Jay to Bee. Janet Frame
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my work.
This is not the kind of letter I dream of writing you. It is what we used to call, in our family, an ‘On the Monday’ letter, derived from my father’s habit when he was away from home of recording almost every move in sentences which began, On the Monday . . . . On the Tuesday . . . .
I should know on Wednesday or Thursday when I’ll be flying to L.A. Could be the weekend sometime. No later than Monday 2nd March. In the meantime au revoir.
Basic love
J
33.
Your letter today is so nice and comforting to me in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. This letter will be the last I write to you before I fly on Saturday, American Airlines F.045 leaving Baltimore noon, arriving L.A. at 2.18 Pacific Time—I’ll be phoning you tonight to tell you. I wanted it to be Friday but the medical checkup has turned out more complicated than I thought and I’m sitting here in downtown Baltimore Maryland with all kinds of wild apprehensions flying through my mind. I shall have to spend the next two days being radioisotoped, for five hours tomorrow and about three hours the next day and then on Friday hearing the results which I’ve no reason to expect will not be O.K. but you know what Authors Imagination Inc. does to one. I also have to submit again to one of those immodest internal examinations where one has no control over one’s secretions and therefore makes oneself apparently ready to receive the smoothie doctor with all his goods. What shame. For ‘one’ read ‘I’.
It will be good to leave Baltimore and I truly can’t wait to land in L.A. It’s like a dream. Perhaps it is.
Elnora phoned last evening and she will be finished her book this weekend—very wonderful news, I think, and I’m sure it will help her. I’m glad you like The Adaptable Man. I did try to reread it but I found it rather boring from time to time. I did enjoy the way the characters (for me, anyway) became people, especially the dentist whom I built up from that one visit to the dentist. My characters are not really people to the reader—to the critic, I mean.
I’m excited about flying west and I see myself on the patio hogging that chair while the hummingbirds hum near by and Ned blossoms in Op Art colours, and you and Paul munch p.b. sandwiches.
Here, in downtown Baltimore, my consolation has been the music, and though I can’t play the big Steinway it’s been something wonderful for me to be alone with a black Steinway most of the day. I’ve been listening to the pronograph also.
Hasty finish to post →
Love x Love J
a See Brown’s drawing on page 75
b Ruth Dallas
c Charles Brasch
d Iona Livingston
e Dorothy Ballantyne
f Rodney Kennedy
g Charles Brasch
h Ida White
i The quote is from ‘Newsreel’ by Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972).
MARCH
34. Santa Barbara March 6 (postcard)
By the time you read this I shall have been swallowed by a carnivorous plant which you have been sheltering unbeknownst in your otherwise paradisal garden. I have strength only to write this card which I gave to Ned to post (mail) & pray that he does so. I’ve not even space to tell the location of the plant. Farewell.
Your loving Janet.
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