The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison by Ralph Ellison & John F. Callahan & Marc C. Conner

Author:Ralph Ellison & John F. Callahan & Marc C. Conner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

To Albert Murray

OCT. 3, 1957

Dear Albert,

I’ve been back just over a week and have been so busy trying to ship out of here that I haven’t had time to write. As it is it looks as though I’ll have to stay here until the 3rd of Nov. when I’ll ship for Naples. I had been counting on taking a freighter but it didn’t pan, so here I am, on the pot but doing no business…Japan was so exciting that if I could go back tomorrow I’d leap. I spent 14 days there and took in as much of that modern-ancient civilization as I could cram. They’re an efficient people—which is always a pleasure to encounter after these slackassed Romans—and damn near everything they touch takes on beautiful form. They’ve taken the Western way, especially the American, and done something of their own with it. When you visit one of their houses you realize what Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson are trying to get at with their frigid designs, but they miss it a mile. A Japanese house is austere but it’s also warm; reduced to essentials not by hacking but by blending, brewing, testing until that which is left is not only the least that is necessary but also the most aesthetically satisfying. I’ll have more to say about Japan later, right now it’s enough to say that I knocked myself out (trading my Summaron wide-angle for a Nikon 35 mm fl. 8 plus $27.00) and that was the best part of the trip. And, because the smug Indians who make so many moral noises discriminate against writers, I had to skip my trip there except for an 8 hr. wait between planes in Calcutta; and went to Hong Kong. Spent three days there being entertained with two other Congress of Cultural Freedom writers and acting like a hungry dog on a meat wagon over all those beautiful women. I simply didn’t know about the Chinese, man; those girls have figures that are the most beautiful I have ever seen, and complexions! Tell Mokie to keep you away from there, they’d drive you nuts. No kidding they are lovely and Hong Kong, is an exciting international city and I want to return. But as for Calcutta, no sir; too depressing with thousands sleeping on the sidewalks, cows wandering in the downtown sections of a city of 8 million, crowds parading behind the red flag. I was glad to get out of there, even though I was going to lecture in Karachi, which was only a little better, for it too has its refugees from the division between India and Pakistan. I lectured at the University in the late afternoon and returned to my hotel to be introduced to a bunch of white Fulbrighters from ’Bama and had a bitch from Montgomery try to tell me how wonderful things were there until the N.A.A.C.P. and the Supreme Court dropped the shuck. I then had to tell her that I was from down that way and how different the facts of life looked from our side of the line.

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