Selected Letters of Katherine Anne Porter by Darlene Harbour Unrue

Author:Darlene Harbour Unrue [Unrue, Darlene Harbour]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617036200
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2012-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

To: Herbert Schaumann TLS 4pp. Maryland

843 6th Street, Santa Monica,

California 5 April 1946

Dear Herbert:

You with your returned soldier, and I with mine—at least you seem to be stubbornly staying in your own house, which was more than I had force for.... My blessed Paul finally arrived, and the whole situation promptly stood on its ear ... I had tried but in vain, but vain, to find him a room. Then I had to buy a bed and put it in my living room, which is also my working place ... He came in (I was and am heavenly glad to see him) and did just exactly what every other human being on earth does near me: sat down in perfect serenity and folded his hands .. absolutely confident, as everybody always is, that I can and will arrange and do everything...

Well, my producer at Paramount thinks that, too, and so does my publisher. And I was up to my neck scattering bits of mss. to them to maintain their belief ... Also, as a long second thought, to get my work done, which is after all the only thing that gives me any real happiness.... after all, I mean that literally. That is my only source of nourishment and renewal—everything else gnaws me away at the roots ... unless I can see some relation to my work with what is happening.

In two weeks I was a mere wreck, a ghost talking in its sleep .. So I left the apartment: we had advertisements in all the papers, and friends looking for a place for Paul—and bolted to the desert, there to wrestle with the devils—multiple, a single one would be a great change for the better—where naturally, on the second day, an enormous blizzard blew up, blew a window sash in front of my worktable out and bashed me over the head. I never had a bash over the head before, and it is quite something, isn’t it? I am now full of curiosity as to its effect on my future mental processes..

I stayed there three weeks and damned near finished the Paramount play ... I should think I’ll be out of there in another week or so ... I hope, anyway ... And Paul finally got himself settled permanently for two months in a little beach apartment. And I came back and went to bed for three days, and cried quite a lot, which with me is no sign of weakening, but nature’s own announcement that I am getting my sleeves rolled up really to go into action. Now I have the house to myself again, Paul just comes in now and then and we listen to music and talk about everything on earth—he is really good company for me, and loves being around—and I have been sleeping ten hours a night for some several nights now, and all at once Life, the sabre-toothed tiger, is back in his cage.....

But oh, never think that I don’t know what is happening to you.

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