“I HAVE TO MORE OR LESS CUT MYSELF OFF FROM ALL CONNECTIONS OF THIS SORT UNTIL I GET MY BOOK [YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN] DONE/ WHICH IS GOING TO BE A TREMENDOUS PIECE OF WORK”
WOLFE, THOMAS. (1900-1938). American novelist; wrote Look Homeward, Angel (1929), Of Time and the River (1935), and You Can’t Go Home Again (posthumously published, 1940). Very Rare Typed Letter Signed, “Thomas Wolfe”. Two separate pages, quarto. Roanoke, Virginia, April 28, 1937. To Mr. Palmer. Very fine condition. Wolfe writes:
“Dear Mr. Palmer: Please excuse me for not having replied sooner to your letter of several weeks ago. The plain truth is I had just finished about a half a million words of writing and was dog tired and had to knock off. I have let everything go for the last four or five weeks, including correspondence. Now I am loafing down the Shenandoah Valley on my way down to western North Carolina where I was born and I am feeling a lot better. First of all let me thank you very sincerely for your generous proposal about my joining the Player’s Club. I have been taken there several times by friends and I think it is a delightful and hospitable place. At the present time I am engaged in trying to get another big piece of work finished. Knowing too well my indolence and how I have to drive myself to get anything accomplished, I have to more or less cut myself off from all connections of this sort until I get my next book done, which is going to be a tremendous piece of work. This is really just the way things are but I do not want to know how much I appreciate your proposal and I hope that some day in the future you will feel like extending to me again the opportunity which I am now unable to take. I have some stories and some articles and, of course, I should be delighted if anything I have done would interest you or be available for the Mercury. I shall be down home for a week or ten days; but when I come back to New York, I am going to have Miss Nowell send you some manuscripts and I hope you will be able to find something that will be suitable to your purpose. I very much appreciate the interest you have taken in what I do and, of course, I should be happy if further work of mine appears in the Mercury. I am sending this letter to Miss Nowell to forward on to you, because I do not have your letter or your exact address with me as I write this. With thanks again for your letter and with best wishes, I am Very sincerely yours, Thomas Wolfe.”
Wolfe’s early death at the age of 38 makes his writings extremely rare. Letters with better content, as the above, especially referencing his best known works, are extremely desirable and almost unobtainable.
$8200.00