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

I'm sure this will catch your ship, and it is written to wish you the best of luck and a happy time abroad. I'm delighted that you're going.

You may remember that in one of my earlier letters about the P-D job, I said I had something else in mind that I would tell you later. What I meant was that I hoped to make you my successor if things looked fairly promising, as I expected. It's strange that Pulitzer decided to discontinue the column during my leave of absence.

I do wish you had been seeing my column daily during the past 5 years. It will make surprising reading after the world has gone through the great shadow & settled down — which will be long, as we reckon days. As it is, many know that it has been absolutely unique in literary journalism. No other paper would have allowed me to say what I've said. It's a continued wonder to me. I haven't been "reviewing books". That would bore me to death.

Yes, it is all over with our social scheme, save the making of the final payment for so much folly. In place of power, in every realm of human interest & activity, it is painfully obvious that there's "nobody home". As far back as 1912 I began discussing the process that has led us to cultural chaos, & I got my reasons straight, as time has shown. The bankers may be able to cobble & patch the crazy social machine enough to keep it going after a fashion for awhile, much as a rural dub might keep his old model- T Ford on the road after it has become practically a junk heap. But they can't fix it really; they have the wrong consciousness. What has been attempted is simply the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. The time comes when the goker in the idea emerges and is clear even to an idiot.

The hell of it is that I can belong to no group, or movement, or clique. The joy of partisanship is not in me. I wish it were.

But I'm not at all in despair. I think and feel more & more in centuries. I hope nothing from the notion of the perfectability of the human race. It is low, low in consciousness & must remain so. But the flower of the of the human spirit at its finest is worth all the suffering - and I know that flower, which lives in time.

Yes, I saw the article on "The River and I". Neatly done, surely; and I was grateful to the young chap. He made a little slip that I hesitate to mention - about Aeschylus; but he meant so well, and later he will be more careful. Altogether it was a bully job.

I'm planning to get a ranch in high prairie country where I can have a few cattle for milk, butter and beef, also riding horses & room in which to do shooting, which I always enjoyed immensely. You should have seen me slaying prairie chickens with a revolver - at as high as 80 yards! It's fun.

Shall begin with my column again Jan. 1st & keep it up for perhaps a year - maybe less if I have fair luck.

There was an "interview" in the Wayne school paper after my visit there. If you saw it, you must have known that I said no such things. I thought it rather amusing.