As I wrote you, Dr. McCurdy brought me the bound copy of the dissertation on Tuesday, Nov. 11. I have been reading it pretty steadily ever since, except when I was illuminating the airways with dazzling pictures of myself!! Late last night I awoke, and it struck me suddenly that you may have been expected a letter from me about the dissertation, thinking that I must have received it several weeks ago. If this was the case, I must have seemed curiously unappreciative!
Of course I like it! I'm human and eager to be thought well of, and you give a gratifying
account of my efforts and achievements over a long period of years. Of course, I like it; but that would be far from enough to satisfy me. On the contrary, often while reading I've felt a momentary sinking of the heart and something like shame until I became aware again that you were carefully documenting every statement, albeit with notable warm-hearted goodwill. (And is not goodwill a prime essential in criticism?)
So that phase of my liking is taken care of, and I can talk about your work, not my feeling, altho' it is hard to separate the two. My impersonal appreciation of what you have done (insofar as I'm able to be impersonal) falls under four heads. I'm greatly impressed (1) with the ingenuity and persistence shown in the collection of heterogeneous data over wide areas in space and time. (As old Prof. Durrin said to me once, 'I don't see how you do it!') It's really most remarkable. You have turned up incidents and sayings that I have quite forgotten, and you have the proof. You have have made dead years come alive for me — years that I would never have recalled but for you, and there is meaning in them.
I'm as greatly impressed (2) with the way you have evaluated the data, (3) organized the scrambled material into significant pattern, and (4) presented in writing the pattern with its emergent meaning. Surely the above is an impersonal judgement. It's a bully job, excellent on all four counts. But it goes farther when certain considerable positions are regarded as essays. Your discussions of my criticism, my social, political, aesthetic, philosophical, and religious attitudes really get under
And, as you and I have agreed, you are growing. (Anyone who does a big job without growing hasn't done a big job). I hope I'm growing and believe I am — but not towards worldy goals, I suspect. You must be weary after the long, hard pull with the dissertation, but you should feel quite happy about it. I could easily understand if you were weary enough to hesitate in beginning the biography. It must not be a burden or seem in any way an obligation. But if you do go ahead with the extended dream, you will be released into a wider, freer realm of story, human story.
So many times in the dissertation you make brief passing references to
vital incidents by way of supporting a statement.
In a biography such incidents would expand into living episodes with story appeal; and you, as an understanding human being would be able to present them creatively as living truth beyond the fact. Anyway, Lucile, bless you and yours — and thanks for being alive!
Bower, hello! I do wish you I could have an honest-to-goodness pow-wow together sometime. I do not cease to feel gratitude for your faith in the best of me — and affection too.
John N.
Stewart, I passed your advice on to Robin, and if that show comes to our town, we'll be there to see.
