cv (ephemeras) wrote in repose, @ 2017-02-26 21:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, atticus mcvickers |
[Narrative]
Who: Atticus
What: Narrative
Where: Chicago → Nebraska → Chicago
When: This week
Warnings/Rating: Awrooooooooo. Letters.
The museum opening went well. Atticus got clapped on the back enough times that his shoulders hurt. Talked enough that his throat was raw. Drank enough champagne that he was buzzed. Spent the evening discussing Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Their letters, Atticus thought, were the most fascinating in the new collection. Talked late into the night about the Beats. Was a good night.
Returned to his hotel exhausted.
Read. Ginsberg's first letter to Kerouac. Kerouac was in the Bronx County Jail at the time. August 1944.
Cher Jacque: on the subway:
I’ve been escorting la belle dame sans mercip around all morning — first to Louise’s, now to jail. I haven’t a permit, so I won’t visit you.
To get off this morbid recherche tempest fourtuanatement perdu, I’m reading Jane Austen and finishing Dickens’ Great Expectations. I also started Bronte’s Wuthering Heights for the second time for an English course; and of course I am also plowing thru about 4 history books at a time (when Edie isn’t chewing my ear) mostly about revolution in Europe in the 19th century. When I am finished I will start one here.
A pet de eu fease.
Allen
Dear George Strong—
I’m home again, to the extent that anybody’s really got a home anymore. Maybe my fundamental home is in Dresden, since that is where my great adventure took place, and where one hundred of us selected at random were bonded by tremendous violence into a brotherhood—and then dispersed to hell and gone. Your seeking me out and greeting me like a brother was a profoundly important event for me.
So I thank you for that.
Dear E. Jr.
Now, look what you went and done? Here I had me a pet stomach ulcer which I had raised from a pup, and you go and make me laugh out loud and scare it off. In the first place, nobody is supposed to have ulcers but rich folks loaded down with responsibilities for taking care of their loot. You know that I’m not guilty of the millions of bucks. Second, ulcers are very rare in females. Therefore you can see how hard it was for me to get hold of a baby ulcer and raise it up. Then you have to up and run it off from home. However, there is a local acquaintance with $3,000,000 who had not an ulcer to his name and therefore was looked down upon by other millionaires. He was very glad to take out a five-year lease on my fugitive ulcer and give it a good home. Poor thing!
Dearest,
I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
This is Cummings, they say, the way they say, this is a Van Gogh, and all critical faculties fall lax because they have been pre-sold. People are pretty hard to sell, but once they believe, they believe and you cannot make them say no with a hammer. That’s not good. Cummings must be made to produce every time he sits down, and not merely sign his name. For Whom the Bell Tolls is one of the poorest novels ever written but nobody knows it because Hem wrote it. Nobody knows but another writer who is close enough to smell it. Nobody knows that a smaller work like To Have and Have Not was really art. And I don’t like the word “art.”