March 15, 1933
Gentlemen,
I suppose you'd be more interested in even a sleight-o'-hand
trick than you'd be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as
usual you can't have the thing you want most.
I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. However, I
was a New Yorker for a whole year in 1930-31 while attending advertising
classes in Columbia's School of Business. Actually I am a southerner, from
Mississippi, the nation's most backward state. Ramifications include Walter H.
Page, who, unluckily for me, is no longer connected with Doubleday-Page, which
is no longer Doubleday-Page, even. I have a B.A. ('29) from the University of
Wisconsin, where I majored in English without a care in the world. For the last
eighteen months I was languishing in my own office in a radio station in
Jackson, Miss., writing continuities, dramas, mule feed advertisements, santa
claus talks, and life insurance playlets; now I have given that up.
As to what I might do for you — I have seen an untoward
amount of picture galleries and 15¢ movies lately, and could review them with
my old prosperous detachment, I think; in fact, I recently coined a general
word for Matisse's pictures after seeing his latest at the Marie Harriman:
concubineapple. That shows you how my mind works — quick, and away from the
point. I read simply voraciously, and can drum up an opinion afterwards.
Since I have bought an India print, and a large number of
phonograph records from a Mr. Nussbaum who picks them up, and a Cezanne Bathers
one inch long (that shows you I read e. e. cummings I hope), I am anxious to
have an apartment, not to mention a small portable phonograph. How I would like
to work for you! A little paragraph each morning — a little paragraph each
night, if you can't hire me from daylight to dark, although I would work like a
slave. I can also draw like Mr. Thurber, in case he goes off the deep end. I
have studied flower painting.
There is no telling where I may apply, if you turn me down;
I realize this will not phase you, but consider my other alternative: the U of
N.C. offers for $12.00 to let me dance in Vachel Lindsay's Congo. I congo on. I
rest my case, repeating that I am a hard worker.
Truly yours,
Eudora Welty
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| Eudora Welty |
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| William Maxwell |
This letter was
written in March 1933 by the creatively adventurous, Eudora Welty when she was twenty-three years old. She
wrote this letter to The New
Yorker! They turned her down. Of course, they accepted many of her future pieces
for the magazine, and she won many awards for her work, not the least of which was
the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973. Through working with The New Yorker, Welty came to know William Maxwell, a beloved writer and editor at The New Yorker, and went on to write numerous
pieces for the magazine, but it wasn't until 1951 that they finally accepted one. I suspect since she went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973, they were glad they finally made that decision.
What There Is to Say We Have Said, edited by Edith
Marrs. The correspondence between Eudora Welty and William Maxwell
Love it! She was one of a kind.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kaye. I adore her writing. She had the ability to latch onto the emotional part of the simplest story and bring it to life.
ReplyDelete