Free Steinbeck by John Steinbeck Page A

you receive this. If the reader will take them for what they are, and will not be governed by what a short story should be (for they are not short stories at all, but tiny novels) then they should be charming, but if they are judged by the formal short story, they are lost before they ever start. I am extremely anxious to hear the judgment because of anything I have ever tried, I am fondest of these and more closely tied to them. There is no grand writing nor any grand theme, but I love the stories very much.
    Carl Wilhelmson is married. I had his announcement this morning. Is your divorce desirable? I mean will it make a demand of alimony on you? I hope you get it without scars.
    I’ve been working like a dog on this last ms. Now I shall take a little time off before starting the next. There are a number of silly little stories that have been bothering my dreams for some time. I’ll get them off my chest without injuring my rest at all.
    We’re going to S.J. (San José] for Christmas. Toby and Grove Day are coming down next weekend to celebrate. Toby with his guitar. The whole bunch of us will probably get horned like owls. Toby gets to singing so loudly that the police interfere. Were you at the beach with us the night he nearly drowned in his soup? I heard a gurgling noise beside me and there was Toby with his nose submerged in his soup snoring it in and gradually drowning. I have a feeling you were there.
    Anyway don’t please keep aloof so long next time.
    affectionately,
John

To Mavis McIntosh
    Pacific Grove
January 25, 1932
    Dear Miss McIntosh:
    This letter may be pertinent if Miss Phillips [Vice-President of William Morrow and Company] is reading the novel To an Unknown God. I have no intention of trying to patch it up. It would surely show such surgery especially since it was finished nearly two years ago. I shall cut it in two at the break and work only at the first half, reserving the last half for some future novel. With the material in the first half I shall make a new story, one suggested by recent, and, to me, tremendous events.
    Do you remember the drought in Jolon that came every thirty-five years? We have been going through one identical with the one of 1880. Gradually during the last ten years the country has been dying of lack of moisture. This dryness has peculiar effects. Diseases increase, people are subject to colds, to fevers and to curious nervous disorders. Crimes of violence increase. The whole people are touchy and nervous. I am writing at such length to try to show you the thing that has just happened. This winter started as usual—no rain. Then in December the thing broke. There were two weeks of downpour. The rivers overflowed and took away houses and cattle and land. I’ve seen decorous people dancing in the mud. They have laughed with a kind of crazy joy when their land was washing away. The disease is gone and the first delirium has settled to a steady jubilance. There will be no ten people a week taken to asylums from this county as there were last year. Anyway, there is the background. The new novel will be closely knit and I can use much of the material from the Unknown God, but the result will be no rewritten version.
    Perhaps it will be as well to let Miss Phillips see this plan. It will give her a better idea of what to expect.
    Your letter was encouraging. Thank you.
    Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

To Amasa Miller
    [Pacific Grove]
February 16 [1932]
    Dear Ted:
    Thank you for doing all that work. It was a lot of trouble. Miss Me. dismissed the ms. [ The Pastures of Heaven] by saying the form doesn’t interest her, but it may interest someone else. The Pastures has begun its snaggy way. Morrow won’t publish as a first novel, but will if a more closely integrated work can precede it. Publishers are afraid of short stories unless the writer of them has a tremendous name. And so I presume that the Pastures will go the way of all the others. Miss Mc. was