Lot Essay
A lengthy letter in which Steinbeck thanks Shumlin for a Brewer's Dictionary, discusses sending a copy of the new Sea of Cortez, and the loss of Ed Ricketts, quotes his wife Elaine's advice on his not getting involved in the theatre, and mentions his recent work on a novelette.
"...You see when Ed was killed, half of me died. He ached me like an amputated arm. So I wrote this account of him to try to ret rid of him and to grow a new arm. I don't know whether I ever have...Because Ed was not an ordinary man, his biography is not an ordinary one. I tried to take him apart for inspection the way we both looked at the things in our laboratory. I think it is a method of which he would have approved...You know, Elaine, with a long history in the theatre and I, with a history of theatrical catastrophes, have a convention which she suggested and I find valid. Every morning I raise my right hand and swear-----'I am a novelist. I will not , repeat, WILL NOT, get involved with the theatre-'...Both of us know that this oath is only good until one day when the itch comes back again and it probably will. Anyway I am working on a piece of prose now, of the kind I have done before, a short novel kept within the procenium arch and conforming to the unities of time place and progression which were designed and insisted on, not by playwrights but by audiences... the idea appeals to me and I am old enough and sometimes rich enough todo what I want to. I always did, but I never had the justification I have now..."
"...You see when Ed was killed, half of me died. He ached me like an amputated arm. So I wrote this account of him to try to ret rid of him and to grow a new arm. I don't know whether I ever have...Because Ed was not an ordinary man, his biography is not an ordinary one. I tried to take him apart for inspection the way we both looked at the things in our laboratory. I think it is a method of which he would have approved...You know, Elaine, with a long history in the theatre and I, with a history of theatrical catastrophes, have a convention which she suggested and I find valid. Every morning I raise my right hand and swear-----'I am a novelist. I will not , repeat, WILL NOT, get involved with the theatre-'...Both of us know that this oath is only good until one day when the itch comes back again and it probably will. Anyway I am working on a piece of prose now, of the kind I have done before, a short novel kept within the procenium arch and conforming to the unities of time place and progression which were designed and insisted on, not by playwrights but by audiences... the idea appeals to me and I am old enough and sometimes rich enough todo what I want to. I always did, but I never had the justification I have now..."