Long ALS dated 1937 from author Max White, deeply personal about sexuality, Gertrude Stein, etc.
From Max White, the pseudonym of Charles William White (1906--?), a novelist most active in the 1930s and 1940s when he published works based on the lives of visual artists; "In Blazing Light" (1946) about Goya is probably his best known novel. He was part of a collective of Greenwich Village bohemians and artists centered around artist Alice Neel. This 1937 letter is written to a young correspondent from western Pennsylvania and takes up both sides of six sheets. "Dear Harry, this long delay in sending your book back and answering your letter should prove to you that as you said you liked to think writers are human, I might say 'all too human.' The pain of it is that my mother-in-law, of whom I am very fond, has been being extremely ill. We have been in a state of commotion that has precluded all normal activity. Thank you for your article on Greeks. I enjoyed it and I must say I've never known anyone to be so enthusiastic about books and I must say that though I believe in your enthusiasm it somewhat passes my understanding, but go to it, there is nothing better than enthusiasm. I was profoundly touched by what you told me of yourself and what you told me what you did. I had guessed your age and it is a fine age though at times a difficult one, so keep on and later many things that trouble you now will trouble you less. And don't worry about being on the wrong side of the fence sexually. Many young people who are sensitive and who live in small communities are forced by the narrowness of life about them to protest in some intimate way against the way life around them and do things quite contrary to their real nature through boredom and loneliness. But don't worry and don't let your conscience trouble you. There is a point where the inside and the outside meet and sometimes the outside, being badly planned [?] and socially all wrong because people will be people, impinges too much on your inner self and you have these choices, you dominate circumstances by your character, you let circumstances dominate you, or you hide from circumstances and, like an underground river, break out at the surface again in some unexpected spot. The last way is a way of survival but, I believe, a very costly way that makes one unsocial. This, my dear Harry, is what I believe, and believe me I am not preaching about myself. I must admit that I never quite know what to say when I must say something. Recently I had to contribute a short autobiographical notice for 'Living Authors' and I was hard put to know what to say and finally solved the problem by expressing my admiring opinions on Spanish painting and Mae West. Yes, my life has been very exciting and when I have said that I realize I can't go on about it because it has been exciting more because of my reactions than because of the intrinsic interest in what has happened to me. Anyway I've mostly had a wonderful time and life is pleasant at present. Yes I've met Getrude Stein and like her immensely. She is at once sensitive and robost and she has a tough and brilliant and subtle mind and I admire her immensely. I don't say I understand all she writes but what I have understood I've liked and the rest was always good reading even if I didn't always know what she was feeling when she wrote it. I have inscribed your book and although the inscription isn't very long I didn't think it will displease you. As for a picture, I doubt the Stackpoles have one though they may and those I had I've given away. If you come to New York you must of course look us up and then we can see what we think of each other when we see each other. PS: Excuse my curiosity but are you of German descent. Always yours, Max." [Regarding Gertrude Stein, White had plans to co-write an autobiography of Alice Toklas, the notebooks of which are at Princeton.]. Item #H10309
Price: $200.00