Los Angeles, California

January 17, 1934

My Dear Miss Stein;

I received your letter today. "You will find all your questions answered in COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION," it said. If it were only as simple as that.

Probably the letter is correct in that it implies that the answer to my questions *is* within the pages of this essay. The difficulty lies, however, in the fact that I am not able to understand the explanation which is apparently so simple and natural to you. French is natural to a Frenchman also, but if the key to immortality were written in French, I, as an American, would die when I was dead.

By which I do not mean you do not write in English. On the contrary, you form some of the most beautiful compositions I have ever heard. "When they are very little just only a baby you can never tell which one is to be a laddy," is delightful. It can only be rivaled by "A Patriotic Leading" which is becoming more wonderful to me as the months pass (for it does take me months, you know, to begin to understand-- and why should it? ).

Oh yes, I recognize the language from which you are making such good things come out of. Only it is only natural that I should want to grasp intellectually that which I read, and it is very hard for me to do that with most of your compositions. The words which you use have certain connotative meanings which persist in clouding up your meaning. I try so hard to let myself go-- to just let your words enter my head and my ears and be there. But it is so difficult, and should literature be so difficult if it is to be pleasing?

What is the difference between your simplicity and that of Lewis Carroll?

You said once that you "take things in and they just come out that way, independent of conscious process." If this is the case, how are you able to achieve the exactitude which your style demands?

Please, oh so very much please, Miss Stein, answer me in my English-- the English that my eyes are taught to read and my brain to receive naturally. Please do speak this language to me, even if it seems unnatural to you, so that I may have the beginning of a trail which I may be able to further develop. I do want to develop it for somehow, for some reason--I couldn't tell you why-- I am obsessed with the idea that your writing has something to say which I need to know very much.

My term paper on you is finished, handed in, and returned to me. The professor gave me an A on it and suggested that I turn it in for competition in the Phi Beta Kappa essay contest. I wanted to laugh at her, but I didn't because I knew she really meant it. I told her I had only begun to understand your story. She said she recognized that but was glad that I was interested in finding out everything there was to know instead of resorting to the common practice of ridiculing that which I did not fully understand.

Give me a little push and perhaps I can coast the rest of the way on my own power.

Your very sincere friend,

Gilbert Harrison

162 So. Lucerne Blvd.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

August 8, 1936

Dear Miss Stein,

I have finished temporarily with newspapers. Yesterday was the last day, the last editorial and the last page proofs and now that is over and I had better start doing some other kind of writing. That writing wasn't very good. I did a lot of it but I wasn't very proud of much of it. There was a complete editorial column each day telling everybody what to think and do, and there were a very few stories and a very little poetry but now that it's over and I remember what was in the paper for the last three and a half years I am not very proud of what I wrote.

I did enjoy your letter. I thought for awhile that you would not reply. It is very encouraging.

I read the letter only twice and understood all of it, that is all of the writing, except for a few words. And that is improvement.

They wanted me to go on next year, I have one more year of work in the University, and publish a magazine, a "magazine of creative work," but I finally said No and managed to keep to it until most of them who wanted me to publish it believed my word. I thought when I had finished being editor of the newspaper that I would want to go on and put out a magazine and have all the people whom I knew could write write and myself write some things, but then as I planned it and thought about it it became less and less interesting until now I tell all the other people, who still like the idea from the time I first talked with them about it, to go ahead and put it out and I would like to read it but not publish it. Just when I was beginning to feel that a magazine would be not so interesting I talked to the Provost of our University about it and he said, No, not a magazine, anybody can do that and does. Write a book. I had never thought about that before.

The Provost writes beautifully, with a lot of dignity, and he likes the idea of repetition. He says when you have something good you ought to do it again and again and he does this until people get tired of hearing him and they say he is getting old and ought to retire. He is retiring. And I tell him that Gertrude Stein insists it's insistence and not repetition. But repetition is good enough for him and he goes on calling it that and says he likes Gertrude Stein because she believes in repetition.

I took a girl out the other night from San Francisco. I hadn't met her before, she was a friend of a cousin's, and

suddenly she asks me if I have every read any of Gertrude Stein's work and I said, A bit. And then she goes on telling me how she met you at Berkeley, and how she was standing by the door in the International House and how you walked up and said, Well, why don't you come in, and she explained that she didn't have a ticket and so you said, Oh come in, come in, be my guest. That was very impressive to her. She is a very solid subject.

About these essays. You see I've been writing a lot of editorials, and they are essays, I suppose. A lot of editorials, I don't know how many. They don't tell very much. I don't know what does. I'm almost afraid to write about something that means a lot to me because I feel that when I have done it, no I feel while I'm doing it that it isn't so, it isn't what I know.

How to know the truth, and then how to tell the truth.

And how much to know before writing, and how much to write of what you know.

I think you're beginning to not know America. I think it's changing from the land that you know. Do I know enough of what you believe to be America. Do you believe that still the republicans are the natural rulers of America. They're coming to be less the rulers. They are coming to be the people with money to keep. Something is happening here. I'm not sure what. Something is, I'm sure. It's not as substantial as it was. Now I certainly don't know very much about how we were in the old days because they were my very young day, but nowadays people go around, waiting, hoping something will turn up, not too dissatisfied, but not the way you might think of American's as being, as their land is, broad and solid and dependable and filled with industry. I don't know what it is. It's very recent. We kid about it still but I don't know for how long. I was talking with a very good friend of mine who graduated from the University last June and he said to me, Do you remember Gil how we used to kid around and laugh about soon we would go out into the cold cruel world, and I said Yes, and He said Boy is it true, and of course all of us laughed. Well, there's a lot of laughing but there's a lot of worry, and in some people, maybe in more of them, it's not this customary kind of worry that comes in every family during its life, but a fearful worry, and a hopeless worry, a feeling of falling apart, of rotting.

They're losing this tremendous faith that Americans can have as long as everything is rather good to them.

Still though we aren't too worried. Things go along.

What do we mean when we say that a certain bit of writing is dishonest. Does any writing tell the truth. I wondered lately if anybody who is young ever tells the truth, if he every writes a true book, as nearly true as can be done by anyone. Doesn't he make things much the way he wants them to appear. Doesn't he fashion what he sees into patterns which he has come to ad-

mire. Yes, I suppose some do and some may not and the job is to
not do it.

They worry I spoke about, it comes out in young fellows who
can write. You can't write if there's a revolution coming on,
maybe you can, but I couldn't and most of them couldn't. And there's
this feeling that tremendous happenings are coming and coming
soon and becoming greater. They don't know what to do. I know
what I want to do, I want to sit down and clear my head and cut
away from confusion and write the truth. But I don't know if I
can. I don't know what's going to happen. They speak of these
troubled times. It's true. You can't very well sit around and
do nothing. Everything does something to you and these troubled
times are doing something. You must know it.

You see I've been writing editorials and probably all ed-
itorials are about these troubled times. But it's true neverthe-
less. You can't take much of it. You have certain beliefs.

You want to believe in the essential value and beauty and worthi-
ness of any human person. You believe, really, desperately believe
in the importance of any life. You know that people ought to
be caring for things, that their living ought to be dear to them.
But it isn't.

You see it isn't. You go down town, or stay at home, or
it isn't to a movie or anyplace, and you know it isn't.
People haven't enough to eat, or enough to wear or enough warmth
in winter and coolness in summer. It's rotten for them. They
rot. They sit around and rot. And you can easily see them. You
don't have to look carefully. Well, what are you going to do.

I agreed with the Saturday Evening Post articles, but I
say what are you going to do. Or me. What am I or anybody else
going to do. We will see, I know. But I wonder what it will be.

May I hear from you again, very soon. I read the letters
very carefully. What about this Identity, I am I because my dog
 recognizes me. I read in our local paper that you had written
a story by that name.

Sincerely,

THE UNIVERSITY RELIGIOUS CONFERENCE

REPRESENTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS

LOS ANGELES

Oct. 11, 1939

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

MONSIGNOR JOHN J. CAWLEY
RABBI EDGAR F. MAGNIN
REV. EDWARD D. GAYLORD
BISHOP W. BERTRAND STEVENS
H. G. JOHANSING
ALPHONZO E. BELL
MRS. GEORGE L. REYNOLDS
RABBI JACOB KOHN
REV. LEONARD OECHSLI
REV. HERMAN BEIMFOHR
HOMER DURHAM
FATHER JOHN LEVALLE

THE STAFF

10845 LECONTE AVENUE
WLA 31148
THOS. S. EVANS
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
ADALINE GUENTHER, ASSOCIATE
ELIZABETH GEARY
GILBERT HARRISON

230 STUDENT UNION, UNIVERSITY PARK
PROSPECT 3565
MARGARET KING

4665 WILLOWBROOK AVENUE
OLYMPIA 9876

JOHN M. BURNSIDE, EXTENSION
FRANCES WARD

Dear Miss Stein,

I'm at work, typing and writing publicity stanzas, and talking, corranging meetings, getting living accommodations. You know what it is, it's the ordinary business of propaganda work and I like what I'm doing, not because of evitemenl list, but because I know I can leave it, when I'm ready, and go on to something else. More and more, the difficult group is the Roman Catholic, which also is the only group absolutely confident of its position, its present and future. Socially and theologically and economically.

I am surprised at how clearly I remember B. Lignin and the house and gardens and even parts of the conversation, and I think the gist of it. Usually I remember very little of details, but almost everything of that I recall very easily.

We are having the greatest, the widest, was sentiment these days that I have ever felt, particularly among the young fellows, but not entirely. We are increasingly resigned to having

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

MONSIGNOR JOHN J. CAWLEY
RABBI EDGAR F. MAGNIN
REV. EDWARD D. GAYLORD
BISHOP W. BERTRAND STEVENS
H. G. JOHANSING
ALPHONZO E. BELL
MRS. GEORGE L. REYNOLDS
RABBI JACOB KOHN
REV. LEONARD OECHSLI
REV. HERMAN BEIMFOHR
HOMER DURHAM
FATHER JOHN LEYALLE

THE STAFF

Some kind of a war. Nobody says he wants it, but the pass. first talk of a year ago and back is not so definite. There is a confusion that 9 suppose is the beginning of an acceptance and then a righteous and militant crusade against "the enemy".

I have just read Saroyan's new book, and it is what we all expected, not great, but good enough for reader's analorg 5.50.

Please give my regards to Miss Toklas and Mr. Fair and your pleasant servent of 15, if you see her. I would be very glad to know what is going on.