ANN WATKINS, Inc.

77 Park Avenue, New York

Telephone: CAledonia 5-5576

Cable: Anwat

Coast Office: Phil Berg—Bert Allenberg, Inc., 9484 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills
London: Pearn, Pollinger & Higham Ltd. 39-40 Bedford Street, Strand, W. C. 2.

November 4, 1941

Dear Mr. Warren:

I wish I could see a sale for these two stories, but I'm awfully afraid they won't go over in this exceedingly bad fiction market where, once they get away from the compelling war story, they're looking for sweetness and light, even more than in the old days.

DO YOU LIKE THE OCEAN is a beautiful job, but so terribly bitter, and I'm afraid its ending is going to kill it for any magazine except a very special Story kind of periodical.

May I tell you of a conversation I had only last week with Ted Weeks of the Atlantic, which I think will explain more clearly than I can, the reasons for my discouragement? He said that since they are now limited to publishing one and, at the most, two stories an issue, they are unable to balance the macabre, the bitter, the "strong-meat" story, as was possible in the old days, when they were able to run the more pleasant story to counter-act its effects. They must, therefore, steer a middle course these days, in their fiction. This attitude holds true with Fred Allen, at Harper's, as well.

I look forward to receiving the more nearly completed copy of the book manuscript and can promise you a week-end reading. With the full synopsis that I have, I think this is enough to go to work on.

It occurs to me that you might be amused, if not indeed interested, in reading the enclosed reprint of an article of mine, running in the November issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and which, in deleted form, is based on a lecture I am to give next week at the New York Public Library, as the sixth in the Bowker Memorial Lectures.

Mr. Robert Penn Warren
The Southern Review
University Station
Baton Rouge, La.