PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

2 December 1937

Dear Morley Callaghan:

Alas and lack-a-day, you are a victim. We are going to tell Dr John Rathbone Oliver about you and he will write another novel, a novel which the Pulitzer Prize committee won't dare to dis-dain, a novel that the judges will accept, and he will be right in between Sinclair Lewis and Julia Peterkin - and that's a hell of a place to be in from any posture or point of view.

Helen Bird Pettee is a lovely and literate creature; Dorothy Grace feeds among the flesh pots. Think of King David and if you can, think of the great northwest and of Saul. Think of the eastern peninsula and of the Jezebel, and when you have thought all that, you can take your thoughts and drop them into a crucible, add two parts of gin, two pints of ginger ale, a dash of curacao, and a squeeze of lemon juice, and write dithyrambs to that Helen whose face launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium, that Helen who makes, by her absence, each day into dross. Write something hot and heavy.

So far as Dorothy Grace is concerned, we had better leave that to Cabell; he specializes in Dorothies.

I still waiting for word from Helena's husband. He is probably beautifying himself in the hope that his mustache will look like Homer's beard, but who ever heard of a Titus whose beard fooled even a ten cent restaurant Greek?

Morley Callaghan, Esq
32 Wells Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada