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Letters of Henry S. Whitehead, 1942
Page 9
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The Harvard Club, 27 West 44th St. New York City, December 9, 1926. Dear Lieutenant Price, Yeah! You have the dope. I published my first story back in 1905, so I know the dope when I see it -- both ways. I.c., you can write and you have the proper slant on selling 'em. It's just as P.C.Cody told me one day when I was feeding him here at the H.C. Says Cody, "H.S., you can write anything! You could get into any magazine there is (or words to that effect, designed to swell the bean to complete megacephalitis) if you'd write what the editors want." I told him I made my living that way but that most of the old output was hardly worth-while offering because there wasn't enough catching magazines to hold that kind of pitching. E.g., did you see the shot of guff Galsworthy has in the current Forum? God assoil us, if I turned out a mess of bunk like that I'd ---- probably sell it!! Heh! Wright has three of my stories bought, one of them for a year and a half. He's looking over another right now. The three bought on are CARIB GOLD, THE LEFT EYE, and THE SHADOWS. The one he's looking over is called "A DOOR INTO THE UNKNOWN" and is an (acknowledged in text) swipe from Well's story about the guy who went flooie in the lamps -- was in London and "saw" the Antipodes. Remember it? Wells has pretty well covered all that ground it seems to me. Mrs. Black gave me your rug-letter to read. Boy, you CAN write. It was a corncracker -- a honeycooler. My comment on it was that although I'm a two hundred pound-er, if I used up my creative energy in correspondence like that I'd be flat for a month. Maybe (softly, Henry!) that's what gave you the ninety-day stretch of unproductivity. Grenville Vernon referred to Carl Van Vechten November 17 in a review in The Commonweal, thus "...the pretentious vulgarity and emptiness of that preposterous product of half-educated aestheticism." Thar!! That was a compensation for 150,000 morons all yapping at once about Interstellar Space. Last week I got one cheque from a Roman Catholic and one from a Methodist weekly. How's that for spreading 'em? One a highbrow stunt on "The Seven Sins of 'The Churches'" the other for a boy's story in The Target. Well, that's quite a lot of gall and snakewood off my soul so far. No one knows when I'll break out again, but will try to keep the rest of this letter decent and respectable. Any time you want me to write Wright right, shoot the works and I'll paterize a letter to him. You betcha, old kindred spirit, even if I did go the parson's way. Well, maseltoff, sincerely, Henry S. Whitehead * * * The Harvard Club, N. Y. City, 27 W. 44, December 23, 1926 Dear Bre'r Price, That was some good olf letter, as Penrod might have said. Penrod came to mind because Van Buren and I (Boy's Camp partner, and a real egg) have been giving out camp kids a Christmas party in two and it "sure was" a lot of fun. No, de-ah sir -- the Revolt is rescinded; the Bolshevism balled-up, the Grouch ground-under-heel, and the Outburst over!
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The Harvard Club, 27 West 44th St. New York City, December 9, 1926. Dear Lieutenant Price, Yeah! You have the dope. I published my first story back in 1905, so I know the dope when I see it -- both ways. I.c., you can write and you have the proper slant on selling 'em. It's just as P.C.Cody told me one day when I was feeding him here at the H.C. Says Cody, "H.S., you can write anything! You could get into any magazine there is (or words to that effect, designed to swell the bean to complete megacephalitis) if you'd write what the editors want." I told him I made my living that way but that most of the old output was hardly worth-while offering because there wasn't enough catching magazines to hold that kind of pitching. E.g., did you see the shot of guff Galsworthy has in the current Forum? God assoil us, if I turned out a mess of bunk like that I'd ---- probably sell it!! Heh! Wright has three of my stories bought, one of them for a year and a half. He's looking over another right now. The three bought on are CARIB GOLD, THE LEFT EYE, and THE SHADOWS. The one he's looking over is called "A DOOR INTO THE UNKNOWN" and is an (acknowledged in text) swipe from Well's story about the guy who went flooie in the lamps -- was in London and "saw" the Antipodes. Remember it? Wells has pretty well covered all that ground it seems to me. Mrs. Black gave me your rug-letter to read. Boy, you CAN write. It was a corncracker -- a honeycooler. My comment on it was that although I'm a two hundred pound-er, if I used up my creative energy in correspondence like that I'd be flat for a month. Maybe (softly, Henry!) that's what gave you the ninety-day stretch of unproductivity. Grenville Vernon referred to Carl Van Vechten November 17 in a review in The Commonweal, thus "...the pretentious vulgarity and emptiness of that preposterous product of half-educated aestheticism." Thar!! That was a compensation for 150,000 morons all yapping at once about Interstellar Space. Last week I got one cheque from a Roman Catholic and one from a Methodist weekly. How's that for spreading 'em? One a highbrow stunt on "The Seven Sins of 'The Churches'" the other for a boy's story in The Target. Well, that's quite a lot of gall and snakewood off my soul so far. No one knows when I'll break out again, but will try to keep the rest of this letter decent and respectable. Any time you want me to write Wright right, shoot the works and I'll paterize a letter to him. You betcha, old kindred spirit, even if I did go the parson's way. Well, maseltoff, sincerely, Henry S. Whitehead * * * The Harvard Club, N. Y. City, 27 W. 44, December 23, 1926 Dear Bre'r Price, That was some good olf letter, as Penrod might have said. Penrod came to mind because Van Buren and I (Boy's Camp partner, and a real egg) have been giving out camp kids a Christmas party in two and it "sure was" a lot of fun. No, de-ah sir -- the Revolt is rescinded; the Bolshevism balled-up, the Grouch ground-under-heel, and the Outburst over!
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