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

I wrote you hastily this morning, but I have a little time now and want to say more. I am undoubtedly well entrenched here with the Post-Dispatch and with the intelligentsia of St. Louis. There are many signs of this, and Joseph Pulitzer shows a liking for me. My relations with the whole outfit are bully, and I am treated with very noticable respect. Just the same, I am wondering if I ought to plan to stay. I am now reading a book a day and writing a column. That is killing work, and it gives me no time to push ahead with the only work in American poetry of our time that can mean much after our generation. I owe it to a lot of loyal people all over the country, as well as to the best in myself, to finish the cycle, and I feel that I have grown in power. I have nothing to discourage me as a maker, for my following increases, and my publisher is ready to publish anything I am willing to give. Latham has written me that my stuff is "important and permanent ", and it is obvious that my method of winning is the classic way. I win against the wind! Latham is taking up the question of a school edition for the Wars, and I think it will go over soon.

Now I have an offer from the Alber Bureau of Boston, New York and Cleveland that is flattering. They want to freeze on to me in the belief that I am "a star", as they have written to a friend of mine here. They want me to give them publicity material and a picture at once, and have asked me to write up a 300 word article for them to use. They are heavy advertisers

and great publicity hounds, and they really spend money on advertising their people. It is one of the very biggest bureaus in America. It managed Prince William's American tour this winter - very successfully.

The point is this. It is late to begin now, as most of the bookings for next season are already made. But the Alber people want to go ahead anyway. I am tied here by contract until Nov. 1st, and if I leave here, I am leaving a salary of $110 per week for a gamble on what the Bureau can get me for the coming season. But I'll have $3,000 in cash in November, besides owning my home clear of debt. I may even be able to sell the home in Branson.

Does it seem to you that I should jump? I am not in the least afraid to do so, and I know the Bureau would make me good money after the first year, if not the first. There would be time and vitality left for the Messiah. Mona wants me to take the gamble, and so does my mother. Of course, this job here looks mighty good to most people; but my followers here wonder why I stooped to it! Damned funny, isn't it? Well, it is stooping, considering what I must neglect for it.

You must not feel that the scheme has reached a sort of impasse. The work spreads steadily. It is only a certain cunt-and-cash clique in New York that tries to stop me; and it is not imagination that it actually tries. Several reviews were so absurd as to make a monkey laugh - obviously spiteful. One took this attitude: This man has been talked about quite too much: now I am going to demolish him. Thereupon it was shown that not a single thing I ever did has any merit of any sort whatever. The writer was Ruth Suckow, an Iowa novelist living in New York. Poor Ruth wants to be it herself. Such things to do no harm whatever. People are disgusted by such obvious spleen. Robinson will thrive so long as the log-rolling continues. Then he will slump. No one is moved to love by anything he writes. He will be remembered for his curious power and all that. I myself am his admirer. But the liking for his work will be like the liking for caviare. Human beings do not, in the long run, love a man for telling them that human nature is a stinkingly petty New Englandish thing. Don't you believe it. Robinson is a cynic - highly gifted - but he leaves life less glorious than he found it. It won't do. My stuff will be loved long after he has become an intellectual tradition. We are going to get into the consciousness of the country through the backdoor. And we'll get there to stay.

I am constantly receiving things from people in various parts of the country, that prove the growth of my stuff even if the royalties didn't show it.

Don't lose heart. Vulva and Mammon will not always be the reigning gods of America. Incidentally, a good many critical intelligences, even in New York, believe in my stuff. They are not free to speak out. It's a commercial and social game, and nearly all must play hard to stay in the game at all.

It will be fun to see if your man Lovett is at once intelligent and honest. I doubt it very much, and I am certainly in position to know the tricks constantly being played down there by way of fooling the rabble into buying.