This country is in the hands of morons
A mixed mailbag
It’s that time again. A mixed mailbag of letters that have caught my eye over the past few weeks. If you’re currently looking for reading material, I heartily recommend all of the books from which these snippets have been snipped. Enjoy.
Do I love you?
I love you, I love you, despite everything and because of everything, I have loved you, I love you and I will love you, whether you’re foul to me or affectionate, whether you belong to me or to someone else. All the same I love you. . .
Is love the sum total of everything for me? Yes, only in another sense. Love is life, love is the main thing. My poetry, my actions, everything else stems from it. Love is the heart of everything. If it stops working, all the rest withers, becomes superfluous, unnecessary. But if the heart is working, its influence cannot but be apparent in all the rest. Without you (not without you because you’ve “gone away”, without you inwardly) I cease to exist.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Letter to Lilya Brik
5th February 1923
—Love is the Heart of Everything: Correspondence Between Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik 1915-1930, edited by Bengt Jangfeldt
Do you ever read the Bible? I suppose not very often, but I had occasion to the other night and believe me it is a lesson in how not to write for the movies. The worst kind of overwriting. Whole chapters that could have been said in one paragraph. And the dialogue!
Raymond Chandler
Letter to Edgar Carter
28th March 1947
—Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane
Don’t cry, dear Mary. Let us do that for you, because you are too tired now. We don’t know how dark it is, but if you are at sea, perhaps when we say that we are there, you won’t be as afraid. The waves are very big, but every one that covers you, covers us, too. Dear Mary, you can’t see us, but we are close at your side. May we comfort You?
Emily Dickinson
Letter to Mary Bowles following her third stillbirth
Early 1878
—Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd
I know that the FBI has a lot of police dogs but you never had a police cat. My cat, Butch, should be the first Police cat. He is very tough and not scared of anything – even dogs. If you had a police cat like Butch, you would fool all the crooks because they wouldn’t suspect that a cat is working for the FBI. If you want to try Butch, write to me.
A young girl named Saraann
Letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
1930
—Kids’ Letters to the F.B.I., by Bill Adler
I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant, and spending all my money, and, what is worse for you, I have been spending yours too.
Jane Austen
Letter to her sister, Cassandra
18th April 1811
—Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye
Do not worry about the past: it is, after all, past, and fades daily in our memory & in the memories of everyone else. Further, it can’t touch the future unless we let it. Every day comes to us like a newly cellophaned present, a chance for an entirely fresh start.
Philip Larkin
Letter to his mother
24th February 1952
—Letters Home, edited by James Booth
This country is in the hands of morons, juvenile rapists, water skiers, and a pimply crooner whom thank God you’ve been spared the ordeal of seeing named Elvis Presley.
William Styron
Letter to John Marquand, Jr.
4th July 1956
—Selected Letters of William Styron, edited by Rose Styron & R. Blakeslee Gilpin
The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. The trade winds blow me, and I do not know where the land is; the waves fold over each other; they are in love with themselves; sleeping in their own skin; and I float over them and I do not know about tomorrow.
Anne Sexton
Letter to W.D. Snodgrass
15th November 1958
—Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters, edited by Lois Ames & Linda Gray Sexton
I wish I could go with this letter. To see you and to hold you would be so good. I know it will seem a very short time when it is over but now it seems interminable like an illness. I have small magic that I practice. When I go to bed, I build up what you look like and how you speak and some times I can almost feel you curling around my back and your breath on my neck. And sometimes it is so real that I am shocked it isn't so.
John Steinbeck
Letter to Elaine Steinbeck
12th July 1943
—A Life in Letters, edited by Elaine Steinbeck
I am grateful for the offer and the interest1, and I hope it doesn’t seem like an act of arrogance to turn all that affection down, but the truth of the matter is that I can’t sing a note, and as for that monster, the dance, suffice it to say that I have no flexibility below the ass at all. I even have difficulty proving the paternity of my six children.
Paul Newman
Letter to William Wyler & Ray Stark
1st May 1967
Don’t be depressed about your children. Childhood is a hateful age—no trailing clouds of glory—& children are generally either prigs or gangsters & always dull & generally ugly.
Nancy Mitford
Letter to Evelyn Waugh
7th January 1946
—The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley
I thank the Board of Trustees of Colby College very much for the honor proffered me, which I must decline for the following reason. I did not attend school long enough to receive even a certificate of graduation from elementary school. For me to receive an honorary degree from Colby College would be an insult to all those who have gained degrees by means of the long and arduous devotion commensurate with what any degree must be always worth.
William Faulkner
Letter to Dr. Julius S. Bixler
7th March, 1956
—Selected Letters of William Faulkner, edited by Joseph Blotner
Support Letters of Note
Newman had been offered a part in Funny Girl opposite Barbra Streisand.
Faulkner has never let me down.
Chandler's letter made me laugh. I am reading the Bible currently, and no truer words have ever been spoken: "The worst kind of overwriting. Whole chapters that could have been said in one paragraph." lol