Across the Spectrum:The Interdisciplinary Life and Letters of John G. Neihardt (‘Flaming Rainbow’)

There was nothing silly about your dream-solution of the social question, except that it was, by all indications, several thousand years early. In your sleep you were realizing that all problems are, at bottom, problems of consciousness. I shouldn't be surprised if Dr. Small either knows that now or will know it when he gets straightened out and has time to look around with his new eyes! Perhaps he knew it when he was still among us. Many have known, but they have never gotten far with these purely animal-minded herds. On this planet it is still the height of wisdom to diddle with effects and never go deeper than surfaces.

Well, it will be nice in heaven!

But, after all, is it desirable that this world should know more than it knows for now? Damned if I know, and in order to know, it would be necessary to know what the cosmos and life are for, where they are headed etc. I have a hunch that practically all answers worth knowing - answers that really answer anything - are possible only on the other side of the sense-fog. In the meanwhile, this is quite a show, and it is hilariously funny in some respects. Probably in all but a very few respects, if we could see from a point a little above our present level.

I wish you would put down for me exactly the points you want covered in that matter about learning to write. I can then be sure that I am giving you what you want, and it will be easier to make a clear statement to Willa Cather. I can't promise that Willa will (!), but a lady ought to when a gentleman asks her nicely; so she may.

I'll see if I can find the Sherman letter which I failed to enclose. It was a mighty nice letter, and he is a dear old man. He has been almost fatherly to me; would have been more so, I have felt, had he not feared to seem to be patronzing me. I do like Sherman, as Alexander knows. And I do admire Alexander in certain ways, and Sherman knows this too. Each has been pretty decent about the other when talking to me, although each has made it clear enough what the feeling was. It is a pity, and also, it is amusing.

I'm glad you like the J-P page, and that you plan a chapter on J.N. the critic. Both you and I use the term in a very broad sense, and there I do not hesitate to apply it to myself. You mean one who has a consistent view of his world and relates things thereto. I am hoping that in the critic chapter you will present the central idea of POETIC VALUES also and discuss it. Doubtless that is what you plan. All who have attempted to review the book have been strong for it. Bookman was the last. N.Y. Eve. Post gave it a serious review, but the chap ended by stating that he wasn't so sure but that a "status quo of Babbitry" wasn't desirable. All right. Little I care, and I should worry. One paper said the thing is "vastly fruitful". And so on. Several people have written me glowingly about the book. But it is no book for the average. The very need of writing such a book made it no book for the average.

Curiously enough, I wrote Latham just yesterday about keeping you decidedly in mind for that Macmillan job, and I made it strong. I expect to see Latham in October, and I will hit him again then. This must come to pass if we can make it come to pass. There is a steady and very noticably e growt h in of the scheme, as I judge from the increased number of letters I receive from all parts of the country.

I am to see Dickey of the J-P in Kansas City May 21st. I will meet Leigh Leslie of Omaha there, and Leslie he will put up a syndicating proposition to Dickey. Leslie volunteers to go to ten or twelve Mid-Western cities without expense to the J-P, and sell the page. The point is to give me a shot at the whole Mid-Western country. Judge is financing Leslie, and I am to be allowed to meet the expense later, if I choose to do so and am able.

as I may never have much. I don't feel sorry about accepting the help, for I want to get at a million people between the Mississippi and the Rockies if it can be done. I want to undermine Eastern influence in matters of culture and to encouraging e independent feeling and thinking in the Middle West. I can't do it alone, but I can make a damned good beginning. A bunch of New York Jews are telling the whole country what it must like, and the country is liking just that. I would ease this in quietly - no frontal attacks and no attacks on Jews at all - just a steady drip drip, making the situation appear what it is, ridiculous. Of course, we can notcannot be certain that we can put it over with as many as ten or a dozen papers. But we should be able to put it over with some. Leslie is a man of very wide newspaper experience, and a dickens of a clever chap. Also, he is a fan right. He made the offer out of his own head, after reading the page several weeks, and the Judge jumped up and said, "Go to it, and I'll pay the bills". It's fun to think about it, anyway; and nothing is so serious as to be necessary. I read in a very wise book not long ago that one should live as though things mattered greatly, but always there should be a quiet little Buddha down in the midst of one's consciousness who knows that nothing really matters. I have known that a good while. But it is dangerous to listen too long to that little Buddha - too long at one time, I mean. Also, it is fatal never to listen to that little Buddha. All this is only one way of saying that, on the lower level of immediate things, everything seems extremely important and should be treated as though it were so; but that there are higher levels, and one should not forget them. Here again, the solution of the problem is concerned with consciousness.

I have to spiel at a luncheon at the Baltimore Hotel May 21st. This by request of Dickey, who says it will help the J-P. Ordinarily, in such cases, I am so infernally busy that I can't find time to defecate.

At least that is, substantially, what I generally intimate. But this time I said yes, by way of staying by a fellow who has stayed by me.

I am very eager to see that book of yours in print. I do want you to get over strong with that. Two books with Macmillans, and you on the road! Then we shall have the world by the caudal appendage and it cavorting all over the lot.

The Macmillan booklet will be out soon - a lollapalooser too! Can't we see that it gets to the right places? What can the Club do to this end? The booklets are too expensive to be scattered at random.

You should read Beck's 'The Splendour of Asia" - a life of Buddha very beautifully written.