toklas
hoping to see you both again soon

Albergo Rapallo
Rapallo, Italy
July 5, 1935

Dear Miss Stein: I wonder if you will be at Bilignin around the 17th of this month? I shall be driving north then, and would like so much to go by way of France and say hello to you and Miss Toklas on my way. If you are NOT going to be there then, would it be too much to ask that you send me a card here to let me know?

Mother and I covered most of the west and south of France, stayed a while on the Cote d'azur and have been resting here. Tell Bernard not to worry, Ezra is not here; I was so amused by a letter I had from him last winter in which he said that he hoped I was still not under that "dangerous influence". I have been reading his book on Free Masonry and find it all right. He gets over the information so pleasantly.

I have been studying Italian again, and for part of my translation did one of your lectures. It went into Italian very well, I think, and was especially good practice because of the repetitions which impressed the words and tenses on the mind. I enjoyed doing it.

I was interested by the things which you told me of America when I saw you, too briefly, in Paris, and I hope that we will have a chance to talk again as I pass by. I am to go back to Harvard in September; mother simply will not hear of a western university.

With best wishes to Miss Toklas and my greetings,

yrs.

You would be surprised to know how much I have thought
about your work and how much I have written about it. And the more I
write and think about it, the more I know what a sloppy thinker and
hopeless writer I am, and at the same time, the surer I become that
you are reliable. I have come to feel that I can rely on you, and on
your work, that I can be sure to find it always hard at the center and
moving on the surface.

I drove all the way to Freiburg the afternoon I left you.
And what a wonderful country is that Eastern part of France. I can
understand how a Frenchman would never have to be building new houses
if he had a piece of that land, and how he would stand right there on
it and fight for it, if anyone came to take it away from him.

I had a funny time at a small Rhinebridge border station
where all the Nazis were drunk. They had to look over all of my books
to see that there was nothing "gegen Deutschland" in them. They were
very funnily drunk, and prideful and glad to be NEW Germands

In the Black Forest all the germans were doing their
game of touring in costume. They were also doing their games of
walking with sticks and bald heads, and their indoor game of electric
stove Kultur. They are a fine people but they do make me laugh. At
last, from watching them, I had to put it all down in a sentence and
this is the sentence:

Their hills and vallies have asked them to stay
inside today and so they have arranged games for the meanwhile.

Of course that sentence doesn't include everything,
but I think it does express that very German thing that makes them
so ridiculous and admirable, so hateful and finally satisfying.

Mother is very sorry that she didn't see you. She
hopes that the next time you come to Pittsburgh you will give her that
pleasure. In a few days we are starting out over the Alps for Salzburg.
Mr Halliburton left for Italy on his elephant this morning. Well that
is all right too, I guess.

I'm asking my NYC booksellers to forward you a
copy of my first NATURAL HISTORY. It has more of the story thing in it
than the others are having. It has also a sort of cheapness that I
hope in the others to rise above. America is a little bit that way,
but I think there is a better way of putting it.

With kindest wishes to Miss Toklas
& again thanks for a pleasing visit.

1. My address at Harvard will be E-31 Eliot House.

2. I shall hope to see Mr Wilder in Salzburg.

[2]

Best wishes to Miss Toklas
& all the kinds of luck to
you both.

There is a jazz song that
says "She can dish it out
but can they take it?" I
hope the Americans will have
the sense to realize who
made them,

Servissimus,

15

Paris 16

Dear Miss Stein:

This is an unpleasant letter
of the elephant who never forgot. I hope on
the boat you will have three minutes to make
me a note to Majorca so that I may know some
one there. Is this a presumption? At least
it is a nuisance, but I hope you won't mind
too much.

I know you won't let your great
success in America stop the flow of your serious
work. Tender Buttons is more important to me
than the Autobiography. I mean to say there are
lots of good raconteurs and very few writers
who can verbally raise Lazarus.

Again I thank you for your
kindness and help. What you have told me about
the kinds of thinking will save me a lot of
error I think. I begin now to feel as though
maybe I might be able to make myself a writer.

JAMES LAUGHLIN IV
"ROBIN HILL"
NORFOLK, CONN.

Dear Miss Stein:

I am terribly pleased with A WATERFALL & A PWANO. It was awfully good of you to send it. I think it will be about the liveliest things in the volume. It has a great deal of charm and force, of the kinds that only you know how to manufacture.

The volume will be out the end of next month and I'll send you your copies at once. It will be called NEW DIRECTIONS 1936, and will have much excellent stuff in it. It will be exciting. There is some swell Henry Miller and some very interesting work by two young people, a boy named Montagu O'Reilly and a girl named Lorine Niedecker.

I have just published a separate pamphlet by the boy and I'll send you a copy as soon as the envelopes for it come.

My book about you struggles on. I had to stop for a while and go to Mexico for a rest. I am interested in it so much that sometimes it magnifies itself into a large blank wall, if you know what I mean. I think it will be ready to go to the printer in about a month. It is full of surprises. I have tried to pack it full of meat and fire-crackers. There is a particular little paragraph saying "to-hell-with-you" for every possible kind of stuffed shirt.

Mexico was fun but hard to digest. It smells bad, you know, and is difficult in many ways. I got more fun out of riding in the planes. My brother went with me and we flew all the way - down across the States and then over to Yucatan and back by way of Cuba and Florida. The men who run the planes are simply marvellous. The ruins in the jungle were good too.

I don't know that there is much news here. As prosperity returns the people get perhaps less interesting, but even then they do not change much. I am getting to be an almost respectable character. That is, I am being asked fairly regular to write conventional well paid articles on proper subjects by nice editors of nice magazines who know somebody who told them I was so nice, or so bright, or something else like that. I think the book on you will put a stop to that and I'll not be sorry. Success is not yet chosen for my metier.

Have you looked at Laura Riding's PROGRESS OF STORIES? I think you might like that; it has a kind of motion that makes a story without being one. Also: there is some fine American venacular in Carl Sanburg's THE PEOPLE, YES. I think you would like that too.

I saw your friend George Platt Lynes the other night and he sends you his love. My girl was having her picture taken by him in funny hats for one of the fashion magazines. She gets the hats free, but they are too odd to wear. I thought Lynes was very nice indeed.

My best to you all - that is, Miss Toklas and Bernard
and the dogs, great and small. I have missed terribly not stopping
by Bilignin. There were parts of Mexico that had that heaviness of
the land, but they were not satisfactory in the same way.

Again so many thanks for the piece of prose.
It is swell!

NEW
DIRECTIONS

NORFOLK
CONNECTICUT

October 11, 1937

Dear Miss Stein:

Miss Norman has just
sent me your DANIEL WEBSTER and says
I may have it for NEW DIRECTIONS 1937.

I am excited and pleased.
It is a fine play - a fine play - full
of your customary lights. The book needed
it badly, and now I feel much safer.

With your permission I
shall make a few hundred reprints from
the same type in pamphlet form. You can
have some of these for presents for your
friends and I'll keep the rest to supply
the demand for Dan'l which will, I'm con-
fidant, outlast the lesser clay of other
contributors.

Truly this is a joyful
day, inspite of how the skies are gray.
Am I becoming soft-headed? - No, it is
just the return to Harvard.

Did I tell you how de-
lighted the family were with your piece
in the ATLANTIC?

Best, as always, to you
both!

Jay

Dear Miss Stein:

You will be wondering why I did not call again and make arrangements to come to see you. I have not been well. I don't know what it is about changing from the food and water of one country to that of another but it is very unsettling.

I am going away tonight to the mountains but will be back in Paris a little later on and hope to see something of you then.

I haven't yet had a chance to buy your new book but I have been told it is extremely good. Well, that is hardly a surprise!

Always with best wishes,

Jay

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CONCERNANT LES CORRESPONDANCES PNEUMATIQUES :

NEW
DIRECTIONS

NORFOLK
CONNECTICUT

January 13, 1939

Dear Miss Stein:

I'm afraid that the price you ask for FAUST, though
I have no doubt it is well worth it, is a bit vast for
our exchequer. I'm terribly sorry as I should have
loved to have had it.

Perhaps you'll have some other less publicized ms.
for us for next year.

I'm terribly interested to learn from Bill Scott that
you have done a book for children. That ought to be
very amusing and I'm looking forward to it greatly.

There isn't a great deal of news here. As a literary
period it is one of seriousness and respectability.
The best work is being done by the critics - men like
Blackmur and Tate and the like who write analytical
essays about each other's work and publish them in
sedate young journals.

We really need a little action. I have tried to sup-
ply some with Delmore Schwartz - whose book I shall
have sent you - and I'll be anxious to know what you
think of him. He is a turn away from Americanism,
of which we had such a snowstorm a year or so ago.

Who will be doing the book of FAUST? Random House?
Don't forget us. We may be poor but we are earnest!

Ever best greetings

NEW
DIRECTIONS

NORFOLK
CONNECTICUT

May 10

Dear Miss Stein -

I wonder if this letter will reach you.

It has been a long time but you seem,
from your book, to have spent it very fruitfully.

I should like to renew our pleasant
relationship of the past. As you probably know, we now
handle THREE LIVES on lease for Mr Cerf and it goes along
very steadily in a small way.

Perhaps you will want to send me some-
thing short for the next annual volume?

Another project I have had in the back
of my mind is a book of your "Selected Writings" which
would trace the evolution of your work from the start to
the present. Would that interest you?

Do books get through to France now?
Would you like some of our new things? I'd be glad to
send them if there is any hope of their reaching.

With best wishes to you and Miss Toklas,

NEW YORK OFFICE: 67 WEST 44TH STREET