Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Autograph letter signed : [Sag Harbor, New York], to "Alicia," [1966 May 21].

BIB_ID
318072
Accession number
MA 2519.11
Creator
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
Display Date
[1966 May 21].
Credit line
Gift of John Steinbeck, 1966.
Description
1 item (3 p.) ; 33.4 cm
Notes
Part of a collection of letters from John Steinbeck to Alicia Patterson Guggenheim, written from New York and during his travels in Ireland, England, Israel in 1965-1966. Alicia Patterson Guggenheim was the editor and publisher of Newsday from 1940 until her death in 1963 and Steinbeck addressed his letter "not....to someone who is dead, but rather to a living mind and a huge curiosity" (see MA 2519.39). Steinbeck wrote the letters in this series as a weekly column for Newsday. Letters in the collection have been cataloged individually; see collection-level record for more information.
Place and date of writing from the publication details of this letter in "John Steinbeck and Newsday" by Robert B. Harmon; see publication details below.
Written on yellow legal pad paper.
Provenance
Gift of John Steinbeck in 1966.
Summary
Discussing the student anti-war protests and their "right to speak or print four-letter words on the campus as well as off it;" saying that his "only reservation about this doesn't come from a censorious impulse, but one of conservation. We don't have many four-letter words of sturdy quality and when you use them up, there's no place to go. Also, overuse milks all the strength out of them;" relating the words of Ernie Pyle in Casablanca before he passed out.