Many thanks for your friendly letter. Altho you make no promise, you do say that Macmillans will reconsider the matter of offering the
Cycle to the public, and that undoubtedly this will be done during the coming fall. I do hope that those who consider the proposition will actually know the
Cycle. Figures on a balance sheet will tell nothing that they need to know in this case. As for the market, we all know that markets are largely a matter of contrivance in these days. When the Cycle is offered, there must be preparation. Among other things, it must not be taken for granted
that reviewers will know anything about the Cycle, and it must be assumed that, even though they know nothing, they write as though they were thoroughly well informed. I can and will furnish the necessary article to be sent to all reviewers. One
brief reading notice, such as your publicity department sent out, would be ridiculously inadequate. This is only one important point. You as publisher, and I as book-review editor for 25 years, know plenty of others, and we are not naive enough to suppose that merit is enough in such a time as ours.
I note that the one-volume edition of the Friends and Glass has done very well. It is the volume with
which the Macmillans force has tried to do something.
The strange curious aspect of this whole affair is that I am on Macmillans' side. It would be foolish to suppose that, as a business firm, you can afford to print the volumes of the Cycle, and then drop the matter, just when the purpose of years has been achieved. The fact of the war can, & should, be used in our favor. The Trans-Missouri country is a great and important part of our America, and even in New York there are America; and if there ever was justification for invoking Americanism in support of a book literary work, you have it in this case.
We have a great deal of excellent critical comment on the each of the volumes of the Cycle, even on
The Song of Jed Smith, and we should certainly make the most of that fact when the completed Cycle is offered.
Incidentally, I shall be ready with a suitable Introduction when you want it.
Is it a certainty that the Book-of-the-Month Club could not be interested — or some other such agency? The Book-of-the-Month Bulletin has said fine things of the last two volumes.
I do believe you are genuinely friendly to me and that you believe in the
Cycle. That's why I feel free to speak out to you. The great Macmillan Company is being penny-wise and pound-foolish in this matter.and if they attut attitude, the time
If you
With kind
I'm about to begin a lyrical thing to be called "I Shall Be Young with You" — something I have kept myself from writing of 25 years. It might well be used as a dedication of the Cycle.
Jno. G. Neihardt
