Beschreibung:

STEINBECK, JOHN. Autograph letter signed ("John Steinbeck") to Harry T. Moore, [Doylestown, Pa., c. 25 August 1937]. 2 pages, 4to, in blue ink on two sheets of tan poor quality copy paper, a few fold tears across some words with no loss, with typed transcript; half morocco slipcase. "THE WHOLE PROCESS OF TRYING TO BE A WRITER IS TO DROP PERSONAL IDENTITY" An exceptional letter responding to queries from Moore, who was working on his book about Steinbeck, published in 1939 as The Novels of John Steinbeck: A First Critical Study (Chicago: Normandie House). "...I think you know my principle -- that the perfect biography of a writer is born -- died. The whole process of trying to be a writer is to drop personal identity. That personal identity is the boundary of a writer's possibility. He shouldn't have any. His history should be the history of his people...I detest personal detail because it thrusts self-consciousness back when it should be eliminated..." Steinbeck gives some biographical details, and continues: "...'The Red Pony' was written about two years ago and appeared in the North American Review and isn't much of a story. I am not the doctor in In Dubious Battle and never was. I didn't enter that book at all but simply tried to include various kinds of viewpoints. Because the doctor was the most literate in the group, it was taken for granted that I used him as a personal mouthpiece. I was interested in the group and its components. I am working on a sociological study only in so far as an account of any group of people is a sociological study. "As for the question about a swing left. No, I haven't swung left. I've always been left...But I do believe and see a constant improvement (in the long view), a constant and consistent struggle toward a better kinder life, and I do see that the struggle and the impulse comes invariably from the common people. As for participation in this struggle -- I take part when it is required of me...It's nice of you to do this critique. I wish I could believe the work justified it but it is so poor, such a miserable statement of such a big thing. Must try to make it better. I'm down here at George Kauffman's [Bucks County home] doing final play script [for the stage production of Of Mice and Men ]...I'm not interested in the play but the discipline of writing for the theatre has been good. I'm fairly sure this will be my only Broadway show. Tortilla Flat [the play] is going on, too, this fall but I'm not writing the book for that..." Not in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters , ed. E. Steinbeck and R. Wallsten, and presumably unpublished.