Letter from James Ivory, London, England, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1971 July 13: typescript signed.

Asking for her opinion of "The American," both novel and play, and venturing the opinion that "I won't have too much difficulty getting the money for it, or for some novel of James"; offering as proof the "speed and low cost" with which they produced "Savages," as well as "the taste right now for romantic-looking costume pictures from the late 19th century-- Little Big Man, Death in Venice, Losey's The Go-Between and now Visconti, afer [sic] having ruined Death in Venice, is about to embark on Remembrance of Things Past"; wondering how Visconti will cast it, and pointing out that "Truffaut said he would not do Remembrance of Things Past because there was no French actress who could play the part [of Mme. de Verdurin]"; speculating that "[p]erhaps people want to look back, away from the degenerate present" and imagining that "I could get financing for The American, particularly with Catherine Deveuve in it"; going over some potential "arguments" for why the film should be funded; noting that a television adaptation of "The Spoils of Poynton" recently did well; telling her he is now reading "The Golden Bowl", and "Ismail is struggling through The American, and so, maybe, is poor Catherine Deneuve"; describing the previous day, when "Nirad Chauduri came down from Oxford to record his lines for the film's commentary"; saying Chaudhuri's oldest son is visiting and "being shown London properly by his father"; relating that Chaudhuri has been invited to deliver four lectures at the University of Chicago in October; expressing some concern at having sent Chaudhuri to see "Bombay Talkie," as it will be "only the second film he has ever seen, the first having been Aparajito, in some castle in Scotland"; telling her "I think it's a fine idea to have our screenplays published, starting with The Guru" and promising to "help with it when the time comes"; describing their outing the previous Sunday-- with "Foo, Drew, Ismail, myself, Paulita Sedgewick, whose [sic] come over, and an actress from New York we know named Marilyn Meyers"-- to Brighton and Chichester, with a picnic by an "un-English" lake "on which floated huge red water lotus and ducks"; commenting on a snake he saw there, and noting that in all his time in India he never saw a single snake, but on his first "excursion" into the English countryside he sees "an English viper, for all I know"; observing that Drew is a terrible driver and the English like to simultaneously drive fast and tailgate, so that "if any of them had had to stop some thirty people would have been killed. Fools."