Influential American writer (1900–1938) known for his poetic autobiographical fiction, best remembered for the 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel. TLS signed in pencil, “Tom Wolfe,” five pages, 8.5 x 11, February 16, 1938. Letter to sportswriter Arthur Mann. In part: “I have been wrestling with the law, with law courts, and with another guy who was trying to indulge in the grand old national pastime of shaking-down…At least I hope to God I am through with it. My lawyers assure me it was a famous victory, and the newspapers said I had won: I do not know how I will feel about it when I see the lawyer’s bill. Some people tell me that life is too short to waste one’s time and energy in bickering with the courts…But there are times when you simply have to fight, just to protect yourself, this was one of them: the case involving a little fellow who has walked off with some of my manuscripts a year ago, sold some of them and pocketed the money, and refused to return the rest: in addition, he had mixed the whole thing up charmingly with blackmail, threatening my first set of lawyers…My first set of lawyers, whose reading experience apparently ended with the works of the late Bulwer-Lytton, and who had never heard of such word-users as Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc.—were undone…The result was that I had to pay them off for their own ineptitude…I managed to get another lawyer who is not intimidated by the threats of a naughty little boy, and the other day we went to town…
This whole experience of the last three years—ever since ‘Of Time and the River’ came out—of shysters, lawyers, legal racketeers, etc.—has been a painful but interesting one. I do not know what the hell it has to do with writing, but something tells me it may have had a great deal to do with it: I now see that the late Charles Dickens by no means exhausted the subject in his observations on the law and on the courts…
I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed the Baseball Writers’ Dinner, and how much I think I got out of it. Not that I learned so much, but I think there was a big value in verification—in seeing the animal at first hand, and in communication with his fellows. The point is, one of the characters in this immense long book that I am writing is a baseball player, and I realize from past observations how easy it is for a writer to go wrong when writing about a professional athlete…I think I may have told you that one reason I have always loved baseball so much is that it has been not merely ‘the great national game,’ but really a part of the whole fabric, the million memories of America. For example, in the memory of almost everyone of us, is there anything that can evoke spring—the first fine days of April—better than the sound of the ball smacking into the pocket of the big mitt, the sound of the bat as it hits the horse hide: for me, at any rate—and I am being literal and not rhetorical—almost everything I know about spring is in it…And is there anything that can tell you more about an American summer than, say, the smell of the wooden bleachers in a small town baseball park, that resinous, sultry and exciting smell of old dry wood.” Wolfe makes several small revisions in pencil throughout the text. In fine condition.
Wolfe was embroiled in several lawsuits during this period of his life, including disputes over royalties, a suit brought by his former landlords who claimed to have been libeled in the novella No Door, and the one he discusses here concerning his manuscripts. Wolfe sued Murdoch Dooher, formerly a friend who acted as his agent, for the return of autograph manuscripts that he had taken to sell to collectors. Despite winning the case, it was a major distraction during what could have been a period of great creativity. His research at the baseball dinner developed into the character named Nebraska Crane, a baseball player who appeared in The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again. Both of these were published posthumously, as his life was cut short just seven months later after he contracted pneumonia during a tour of the West. Pre-certified PSA/DNA.
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