245 St. Matthews Avenue,
Louisville, Kentucky.

4 September, 1935.

Mr. Cleanth Brooks, Jr.,
The Southern Review,
Louisiana State University,
Baton Rouge,
Louisiana.

Dear Mr. Brooks,

Many thanks for the copy of your book. I have only had
time to look through it so far; but it is a subject in which
I am deeply interested and I am most grateful to you for send-
ing it to me.

I enclose my piece on Jerrold's book. I hope I am not in-
conveniently late.

I have received the Pareto from Harcourt.

15 Feb. 1936

To the Editors
The Southern Review
Baton Rouge, La.

Gentlemen:

Some apologies and clumsy explanations. Sometime last December or
November one of you wrote kindly inviting me to submit for consider-
ation a group of poems. I can't locate the letter and I left the
Review North, so that this is addressed collectively and the very
address of the magazine is a memory-guess - I hope a right one.

I'd have answered much sooner but I was sure from week to week that
I would get together a group, and so postponed it. Please pardon
the discourtesy. Looking through the work lately, I now realize
I have nothing finished that seems fit to submit : it's all either
too purely experimental or rides too easy. I believe and certainly
hope that within six or eight months more some things may begin
to take more shape. When they do, I should like very much to submit
them, if you are still agreeable to it./ Bishop's poems were
very fine.

The Courier-Journal,
Louisville, Kentucky.

5 October, 1936.

Dear Red,

How about letting me do a piece on Chesterton for the Southern
Review, using his forthcoming autobiography as excuse and bringing in pretty
much the whole field of his work.

Chesterton is a hero of mine. I have read pretty much everything
he has written, and would much enjoy writing about him. And the story would
be wholly down our alley.

If you approve of the idea would you get a copy of the autobiography
sent me to Louisville before election day, assuming copies are available before
that. The day after election I set out lecturing for six weeks.

Warmest regards to you both, and hoping to see you both very soon,

15 February, 1937.

Dear Red,

Louisville has been such a bloody mess lately that there
has been no chance to answer your welcome letter. I was away
during all the first part of the flood so did not even get
your letter till ten days ago.

I have no place to sit down in the Courier building, everything
still being torn up and messy, so work is hard. I shall try
to get started on Chesterton tomorrow, and will do my very
best to mail it to you by the 20th. But I can't promise, my
whole environment being so up in the air. But I promise to try
hard.

I am extremely anxious to see you two and talk about a
million things. I also want your advice about FREE AMERICA.
I also very much want you to write for us if you ever have a
spare moment. Please try and do that.

You doubtless know that, for some reason I am too dull to
understand, my name is mud in Nashville. I was in New York when
the disagreement on policy between New York and Nashville came to
a head, and attending the meetings in New York I tried with com-
plete lack of success to keep both sides aware of what was in the
other's mind. When Nashville withdrew it seemed to me that the
effort being made in New York was well worth what little support
I can give it, so I continued my support. It wasn't till some
weeks later, when hard Smith showed me a letter from Lanier, that
I woke to the fact that there is violent distaste for me in
Nashville. Why, I still don't know. If you have any dope and
feel like passing it on, I'd be grateful. It seems to me im-
portant that the few of us who are trying for the same basic re-
formation in America shouldn't have beastly internal squabbles,
like a lot of communists. But I don't know what to do about it.
I suppose nothing is a good thing to do. At least that should
not make things worse. But if you have suggestions I'd more than
welcome them.

Yes, we saw Alice in New York. She was much better than I
had been given to expect, which was encouraging. Our best love
to Cicina and to yourself. You know, of course, that we want you
in Louisville if there is ever a chance of your coming.

Oct. 20, 1937

Dear Herbert:

I had hoped that we might lure you into doing a piece
on the Bulwark of the Republic, by Hendrick, and the other
constitution books, and we still regret that you were not
persuaded. But can we get you to do a shorter piece (say
1,000 to 3,000 words) on The Saga of American Society, by
Dixon Wecter? And if you cannot do that--or even if you
can--won't you make us some proposal for an article or
review? We are hoping to have something by you in the
very near future.

I hope your summer was as pleasant as ours. We spent
almost all of it in a rather remote part of Northern Cali-
fornia, on Clearlake as a matter of fact, where we met
one of your cousins. I managed to finish about 80,000 words
of the novel, but I am no where near the end. The scale
of the thing has turned out to be much larger than I had
anticipated, and I am not near the middle yet. I really
don't know how the thing is coming, or how long it will be
before I finish. I hope to impose on you and Eleanor, by
asking for a reading at some stage in the process. I haven't
been able to get seriously at the thing since my return,
but I have managed to do aocouple of poems, one of which
I am enclosing.

I do hope that we shall see you all in the not too
distant future. Cinina sends her best regards to you both,
and so do I. I am looking forward to hearing from you.

As ever,

ROBERT W. BINGHAM, President & Publisher

BARRY BINGHAM, Vice President & Publisher

The Courier-Journal
THE LOUISVILLE TIMES

LOUISVILLE, KY.

6 November, 1937.

Dear Red,

Many thanks for your letter. I am off to the East tomorrow, for a long lecture tour. Until December 20th, my address will be the Beaux Arts Apartments, 307-310 East 44th. Street, New York City. Eleanor will be with me in the East.

Eleanor has been going through a bad time. Her brother Eustace, of whom she was very fond, shot himself last Monday. Suicide is such final defeat that it is a hard thing to have to accept for someone you loved.

I am struggling to finish my book on the Democratic Party before the end of January, so until that time I can't take on any outside writing. The introduction to the book, which is about the world today, might with heavy cutting make a magazine piece. It is almost ten thousand words, but there may be some way of cutting it to six thousand. I'll send it to you as it stands, if you don't mind, and let you read it. I can't undertake to do anything more constructive than cut, until my book is finished, at least the first draft of it. But if you can see any hope in the thing I'd be glad to cut it. Or perhaps you can cut it in the office. You can do anything you like with it, but I'm afraid it may depend too much on what follows to make a good piece.

Any time you feel like letting us see a part of your book, we'd be more than delighted. Many thanks for the poem, which I like very much. I never can write quickly about poetry, but when I get to know it better I may have something sensible to say.

Very best wishes from both of us to you and to Cinina, and hoping to see you before too long.