May 13

1943

Dear Josie,

I was terribly glad to have your letter and to
know your address. Without knowing anything except that I
would very much like to read a book by you about Kathe Koll-
witz - biography, novel as biography was really what I thought
of - I spoke to Don Elder at Doubleday's about it. He seems
quite keen about it. It could be a wonderful thing to do -
she's the only people's artist of the last fifty years, I
feel, and before I knew that you had any Kollwitz material
at all, I felt you were the person most worth hearing about
her. I do so hope you want to do it - want to be interested,
anyway, for a beginning. I know that Martin Gumpert, who was
a good friend of her living son's, has stuff, too; so has her
niece, now in California; so has her gallery here. What Don
wishes now is that you will write him a letter at Doubleday's
outlining such a book and suggesting that material is available
to you.

My resignation was sent in to the OWI on the 1st
of May, and a smear article started the rounds late last week.
I was warned by my more acute friends that if I didn't make some
sort of statement publicly, someone would beat me to it in the
course of the week, but it seemed out of the question. However,
the thing did break, and I issued a statement early this week.
I'd like to go on with posters - God knows the government has
to have a decent war poster program, the advertising people are
fully aware of that - but I'm not sure of what I shall be doing,
except that I am home at my poems, happily after a long time.
I am signing up to do a Melville anthology, and there is talk of
a book about the air opening-up of South and Central America, with
three months of flying, and a book for Doubleday's. I never meant
to go to New Mexico; Rebecca must have been improvising.