Dear Jean Toomer:

I have not forgotten our agreement concerning Ernest Bloch.. but unfortunately that gentleman has taken a job in Cleveland as head of the new Conservatory. He does however make periodic trips to NY and I believe gives lessons. In this circumstance, if you care to meet him when he is here, the best way will be possibly this.. as I do not know when he comes.. Write me that you wish to see him.. I will despatch to him at once a letter telling him xxx who you are.. then you write to him, care Hotel Statler, Cleveland.. and ask him to communicate with you direct as to an appointment.

Just the other day a friend brought to my attention your answer to Mary Austin in the Call. Your paper was a remarkably clear and keen piece of work.. you are doubtless, by your own findings a musician, but you have amind that does not show to disadvantage in writing, either. I doubt if the frowsy-minded Mary Austin deserved such intelligent destruction.

Good luck to you...

228 East 79 St
NY Oct. 21.

October 21, 1920

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

148 west 95 street, N Y April 3, 1922

Dear Jean Bloch---Glad I was indeed to hear from you, and to read what you had to say. You are the sort of life one doesn't forget .. nor do you grow dim. The contrary! Let me see what you wish to send me, of course. I am hurt by what you say of the intermittence forced on your music. I have just learned that Bloch, now director of The Cleveland Institute of Music, is to give some scholarships for the summer course. I know no details. If you are interested, write to the Institute for details. And if you think you cared to apply for a scholarship, tell me and I will write to Bloch in so personal and direct a way that every chance should be yours, provided you are technically etc. qualified.

Yes: Washington must be a lonely place. Que faites vous dans cette galere? But I wonder if you are lonelier there than I am in New York? I dreamed years ago, that the time of Association, the time of battallioning the Spirit had come to America. When I wrote Our America I thought I was heralding a fact, not prophesying. I was at least time-dimensionally wrong. We must still persevere alone .. all of us, scattered suffering, fighting the pain and the menace of under-nutrition of which you speak. Perhaps in the very scatter of ourselves, a seed is being planted more widely than it could be otherwise ... and perhaps not. I believe, sometimes I think it is a credo quia absurdum. But I go on believing.

You r letter has helped enormously. I wish I could think I could be of help to you. You are one of those men one must see but once to know the timbre and the truth of. About you at present solitude and silence. Well, mine is broken mostly by the bile-venting of ugly journalists who hate me with a hate I can never understand. And then letters such a yours, fixing not changing my silence, but filling it with sweetness.

Let me know if you want me to write to Bloch ...

2

more complex organism is a bit farther off.

## POEMS

Naturally there are more perfect things among these shorter less organic creations. But although you are a poet, I don't think you'll find your final satisfaction in the mere direct lyric. Something in the way of a free woven narrative that includes the song of Nathan Merilh and gives the texture of the world he springs from will include you all.

Some of the poems are quite perfect. Seventh Street, Becky, Avey, (Daniel less so), Carma are lovely transcripts of a world old in America but new in American expression. The poems Cockswain, Beehive, Evening Song. Marble Faces are another depth .. more metaphysical and yet well pictorialized here. Some of the things are mere XXXX statement, not fleshed not living .. like The First American. Some, like Kivalt, are notes for yourself in a rich sensuous garb but still notes that are true in their potential rather than in their kinetic energy.

ON THE WHOLE, my dear Jean Toomer, I am enormously impressed by the power and fulness and fineness of your Say....A man whose spirit is like yours so high and straight a flame does not need to be told that he has enormous gift, and that this means a responsibility beyond the ken and the rules of the masses .. nor does he need anything one who feels himself his brother and knows that such things need no direct articulation, can send him in a letter. Yet, corroboration from anybody helps. You must go on. You must by whatever ruthless means which will not hurt your spirit, preserve for yourself the freedom, the quiet and the peace in which the spirit may turmoil and seethe and ecstacy to birth.

If there is one thing I have learned, living in America, knowing my own life and knowing the lives of the many many about me, it is that the artist must have the greater wisdom of fighting for himself, of knowing that only so can the time come when the American world will be a place in which he can live. Today, every rhythm, every will sent through the weave of America is fatal to creation .. and so often not alone economic pressure but the subtly insidious Myth of 'the duties of manhood, the need of making ones own way' plunges the delicate artist tissues into a corrodent poisonous bath of American 'reality' which eats them up. Dont think that you will be helping yourself or America in a newspaper office or an advertising agency. If you can keep away, do! Keep to the streets, keep to the quiet of your room.. let that flame burn up clear. And remember that the world which will swallow you, annihilate you today if you take its word and its thought in that very act will be rebuking you who should know not only yourself better, but it better also .. who should know that you must as a part of it prevail against it and so function for it.

When I look about me at the marketplace, I feel that so stinking has become the rottenness, so prostrate are all the organs whereby man has stood up proudly through the ages, that we are doubtless very close to the new spring and the new seedlings. The so-called literary XXXX and artistic milieus are indeed strewn with excrement and decay ... but so are the fallow fields.

Keep yourself warm underneath, in the soil, where the throb is .. and use every decent means in your reach to protect yourself from a too early pushing to the surface.

your friend and brother

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

148 West 95 Street

New York, May 2 22.

My dear Brother:-

That was another good letter from you. You talk of your work in a way
that shows you detached from it .. which means that you are in the state
for creating what comes next. I don't think it makes much difference what
a man feels about his work, so long as he does not defend it too passionate
hotly. That does not mean that he should not love it, nor believe in it.
It means simply that he is already beyond any given bit of it .. i.e., not
yet finished. But you have more than begun. There are things in your writ-
ing of very definite life and form .. not yet organized, that's all.

You tempt me hugely with your invitation. Perhaps, since you dont require a
definite answer nor set a definite day, I may be able later this month to
run up. I do not know .. if I see two or three clear days I shall. In this
case however I will wire or write you beforehand so as to make sure that it
is convenient to you. I know I should love a long quiet walk with you
through Washington or the lovely nearby woods. We must have that, you bet!
...My work continues to breed trouble. My next book, CityBlock, is of such
a nature that my publisherx tells me its appearance in bookform regularly
would mean a prison term for him. I am quite willing to go to jail for my
work but I cant demand it of him and there is no way of shifting the respons-
ibility to myself. So we are working on a Subscription Edition idea .. which
I detest heartily. But nonpublication doubtless would be more detestable still
The so-called 'established critics' are I believe about unanimous in calling
me a damn fool or worse. For a man who has entertained the fond hope of
earning a living by his pen this is a situation at least ironic. I have al-
ready outlived the rather brilliant reputation of the author of Our America
and of the editor of Seven Arts..........Amen.

ever yours .. and with hopes of that visit.....

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

July 26 22

Dear Jean:

There is loveliness in this poem, but isn't it marred by a fortuitous obscurity possibly of puncutation? What verb commands giant shads? or am I stupid? and wouldn't to sing better than from in the 2nd stanza?

Tell me what is your pleasure about selling CB. I have to give dealers 1/3 off, and I shall be 1000 times gladder to give you the same. That means, if you sold say a dozen copies you'd make about $20.00. Is it worth the trouble and bother to you? If so, by all means do it. In the event of this decision, I am returning your lists which of course I shant use. What you do is to get the subscriptions and the money at $5.00: subtract your commission and send me a check for the balance, together with the names of the subscribers to whom I shall then forward their books.

Can you make that trip with me in September instead of October? I find I must be back here before the cold weather to tend the furnace. And that makes it so much sooner too! What a holiday we'll have.

Here is my need, Jean, as regards town. My novel is to be called HOLIDAY. And it is simply the story of a lynching. The picture of the drab hideous unpainted town of the whites, the niggertown next-door, possibly in a marshy pinewood: and the gradual tumescence that ends in the Passion of the burning. A short swift novel, all living in my head except the actual words. Now what I want, just incidentally, is to be once again in such a town ... where there are such white persons, and such black ones. Is Kentucky the place? is it sufficiently south? What about one of the Carolinas? They are not so far as Georgia, and are the precise thing. But I have no objection to Kentucky, or Arkansas or whatnot. It is up to you, dear brother. Let us simply not squander money on railroad fare: not go any farther, that is, than is needed. You understand of course that what I want is not to photograph in my book the town we choose: I have that town clear already and it is not a factual town. But I wish to EEXX soak once more in the color and atmosphere of that first inspired my idea. That is why I wish an ethnic similarity and an economic and cultural as well to that first inspirer.

You are good to say what you do about the promise of HOLIDAY (don't tell the title to anyone). I am probably presumptuous to write about the negro, and particularly since I know you who are creating a new phase of American literature (O there's no doubt of that my friend). Of course, what my book will be is something far apart from your own: I see a dynamic Form, a rather abstract Design of this juxtaposition of repression and passion. My book will after all be of its source .. probably the most purely subjective Design I have ever created, precisely because of the extreme objectivity of its subject.

АХХХХХХХХ

ХХХХХХХХХХХХХ

As soon as you give me the right address, I'll ship you circulars and blanks, provided you want to sell the book. But PLEASE, my dear friend, don't undertake this as you well might because you suspect it is my wish and contrary to your convenience. Do it only if you want to. Otherwise I can send circulars

1341 You Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C.,
31 July 1922.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

My interest in the sale and distribution of CITY BLOCK is primarily that of the broadly cultural. I believe CITY BLOCK to be one of the significant contributions of our age to what is best and most enduring in American letters. There is a penalty involved in the creation of an authentic art product. This: that by those very faculties which determine his artistic being, that is, intensity of vision, depth of perception, originality of execution, etc., an artist is in advance of what is average in his age. This means that to a certain extent he is alienated from it. For those very qualities which a later epoch is certain to venerate him, the average of the present day is most likely to take exception to. Hence, the need of private editions. CITY BLOCK is not for those whose response to what is deep and vivid and true in human life is inhibited by prudery. CITY BLOCK is not for those who insist in judging an art work by values that are cheaply ethical. Nor is it for those who wish simply that an artist reproduce the verities of their own minds. The purpose of any art work is not to convince you that you are right, but to open your mind to larger visions and perceptions. CITY BLOCK will prove a vivid experience for all who are receptive to authentic contributions in life and art. I believe you to be thus receptive. Hence, this note, and these circulars.

I likewise have a personal interest in whatever Waldo Frank creates. He is a friend of mine. At a time when my own artistic efforts were at the phase where they most needed the criticism of a deeply intuitive and sympathetic mind, of a mind as honest in its judgements as it was sympathetic, Mr Frank put the best of himself into the reading of some hundred or more pages of my manuscript. The criticism and appreciation which followed were wonderfully helpful and stimulating. Perhaps I shall never fully realize what they meant to me at the time. Perhaps I shall never be able to fully guage the value of his subsequent unfailing interest and friendship. But this I know: they placed a pillar beneath me at a most crucial time; they were warm hands that reached to me when the world seemed most chill and empty. If this were strictly personal, I should not relate it at this time. But this is not the case, for what he has done for me is but symbolic of his general interest in the expression of cultural America. More than any other man of his years, he has pushed forward the day of spiritual achievement. As editor of Seven Arts, he reached out for new and vital things. As author of OUR AMERICA he quickened our pulse and mind to beautiful articulation. As a citizen of Art America it is obligatory that you know Waldo Frank. Do so, by ordering CITY BLOCK, his latest creation, from me.

Checks or money orders should be made payable to Jean Toomer, and sent to me at the above address. The volume itself will be shipped direct by Mr Frank.

Please have any of your friends send in their orders.

Faithfully,

My interest in the sale and sitribution of CITY BLOCK is primarily that of the broadly cultural. I believe CITY BLOCK to be one of the significant contributions of our age to what is best and most enduring in American letters. There is a penalty involved in the creation of an authentic art product. This: that by those very faculties which determine his artistic being, ei, intensity of vision, depth of perception, originality of execution etc., an artist is in advance of what is average in his age. This means that to a certain extent he is alienated from it. For those qualities which a later epoch is certain to venerate him, the average of the present day is most likely to take exception to. Hence, the need which may often arise in an author's life for the publication of private editions. CITY BLOCK is not for those response to what is deep and vivid and true in human life is inhibited by prudery. CITY BLOCK is not for those who insist in judging an art work by values that are cheaply ethical. Nor is it for those who wish simply that an artist reproduce the verities of their own minds. The prupose of any art work is not to convince you that you are right, but to open your mind to larger visions and perceptions. CITY BLOCK will prove to be a vivid experience for all those who are receptive to authentic contributions in life and art.
I believe you to be thus receptive. Hence this note, and these circulars.

I likewise have a personal interest in whatever Waldo Frank creates. He is a friend of mine. And I use 'friend' in its best possible sense. At a time when my own artistic efforts were at the

2

phase where they needed the criticism of a deeply intuitive and sympathetic mind, of a mind as honest in its judgements as it was sympathetic, Mr Frank put the best of himself into the reading of some hundred or more pages of my manuscript. The criticism and appreciation which followed were wonderfully helpful and stimulating.
Perhaps I shall never fully realize what they meant to me at the time.
Perhaps I shall never be able to fully gauge the value of his subsequent unfailing interest and friendship. But this I know: they placed a pillar beneath me at a most crucial time; they were warm hands that reached to me when the world seemed most empty and chill.
If this were strictly personal, I should not relate it at this time.
It transcends that sphere, For what he has done for me is but symbolic of his general interest in the expression of cultural America. More than any other man of his years, he has pushed forward the day of spiritual achievement. As Editor of Seven Arts, he reached out for new and vital things. As author of OUR AMERICA he quickened our pulse and mind to beautiful articulation.
As a citizen of art America it is obligatory that you know Waldo Frank. Do so, by ordering CITY BLOCK, his latest achievement, from me.

Faithfully,

31 July 1922.

2

phase where they needed the criticism of a deeply intuitive and
sympathetic mind, of a mind as honest in its judgements as it was
sympathetic, Mr Frank put the best of himself into the reading of
some hundred or more pages of my manuscript. The criticism and
appreciation which followed were wonderfully helpful and stimulating.
Perhaps I shall never fully realize what they meant to me at the time.
Perhaps I shall never be able to fully gauge the value of his
subsequent unfailing interest and friendship. But this I know: they
placed a pillar beneath me at a most crucial time; they were warm
hands that reached to me when the world seemed most empty and chill.
If this were strictly personal, I should not relate it at this time.
It transcends that sphere. For what he has done for me is but symbolic
of his general interest in the expression of cultural America. More
than any other man of his years, he has pushed forward the day of
spiritual achievement. As Editor of Seven Arts, he reached out for new
and vital things. As author of OUR AMERICA he quickened our pulse and
mind to beautiful articulation. As a citizen of art America it
is obligatory that you know Waldo Frank. Do so, by ordering CITY BLOCK,
his latest achievement, from me.

Faithfully,

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

DEAR MAN

Thank you again, but now that I go over the prospect clearly, I find
I must not come to Washington this Spring. A une autre fois! There
are here constant and little duties, which, in the not too fit condit-
ion of Margaret, I have no right to shārk. So come to New York, soon,
for I am eager indeed to see you. A couple of days you will at least be
able to spend out here with us: I am sorry that household matters will
make a longer stay impossible. It seems a damn poor return for your
own hospitality to put a term to your visit .... but I am not master
of conditions here, it cannot be helped. you may be sure however, that
not only I will be glad to see you. Margaret looks forward with real
expectation to meeting you, she has already seen you: and I am sure
that you and she will become real friends instanter. Also, Tom will
smile upon you after he's given you his scrutinous and careful onee-over.

I wish to goodness the house were of the size that I could give you a
room and say: camp here till you're sick of it. The point is precisely
the lack of rooms, so that the guests cannot have that pleasant KUKUB
comfort which comes alone of knowing that the house goes on the same.

I am in a bit more endurable a mood ... more resigned I suppose. I find
it almost too painful to look out at the window at the Spring. And woth
a heightened wonder I look on what I could never understand: the desire of
men for personal survival. It seems to me that the sweetest faith in all
my life is the faith in an absolute death for this painful imperfect sick
enig shell called WF What is bearable to me in life is but accidental
to my personality: but a brief dweller in a crazy corner. That immortal
element will of course live .... but even today it does not know my

name. How childish to think that it will rotted! My love to you Hal.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

WANDO FRANK
DARWIN CONN

P.S. you ask perhaps "How go about learning French?" I'll tell you how I learned Spanish ... and good gods, man, havent you got every bit as much intelligence and power (if not more) than I?

I got the Cortina Book of Conversational Spanish. Its drawback was that there are so many commercial words, but just the same it is good. I got a dictionary, and I got three or four Spanish Classics of modern Prose (prose is always easier to get than poetry). I made sure to select books that would interest me, so that the incentive to read them would be there.

That was in April.

I studied a Cortina lesson a day, memorized the regular verbs, and after about a week, I began reading one of the books I had bought. I looked up every word, And I read aloud to myself (irrespective of how horrible the accent) for ten or 15 minutes per day. I devoted not more than 1 or 1 and a half hours a day to this. I HAD NEVER HEARD ANYONE SPEAK SPANISH. I merely followed as closely as I could the Cortina methods of pronunciation.

In the Middle of May I went to NY and took THREE lessons at the Berlitz, in order to hear the language before sailing. The teacher thought I was lying when I told him what I had done.

June 7, I sailed for Spain: and by July I was speaking with quite decent fluency.

Forme

It is a CINCH. The thing to do is to memorize the verbs at the beginning, and READ. If you know the verbs, you'll have no difficulty looking up the nouns and adjectives etc.

The choice of French books for you to begin with is enormous. I'd start with a prose classic of the 17th or 18th century: for French Prose was simply and more lucid in these centuries than either before or after. Here are a few suggestions:

Voltaire: Candide

Labrytere: Caractères

Molière: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Les Precieuse Bidicules.

or if you want something more modern

Anatole France: L'Ile des Pinguins
Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard
or better still

Stendhal: Le Rouge et le Noir
La Chartrouse de Parme

These are all the plays I want to read.

these are all works in

lucid classic prose. there are hundreds of others equally fit......

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Dear Jean

I am so sorry .. but I don't see my way clear to Washington after all.
If the baby had come the end of April as we hoped, instead of May 12,
I should have had a clear space in May before having to move lares and
penates up to Darien on May 31. But so it was, and I am so cluttered
and stifled with work and with details of living that don't deserve the
noble name............Not even a letter is possible just now. When I
am at ease in Darien (Conn) I hope to write you more fully. There has
been terrible trouble, not yet over, about Cityblock......I'll tell you
all about it, later. You don't know how I have looked forward to those
walks with you about Washington. Well: life's like that.

my love to you......

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Dear Brother

CANE came wednesday afternoon, and as I was
going to town thursday I went through it hurr-
iedly in order to be able to give it to Hiveright
on the following day. L. says he will read it
within a week (he may or he may not); and now
feels quite certain that the book should not be
crowded on the Spring list. He says "I cant do ±
anything for it, so quickly." His Spring catal-
eg is already in the Press. Write me how hard
you want me to press him for a Spring publicati-
on. If you feel it is important, I'll do what I
can.

The new sketches impressed me very deeply in
the hurried reading. Theater and Box-seat both.
Why didn't secession take Theater? The book as
a whole is amazingly rich and varied -- a gen-
uine contribution to our literature. You're no
a man of promise, any more: you ARE.

I am trying to arrange for you with Kreymborg
to come here and give a reading at the Green-
wich Village Theater: a lot of artists, Sandburg
Amy Lowell, Kreymobrg, myself -- have promised
you'd get a $50 guarantee and carfare, and
50% of the profits, according to the crowd you
drew. Moreover, I think we could get an advance
from L. if he takes the book, irrespective of
publication date.

I have been busy with a series of lectures at the
Rand School on the Rev. in Art and Lit. Last
talk is next thursday. Then I get right to
work cleaning up and typing Holiday, which is
to appear in August or September, according to
schedule.

love, as ever,

The Endless is for a Merry 1922 Xmas-

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

BROTHER

you can count on me to do all I can to land the
Kreymborg engagement. It's all still tentative.
Also, to land Cane for you, and a Spring publ. if
possible. I shall see, after L's read the book,
how valid his feeling against a Spring Publ. is.
I am happy of course that you've given Kabnis to
me. One cant talk about those things. You know
perhaps what you mean to me. I am delighted that
the magazines are openig up so. you'll be amazed
at where you are, brother, in two years. But of
course, Cane wont sell much. $100 advance on it
is really all we can ask for decently.

If you come up to give that reading, you can come
up to Darienand stay a while too, and meet Margy
and Thomas. You'll like them both, and they'll
both like you.

I'd give a good lot for a few hours with you
right now. I'm sort of tired and "down", and
there is no one in these here parts who means to
me what you do. LOVE

JEAN'TOOMER COLLECTION

W.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

## Brother

Yes, as you feel, Munson is real. Burke is too, but in a far more limited manner. Josephson is the merely clever man of the triumphant. Josephson will be successful, probably fit into some place of the sort he inveighs against today because he is outside. Burke's will be the highest and most honorable kind of academic career, something perphance after the manner of Mathew Arnold. Munson is the most indeterminate. He is the only critic I know who has the dimensional vision of a creator. Brook shad glimpses of such, but he lacked the power to create, and he lacked the courage to critioise. His career is a wistful retreat. He is to me the most tragic figure among our contemporaries. I love him, as one loves a lost hope, a vision that faded. But Munson, with his extraordinary sensitivity to the dimensions of mystery and of aesthetic creation, is devoted wholly to the work of the critic. No would-be novelist, he. And he has courage, virginity of impulse in a degree that no other critic I know of, and so few creative artists, even begin to approach. Unfortunately, he is a gentle person in his actual life, and likely not to insist in Secession on his peculiar intuitions. But he is a cheerful presence in New York. And you and he will yet be very close. I claim the right to be present on the night you come together, and you and Lee Ornstein, and you and several others.

I feel humble and contrite about Holiday, so gorgeous a theme, could I have possibly done it? I cant it more likely that I may be fied it? My emotional retreats and whirlings after the fact are of utterly no importance. I thought oftentimes I had muffed RAHAB, and I know I did not. In a month or six weeks, I shall read Holiday quietly and crucially to myself. Until then, hands off. And these worryings are neurosis. For of course, I see a thousand things I could have put in and yet I know that the very crucifying test of the artist is what he had the madness to leave out. The book is bereft of analysis and psychology. I can so easily write both of these. And yet something tells me that therein perhaps a Genius guided me for that, in writing this tale, I left out those qualities of myself which would not have fitted it.

Well we shall see.

There is no doubt about your brother. None. You have an extraordinary gift. The flame of your is pure and strong, and you're not fragile either. You have the protection of a prophetic vision concerning yourself. You're in a good state, deep down. And you are eating three meals a day, are you not?

Never forget: we are the intimately sanctified priests of the new Vision, and of the eternal God. We must have pride, we must have the humility of pride in our secret work. We must have courage. We must go on, wheresoever: and we must not be downcast. For a deep Joy in our consecration is one of the honours of its truth.

love to you......

greetings to Mrs Pinchback and
Ken and Mae

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

BROTHER

I don't know if Munson and Burke mistook not to take Theater, but your spirit in their rejection is certainly fine; and there's behind the gen- Uineness of the way you feel a strength and a sure deep one too, that is bound to win out. I am sorry you are having the usual stereotyped hard time. But of course, you must have it. It's the mysterious rule of life: and yet not so mysterious either when you think of the physics of true creation, of its inevitable and functional displacement of material already there, and of the inevitable inertia-resistance of that material (the powers that be) to being displaced. good hunting, brother. Would I could really help you! My impotence, as in XXXXX your case it comes to me, makes me miserbah. If I only had the influence or the wealth to help you to your freedom ... your recognition will come soon enough, as soon as the work matures. But you see, my state is not so very different from yours. A few years difference . the difference perhaps of our ages, no more. For one person who says Yea to Waldo Frank, there are a dozen who scoff at him or hates him, or do their best to hurt him . . and at times succeed. You'll have to take from me, brother, my love and my confidence . for it's all I have to give you, and I want to give you that.

Holiday is at a pause . . before the crucial portion of the book. I am wondering if you are going to condemn or accept it? I have never written anything with so uncertain a sense. At times, I think it is marvelously true . . this thing that's almost writing itself. At others, I wonder if I am presumptuous to have thought so at all.

Mrs Elbert did not write me. No one did. Dont fall off, Jeam, in your campaign to reach N Y If you persist you will.

How's your grandmother? - And Ken? and Mae? My cordial greetings to them, and to you, my love.........

Waldo

That hurry, is convenient to you, the money-matter.

Did you get Vumline Man?

Tell me what you think of him.

Did you get THE UNWELCOME MAN? I told the publishers to send it to you with my compliments. If they sent a bill, send it back to me.

Brother mine

I understand BROOM has 'discovered you', and that Josephson who aint
got much sense otherwise has written to N Y that you are a "great un-
known". Hurrah hurrah. I spoke to Seldes about you, and there too
the virus will gradually work. Munson writes me enthusiastic letters
about you, and he is most eager to know you. You will have friends be-
fore you, in the gr-r-reat Cit-ee/

Seems a shame to take seventy simoleons from you, when I owe you end-
less endless things. Thanks. Hope it doesn't break you. If it did, I told
you not to. You can always send back the two books you have .. but
if you sell them today, remember the price is now $7.00.

Rahab goes into its fourth edition, and Liveright is brining out Mun-
sons book on me in the Spring. He'll bring out your book too, when
you shape it up...and if you let me, I'll write an introduction to it
A book means a great deal .. it means you've arrived officially. So
as soon as CANE'S in shape, make it ready and shhot it. You should
have a hundred pages pretty soon. A book of that sort need not be
longer, scarcely need be so long. When it's ready, send it to me, and
I'll go over it carefully.

How goes the N Y conspiracy.

But there's news

HOLIDAY is DONE

in the rough.......but DONE

O I AM GLAD.

but when
I send it to
you

O I SHALL TRRRREMBLE

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTIC

love ever old brother

Darien Conn

Dear Brother

The advantage and excuse I find for the shifting point of my
joining you southward is that it is being pushed forward. Can
you go with me toward the end of August? The point is this: I
cant go late in September because of the need of being here when
the cold comes, and because I should be on the job when the book
is published ... at date I can put off until Sept. 20. I have
moreover to stay here until the book is actually manufactured,
which will be about the 23 of August ... date uncertain. As soon
as I knoe it is OK I can get off and join you. doubtless when
the book is being reviewed and the first copies are out, there will
be a rush of Orders (I hope so) and I should be here. that means
that the best time for us to go would be from the end of August
through the middle of Sept.

Is this good for you? and do you mind if I still put off the
actual date of our starting until I have more certain news?

Let me know.

love as ever to you,

The two ppems For M W and Glaciers of Dusk are finely wrought ..
there is a music in you.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION