Letter to A.D.R., August 18, 1930

620 West 122nd Street
August 18 [1930]

Splice the main-brace, ahoy!

All congratulations on your latest entries in the unofficial log. It arrived this morning, and so you see I am SETTING YOU AN EXAMPLE. In fact, I wrote you a letter before this one, but tore it up. It contains too much really Tough Language, and all That Sort of Thing! I suppose I picked it up form the Unmentionable Movie Trash which I Read For a Living–anyhow, where-ever I picked it up, it certainly is NOT the proper thing to send in a letter to one who is writing Healthy Young Men for a Living.

My dear, don’t you ever yearn to spit in their faces, and to create for a change some perfectly Horrible and Gritty young men who would hammer and mash and batter and whang up all the healthy-minded maidens?  I suppose, were a list of detailed rules for healthy stories written out, they would look something like this: “No kisses of more than two second’s duration,” and that sort of thing. Wouldn’t they?

Well, anyhow! Dang it all, I’d like to see all you Russells together. It’s not right for people to have half-continents and such trash shoved whang into their faces, between them and those they love, is it?… Read more

Letter to A.D.R., August 1, 1930

620 West 122nd Street
New York City
August 1, 1930

My Deah:

Well! Here we am, as you might say. It really has become a rather usual occurrence, all this moving around, yet still, it has not lost a certain spice. This is really a grand little apartment of three rooms, and we have our own old furniture, and a whole bookcase full of books (the pick of the flock) and a little kitchen which is concealed behind two vast doors; and I can’t imagine a better place for us to live in———-that is, all things considered, and seeing things as they are, my boy, as Chester used to say to Marlow.

You mustn’t feel sorry for me at all, though. I really am quite happy, because I am so busy from morning till night that I haven’t time for anything else. I’m good in school–in fact, one of the best in the shorthand class, now–and Fox Film likes my work for them, and they hand me out a bit of praise almost every time I come into the office, which is about three times a week, and they pay me in cash in sealed pay-envelopes (can you imagine anything more pleasant?)… Read more