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Thomas Wolfe Collection, Accession 6348-b, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library
Deposit 1961 Oct 28
Funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
[Includes ANS, Thomas Wolfe , Sante Fe , to Ester Owens , [ Tulsa, Oklahoma ] regarding the dedication to Benjamin Harrison Wolfe , who died of influenza,]
[Declines her invitation to Sante Fe since he is due back in New York City ; says he has a book coming out in October and that his holiday has come to an end; looks forward to seeing her again; sends love and friendship.]
[Declines invitation to Tulsa , saying that he and Maxwell Perkins have decided to stay out of the lecture circuit, though he may lose money; thanks her for sending pair of rabbit's feet for luck; mentions being troubled and tormented since October with demands put on him; explains that he does need, and has little chance to win, the Pulitzer Prize, and that he had Perkins pull the book from consideration; expresses disappointment at not being able to see her soon.]
[Thanks her for Christmas present; sends season's greetings; looks forward to going home to North Carolina and to seeing New Orleans ; remembers a visit to New Orleans during Mardi Gras when he was a child.]
[Talks about his "flu" or "grippe" after returning from the South; says he subsisted largely on her gifts of preserves and cheese; discusses his legal problems; maintain that the past 2 years have not made him bitter or cynical; finds comfort in her friendship.]
[Thanks her for preserves and remembers her previous practical gifts; hopes her examinations went well; relates his summer plans to work in a rented cabin near Asheville, North Carolina to cut, rewrite, and shape a gigantic manuscript; expects short stories to come out in Scribner's Magazine and The New Yorker ; says he has sold stories to Redbook and Saturday Evening Post and is pleased about the profit.]