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

I want to write you, but I know how absorbing your new experiences must be, and I doubt that any letter from here can be of much interest to you now.

It was better to see you than not to see you; but somehow the meeting left me with a lump in my throat.

I've been reading and checking the MS you left, and have dictated corrections and suggestions, which are typed on separate sheets of paper. Much of what you gave me (after the first chapter) is excellent. If the book can be like that (and why not?) then the biography can be a fine thing. Evidently your long-hand notes are sometimes less than adequate and occasionally very inaccurate. Most errors occur in sections based on my oral accounts of various incidents. Some of these stories must be told again, probably best on tape.

I am worried about the finishing of the biography. You have not had the time needed for the work. You've simply had too much

to do without the writing. It seems a pity, too; because this book [could?] be of great importance in your life as well as mine.

You can not finish the biography properly without using me as your one source for much of the story. This means that we should be in close contact while you are producing MS. I should be checking and offering any pertinent new material that might occur to me. I don't know how this can be done. I'm afraid that when you get back home you will be full of new experiences abroad, and probably swamped with other work needing to be done.

My pain stopped about a week ago, but I'm still weak and feel shattered. Still, I can handle one class a week, I'm sure.

India wants me in November. I don't see how I can go then, if at all.

I wish you could visit Andrew Melrose, Ltd, publishers of my Eagle Voice. They will have all press notices. (very good ones, too!). Ask them about the paperback edition of Eagle Voice. I'd like six copies of that edition. Also, I'd like to buy the cover design painting