Midnight: Thursday

Dear Harold:

Parties arrived and has been read. I searched its pages for a note from you. There was none. Or perhaps it remained invisible. I did not like Carl's latest effusion. Frankly I believe it to be his worst novel to date. All of his limitations are relentlessly exposed. His superficial excellence (pardon the hiatus) in this novel does not serve its purpose as it did in The Blind Bow Boy or in Firecrackers. David was the only person in the novel I liked or whom I could visualize. The others...save perhaps for Roy and Donald were much too fantastic or shadowy. The Graf just didn't click and she needed it. There is much more I could say, to make myself more clear but I am tired tonight and words won't come.

Have you perchance read Clare Sheridan's *Naked Truth*? If you haven't do so immediately you can obtain a copy. Clare Sheridan you may know is an English sculptress, a rather sapient, witty, and frankly mad egoist, who has doubled in journalism. It has been said that her sculpture too was journalistic. I can well believe it. But she is a person, or at least in her book she makes herself a person I adore. Her madness has not the ethereal quality of Shelley's nor is it a syphilitic madness like de Maupassants. She is Byronic if anything. Her escapades with Lenin, Trotsky, Charlie Chaplin, Mustapha Kemal, and countless other outstanding individuals of this generation will both amuse and educate you. And what Mussolini tried to do to her, according to her sotry, is too delicious to miss. Imagine having a man like Il Duce attempt rape on a body.

I am very busy...too busy. Writing, practicing the piano, teaching

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Theodore, reading. I have read I suppose about ten books in the past
week. Hast read Revelation? Its a new novel by a Frenchman, and
concerns a mother who has adored her son, and who finds on his death
that he was homo-sexual. The thing is so deftly handled that gaucheries
of style are forgotten, I mean prose style. It irritated me. Others
have seemed to like it, but to me it be longed to the degree of what I
call "female" writing. The sort of thing most women writers are
guilty of, and which more and more men adopt. Someday when I am
less tired I will explain that too.

And now I must go to bed. I have been up since seven this
morning, and have not had an idle moment. I have even been to twon
twice, that is downtown Jamaica, which is a good mile走 walk, which
means I probably walked four miles. Labor day I sprained my
ankle playing tennis, today I sprained my wrist for the second time
playing the piano. Sprain is rather strong used here. Anyway I
am uncomfortable. What matter terminology?

Adios,

Salutis, salute,

Is there anything at all you can
do about Magic Mountain?
This is a cri de coeur -
N.

Thursday

Dear Harold:

Here is the expected clipping. Does this go into
the library archives? Or is it for your own private collection?
I needn't state my preference. It really is a good review.

I have gone stale. Cannot write a word. And
this with the Belasco play already overdue and over three
quarters finished. Also with about twenty thousand words done
on the "new", I must stress that newness, novel. More I have
some short stories all started and in a first draft, but evidently
my brain and emotions are rebelling from too consistent labor.
I bide my time, impatiently I admit, for I am rather in the habit
of working now, and spend my time reading. Such things as Point
Counter Point, The Counterfieters, A School for Wives which I do
not like, Death in Venice, Madame Bovary, The Idiot, which just
about cover my favorite novles of all times. A/I I need do now is
read Upstream, The Case of Mr. Crump, Winesburg, Ohio, Jungens
your long awaited Magic Mountain, Of Human Bondage, and Penguin
Island. That is Thurman's course in novel reading.

And I have a new occupation. One which intrigues me
too much to last. I have taken over the cultural training of
Lewis' son. I adore the youngster. Everyone claims he is mine
because he resembles me quite closely, and he is the most pleasingly
precocious child I have ever known. Yesterday I went down town and
picked out a grand piano for Lewis to buy. It is to be delivered to-
morrow. Which means that I shall once more go in for piano in a
big way, and begin a

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(damn this typewriter) Theodore on his elementary scales and fingering.
Imagine me being such a paternal elegant. Its a role I am enjoying
heartily. Perhaps, after all, these past four hectic years in Harlem
have not left me in a rut. I may still have my former capacity
for experiencing sea changes. In which case, there is no telling
what might happen next. Howbeit, Harlem holds no more charms
for me. Liquor I will always like, but my motto now is civilized
tippling. Jeanette and I went to Bunnie's for dinner the other
night when I was in town. The four of us, his sister made the fourth,
three each
had a glorious time, all out of these drinks and my first in
three months. I experienced that glorious mental stimulation,
which alcohol can provide, without going native, and it appealed to
me so much, that except for rare occasions I never expect to
gorge myself again.

As for other pursuits which used to occupy a great deal of
my time, I have more or less outgrown them. And most of the
people I know and used to enjoy bore me so that I would be most
happy never to see them again in life. And that goes for all my
former associates except of course, Jeanette, Bunnie, and yourself.
I visited Helene the night Georgia arrived from Denver and had to
leave hurriedly because I became, frankly, sick of my stomach.
Thus does Wallace Thuman enter into the vale of middleage. Please
don't imagine I am claiming any great reformation or that I am saying
that this state of mind is going to be permanent, but I have always
gone in for things until I exhausted myself then dropped them. And
this may be true of the erotic bohemian life I have been leading in
Harlem. As far as I now know I shall remain in Jamaica until I die.

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go to Europe or some other fresh place. It may be that I shall
be working this winter. In which case I may have to move back to
town to escape the rigors of commuting. But, if I happen to have
no regular job, in Jamaica I hope to stay. And that's that.

I listened in to the Stadium concert last night. It was
seventy five percent Gershwin. The Rhapsody, The Concerto,
The American in Paris. George Jean Nathan once said that Gershwin
had heard only one Negro song...The Memphis Blues. I agree.
The Concerto is spotty and echoes the Rhapsody. It shows a great
lack of imagination. And An American in Paris is impossible.
At least to me. Only the Rhapsody stands out as being something
to cheer about, and there are amatuerish areas thnout it. However
it is a brave adventure which more than compensates for its
occasional lapses. I have in mind a magnum opus for the theatre.
A negro thing of pantomine, singing, dancing, and sheer music
which will use the spirit and form of Gershwin's rhapsody. More
of that anon, when I have mastered all theatrical technique.
Then, and then only, will I cast it out the window. I have learned
that much from writing a novel. One cannot very well experiment
until one has a conventional foundation and rigid training. I
have tried to make the novel elastic without having first learned
the boundary lines so that I could steer a clear course. The results
you know. Sheer chaos.

And since I sat down to write you a short note, and have rambled
this far, I shall try again to finish Act three of *Goodbye New York*.
Maybe I'm inspired again. I'm sorry you haven't kept your word and
been out to visit me. I won't scold, nor say some of the sarcastic
things my fingers are aching to spell. I'll say instead, so long,

Thacci