From: LeonardSMa at aol.com <LeonardSMa>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 10:45:26 EDT

Linnea asked so many good questions. Yes, I did purposely include the letters about politics and current events. UN didn't pretend to be neutral about things (books, people, politics, religion, anything), so I felt these letters revealed something basic about her. Also, they served as historical markers: what else in the world was going on around the time that Harold and the Purple Crayon was in the works?--well, the McCarthy hearings, among other things. A book about imaginative freedom at a frightening time of the suppression of ideas. Not an irrelevant connection. Children's books are so rarely viewed in terms of a larger cultural/historical context; the letters presented a great opportunity to do that. One other example: UN in April 1954 confessing to Janette Lowrey that shes owns a TV: that speaks volumes about the relationship between high and low culture then--and now. I did briefly consider a non-chronological organizational plan--letters arranged by author--but decided it would give a truer picture to show all the different projects that were concurrently in the works at any given time. To read UN's long, attentive letters to a given author, you might assume that she was corresponding with no one else. But of course this wasn't the case. About letters left out: there were very very few letters that I would have liked to include but felt or realized or was told I couldn't. Surprisingly few. I decided early on to publish whole letters rather than just interesting snippets; from the letters included in the book, only 4 or 5 sentences in all were deleted for reasons of privacy. Nonfiction books are all read ("vetted") by lawyers these days and the concerns that arose related to invasions of privacy and/or libel. My deepest worry, at the beginning, was that lawyers would have their way with the book and that it would be greatly diminished as a result. That didn't happen, and I'm grateful that it didn't. About pacing: I kept that concern in the back of my mind, always. I would think about which letters were the essential ones written to each author, then add those to the manuscript. It was fun seeing what each letter ended up having for "neighbors." One interesting juxtaposition I couldn't have planned for is that of the very first letter (to LI Wilder) and the one that follows to Georges Duplaix. In the first, UN is brand new and feeling pretty raw and exposed--then, pow! she's cutting Duplaix, a publishing veteran, to shreds with her two-fisted sarcasm. Talk about growth spurts. About the end: I worried a lot about that. Charlotte Zolotow had the very last letter in her files at home and she gave it to me (by the UN was out of the office and no longer carboning letters, so CZ had the only copy). I was bowled over by that letter, and still am. The Stevie Smith poem could have been UN's epitaph ("I was too far out all my life...") The typewriter that wouldn't work summed up those post-Harper years, during which I think, very sadly, she felt pretty lost. But the power of her mind is still there, reflecting on her past, reconsidering a cherished book, urging a cherished author (CZ) to get on with her books while making excuses for herself as author. How like her! And of course it was a nice touch to catch her reading someone else's letters with such absorption, then quoting (or misquoting)--and still listening, so intently, for the cadence in the words. More later. Leonard Marcus
(LeonardSM at aol.com)
Received on Tue 11 Aug 1998 09:45:26 AM CDT