Oct. 25th, 1971
Things have been booming. I've been receiving citations and honors, and don't know where to put them. Also, I've been giving a good many programs.
At the Ak-Sar-Ben stock show and rodeo, I competed with the cowboys and bulls and came off first! Honest! They cleared the huge arena, then led me out into the middle, turned the light on me and inducted me into the Hall of Fame. Whereupon, the whole crowd of 6000 stood up and "hollered"! This is only one honor hono honor.
What I most want to know is what is the outlook for the publication of your Biography. Please tell me. I'm "awfully" interested.
I'm going to Columbia on the 30th of October, to meet Harcourt Brace's vine prentic vice-president. I don't know what this is for, but I hope they may be interested in my Cycle etc. They seem sold on the autobiography.
It occurs to me that when you publish the Biography, you may want to give my Autobiography as the source of a few facts — like the argument between my Grandma and the Bull! I cannot [drop?] such things, but you can give my autobiography credit, and include it in
We have an agent working on Black Elk Speaks for a movie. Pocket Book will mass-publish Black Elk Speaks and When the Tree Flowered — huge editions! We are having a hassel with Bruce, trying to transfer the Black Elk Speaks over to Simon & Shuster
, who want to issue a beautiful, hardback edition. We have the rights, but we don't want to be unkind. However, we can't afford to let Black Elk go on with no books on sale. We hear from all over the country about the immense
If only the autobiography takes hold! Then we could go to town with the Cycle etc.
Dick Cavett will give another Neihardt interview — and maybe a live one in New York. This, I have reason to suppose, will be at the time the Autobiography comes out. The result of the other Cavett show was, and still is, fantastic. So anything may happen.
Gaki
