Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1971 January 17 : autograph manuscript signed.

Asking Ivory-- "if your personal cash situation is not too tight"-- to acquire "a winter suit and winter trousers" for Jhab, who "really has nothing to wear"; providing specifications for the clothes; expressing happiness that Ivory has "got round to Henry James," as she feels there is no other author "who, in every way, suits you so well," and agreeing to help him adapt a James property if he wishes; describing her role in the process as "a wholesome technical job acting as a kind of liason officer between you both [i.e. Ivory and James]"; adding the caveat that for "the next few months" she will need to focus her efforts on her novel; considering several James novels in turn: "The American," "The Golden Bowl," "Portrait of a Lady"; systematically laying out, in numbered points, encouragement for Ivory; encouraging Ivory to write a treatment for "The American"; expressing some dismay that Ivory doesn't have more projects in development, and reminding him that "you have to have many many [possible projects] for one to be chosen and that from only a multitude of ideas and projects can one actually materialise"; suggesting two of E.M. Forster's "minor" works as possible candidates-- "A Room with a View" and "Where Angels Fear to Tread"; embarking on a long discussion of how little one should value the aesthetic opinions of the young: "One doesn't, if one is a mature and intelligent artist, do anything for the young. If there is something in one's work that happens to appeal to them-- fine, tht's good-- but actually to tune in to them, submit to them, stoop [underlined] to them, that is despicable"; quoting Auden, "In semi-literate countries / demagogues pay / court to teen-agers"; mentioning that she has been re-reading Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" because the faces of the current crop of "young revolutionaries" remind her of the young people of the Russian revolution; suggesting that book as another possible candidate for adaptation, citing the striking parallels in it to the present day; noting Normal Mailer's attempt to write something similar with "Barbary Shore."