The Open University | Study at the OU | About the OU | Research at the OU | Search the OU Listen to this page | Accessibility
'In the meantime I thank you heartily for your more than in one way very interesting vol.["Shadows out of the Crowd"]. We shall have a talk about it when you come, with the corpus delicti there before us to refer to.'
'You don't mind if I suggest that you should take a glance at Curle's short stories "Life is a Dream"-- not all in the vol. but three of them. Read first "Blanca Palillos", then the "Remittance Man" and finish with the one called "A Memory". Each in its way has a distinct value [...]'
'I will talk to you at length about the stories when you are well enough to come down here for the weekend.[...]. The value of these tales relies in the "nuances" of colour of half light and in [an] almost evanescent tremor of emotions.'
'Just a line to thank you for the book. As I turn the pages my consideration for you grows to the proportions of respect. There is a beauty of easy moving prose - charm of phrase — felicity of words which give the strongest possible impression of mastery of language [...].'
'Best wishes for the book's career begun yesterday—wasn't it?'
'I was just about to write to you on the "Dole " articles. They are wonderfully the right thing: matter, tone, attitude, interest.[...] Jessie is lost in admiration.'
'Today's "J[ohn] B[lunt]" is particularly good. [...] The last three "Blunts" were remarkably good.'
'To go back to your book ["Joseph Conrad: A Study"]; I know you thought highly of "Nostromo" but didn't know you placed it quite so far above the other books. The other day I took up "The Secret Agent" and read it through for the first time (Conrad gave me a copy when it was first published). Now I shall do the same with "Nostromo" and read it straight through and try and keep aside the idea it produced when I first began to read it—that the S. American atmosphere is false. [I] mean principally the mental atmosphere—the mind of the natives.'