Prolific American author of westerns, including such classics as Hondo and How the West Was Won. TLS, two pages, 8.5 x 11, November 24, 1987. A superb, revealing letter written less than a year before the author’s death. In part: “Personally, I doubt if I was ever influenced by any writer, even when I was beginning. I did learn from Maupassant, O. Henry, Stevenson and Trollope, but only in the how of telling a story, and by Maxim Gorky, as well. But I never had any desire to imitate any other writer except when I was a boy of fourteen I wanted to tell stories as did H. C. Witwer, a writer whom I am sure you have not heard of. He wrote boxing stories in the form of letters, inventing much of the slang used at the time and writing some very clever stuff…. Struggle, as our friend Herr Hegel said, is the law of growth, and we all need something to try our strength. My only hang-up in the category we are discussing is critics: I do not believe any writer should read his reviews or criticisms of his work…. I also believe that I am only now becoming a good writer. If I have ten more years, or twenty, of writing time, I’ll do some much better work…. Van Gogh is often written about because of the peculiarities of his personality, but if one studies the progression of his work and what he had to say about it one can see he was no madman, but a thoughtful, painstaking artist, a man who knew what he was doing every second of the time. The same for Poe….” In fine condition, with usual mailing folds. R&R COA.
