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John Steinbeck Autograph Letter Signed Sending Misanthropic Christmas Greetings Fantastic content A.L.S. "John", 3pp., 8...
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Description
John Steinbeck Autograph Letter Signed Sending Misanthropic Christmas Greetings Fantastic content A.L.S. "John", 3pp., 8.5" x 12.5" yellow legal pad, New York, Dec 4, [1957], to Murray Louis regarding the upcoming holiday season and making mention of current projects. In part: "your pitiful cry for intellectual fat-back catches me at high tide. For So! It is Christmas tide and bad-kid tide , and yellow pad tide and if I could only get to the country eel fishing tide and go to bed at 7:30 pm tide. Just be thankful you don't have our intellectual and aesthetic advantages which comprise fighting Bloomingdales, going to openings for no other reason than that I or some I know wrote them, of damp and dreary and what the hell shall we send Aunt Sally. She never wears ou a handkerchief. Mail full of private charitable 'interests' of the rich. Mrs. Spiros Skauros, Dorothy Rodgers, Helen Hayes - fifty dollars a crack and deductible if you've got anything to deduct from, which I haven't... I'm trying to get on with a little book [likely Once There Was a War]. That's almost funny. The time it takes is resented by those who are spending the money it might make if it ever got finished and ever made any money. I've put the long book aside. [likely Winter of our Discontent which would be published in 1961] In the early spring I'm grabbing Elain by the hair and going into hiding in some sullen country where joy and friendship are a sin and relatives have detonators pre set for Christmas tide. These are the Christmas mollygrubs of mal le grub. It's the saddest of all to me, the tinselled, rulumped up funeral of peace. I remember if with horror year by year. Once I invented a holiday for myself called Jack and the Wild Day. It came whe you felt like a holiday and failed on the calendar. I guess I hate most being told to be merry. I'm gay enough if left alone like a gila monster, a jouyous beast, ecstatic saurian until some one says good morning to him. There must be some sullen, hateful hole in Wales where I could prosper. Uncle Criss is easy. He like anything. And that's what he gets - usually the present some spiteful friend gave us last Christmas. Poor Uncle Criss. He's snowed under in slop for the simple error of liking anything..." Much more great content including a rather 'colorful' toast learned, he writes, while serving as an "ordinary seaman" : "When all your friends have left you / And Life seems but a wreck, / May you tumble through your a** hole / And break your f***ing neck." [edited for language] Great content regarding his internal struggles with his own literary success. By this time Steinbeck had worked on numerous film adaptations of his novels, including East of Eden, starring James Dean, whom he thought poorly of. The social obligations and literary restrictions placed on him as a public figure were difficult to navigate and this letter clearly illustrated his discontent. With mailing folds and a single small separation, paper remains very bright and clean. Near fine condition exemplar by a literary giant.Auction Info
2007 April Books, Manuscripts & Autographs Grand Format Auction #658 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
April, 2007
16th-17th
Monday-Tuesday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 3
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
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19.5% of the successful bid per lot.
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