The Puerto Rica number has arrived and I am both astonished and delighted. It is a magnificent issue and this is not a merely friendly statement. I should think you would be walking around on air for a few days now as a result of viewing your achievement. You are really conducting one of the few really good literary journals of the day. I will say more later.
I am sending you Pattee's new book. I want to draw your attention to page 290 and to certain items thereon that I have numbered. Do you think it worth while for you to take this gentleman to task, pointing out the very obvious fact that he is not acquainted with the subject he discusses with so much assurance. This, of course, is left up to you and I do not ask that you do anything, but it seems to me a pity that men in authority should be privileged to do such things in so bland a manner and wholly on hearsay. I do not question the opinion given. The question concerns the right to give an opinion. The points to be noted are as follows:
Number one.
The term "Indian epics" is used, which proves that the epics are not known at firsthand, since only one of them may be so described and even it is primarily a white man's epic.
Number two.
The author names the first two of the Cycle and then says "and others". The use of the plural proves that he does not know what other or others there may be.
Number three.
I need not tell you that I do not dwell in a professor's study and that I have never held a professorship in my life except an honorary one, which I do not take seriously. Twice I have been offered active professorships and both times I have refused. Perhaps no writer living, with my intellectual interests, is less professorial than I.
Number four.
The reference to Greek is, of course, an echo from Louis Untermeyer's ridiculous and undoubtedly spiteful remark of years past. This echo has turned up, as you know, more than once. No doubt the author would be surprised to learn that, in ten thousand lines of the Cycle thus far written, it would be hard to find more than a half-dozen references to the Greeks, if that many.
Number five.
There is a suspiciously nasty note here and it could be overlooked as merely cliquish were there not a misinterpretation involved. As a matter of fact, these narratives of mine are published in the Modern Readers' series along with other classics(!) under the general editorship of Ashely Thorndike of Columbia University. No edition of my work has ever been prepared in Nebraska or for Nebraska. It is a common occurence for me to be invited to important educational institutions and educational meetings as a result of the interest in my epic stuff among educators. Recently, I was the chief speaker at the Annual Banquet of the National Educational Association at Columbus for this reason and for no other imaginable reason. The President, in introducing me, spoke to the effect that I need no introduction before any audience of American educators. Also there may be some significance attached to the fact that when the White House Library of 500 volumes was being chosen from all the literature of all the world in all time by a very distinguished committee chosen from all parts of the nation, my Indian Wars should have been selected. Perhaps Pattee could explain this away.
You will know what you want to do with these points and with any others that may occur to you if you should decide to prick this windbag.
Jno.
I wish he could be exposed publicly - in some Eastern literary journal.
