Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, London, England, 1971 June 15 : autograph manuscript signed.

Wondering "Will our troubles on B.T, ["Bombay Talkie"] never cease?" [see MA 23840.857]; admitting that "in a way I suppose it's a relief not to have [the film] released and reviewed in London, but still, to think that this is so because the distributor doesn't trust it and wants to shelve it..."; expressing gratitude that "you have some other films to follow it, to cover it up as it were"; realizing that the reception received by the film-- "the meanness, the spite, the stupidity that it evoked here in India"-- has "changed a lot of things for me"; moving on to the "cheerful" news that Ava did very well in her final "school-leaving" exams; saying this has given them hope for Poji [Firoza], "for Ava at Poji's age used to do just as badly at school"; telling him that Ava will soon "sit for the entrance exam at the School of Architecture" and has applied, as well, to Delhi University in zoology and math; concluding that, because both Ava and Poji will be starting new schools in the coming month, she cannot come to the U.S. until she gets them settled; telling him that she is planning to spend September in England and October in New York and asking if that will work for him-- "And even if you are fairly busy, it won't do me any harm to pace the streets of New York by myself"; mentioning that she recently read "Mr. Sammler's Planet"-- "not a particularly good novel, I thought"-- and discussing the impression it gave her "that New York-- perhaps America as a whole ... is the missing conerstone of my experience. I mean, like Mr. Sammler, given my birth & background-- New York was the natural end, the goal, with London only an interlude. And so indeed it would have been, if the war hadn't intervened, delaying the American visas we had applied for"; saying that "I still want to do something about England-- pay off a debt, as it were, not to England of course (even I'm not that arrogant) but to myself"; telling him she had considered "A Lovely World" to be that payment, "but of course the cheque bounced"; asking him not to mention her travel plans to her mother, if Ivory should see her while in London, because she hasn't written to her about them yet; asking questions about Ivory's stay in London and lamenting the fact that letters take longer to get from the U.K. to India than from New York; asking if he received her registered letter from Kasauli and her telegram about the jacket of her book, and asking if he can do anything about it.