Letter from James Ivory, New York, New York, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1971 November 3 : typescript signed.

Assuming this letter will be waiting for her when she returns to Delhi; admitting he had decided not to heed her instructions to wait six weeks before writing to her; describing his visit to Lillian's to carve pumpkins for Halloween with Erik; claiming "the pumpkin must be the most photographed pumpkin there ever was" as pictures were taken of every possible stage of the process; continuing the story of their day with a walk, during which Ivory mistakenly allowed Ross's dog Goldie "to drink water out of the gutter"-- "the next time I'm going to let Erik drink out of the gutter"; continuing, "then it was bike riding time," followed by a discussion of "Penelope Gilliatt's hateful movie"; relating some incidents with Erik where the child struck his mother; relating the arrival of "Mr. Shawn," lunch, and his own ambivalent feelings about being "a surrogate god-father," staggering home exhausted at six o'clock; telling her he spends his days in the editing room and tries not to go out too much in the evening; describing one of his recent "interesting encounters" with "three extraordinary Womens[sic]-Lib types who called me up and asked to see me" at the Algonquin, and were trying to get Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" made into a film.