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words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read. I have the instincts of a minstrel rather than those of a scrivener. There you have it. We are not of the same trade at all and so how can your rules fit me? When my sounds are all in place, I can send them to a stenographer who knows his trade and he can slip the commas about until they sit comfortably and he can spell the words so that school teachers will not raise their eyebrows when they read them. Why should I bother? There are millions of people who are good stenographers but there aren’t so many thousands who can make as nice sounds as I can.
    I must have misinformed you about my new book. I never never read Hemingway with the exception of The Killers. I have not lost the love for sound nor for pictures. Only I have tried to throw out the words that do not say anything. I don’t read much when I am working because novels have a way of going right on whether you are writing or not. You’ll be having dreams about it that wake you up in the night, and maybe you’ll be kissing some girl the way she expects it, and all the time your mind will be saying, “I’ll do the thing this way, and I’ll transpose these scenes.” A novel doesn’t stop at all when your pen is away.
    Next week maybe I’ll be moving to Los Angeles with Carol and we’ll have some kind of a little house on the outskirts and you can come to see us. We haven’t much money but it’s very cheap to live out here. Maybe you’d like to settle near to us. I don’t like Stanford and never did. Prigs they are there and pretenders. Maybe you could get a part time job in the south and we could sit in front of a fire and talk, or lie on the beach and talk, or walk in the hills and talk. I’d like you to know Carol. She doesn’t write or dance or play the piano and she has very little of any soul at all. But horses like her and dogs and little boys and bootblacks and laborers. But people with souls don’t like her very much.
    Let me hear from you as soon as you can.
    john
    Â 
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    Later he was to write:
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    â€œRemember the days when we were all living in Eagle Rock? As starved and happy a group as ever robbed an orange grove. I can still remember the dinners of hamburger and stolen avocados.”

To Amasa Miller
    2741 El Roble Drive
Eagle Rock, California
[Early 1930]
    Dear Ted:
    I have been doing so many things that there has been no time to write. I moved down here with many furnitures and then Carol and I got hitched which required some messing about and then there was a great deal to be done on this little house, painting and gardening and fixing of toilets which is always necessary in a tumbled down house. Anyway, merry Christmas and so forth.
    By dint of a great deal of labor we have made quite a nice place of this. We pay only fifteen dollars a month for a thirty foot living room with a big stone fireplace, a bed room, a bathroom, kitchen and sleeping porch. It was a wreck when we found it, but it is the envy of all of our friends now.
    I have been working quite successfully. Find the need of a new title and am wild about it. I have been trying to get one and it is the hardest thing on earth.
    The sun is so warm down here it makes me feel very good. We live on a hill in a very sparsely inhabited place which is heavily wooded. The neighbors are good with the exception of one virago. We have a Belgian shepherd puppy, pure black, which is going to be a monster. And all of the time I am getting work done which makes me more happy than any of the other things.
    I hope to hear from you very soon and when I get this draft finished in triplicate I shall send one copy east for the usual criticism. I have already decided to make very definite changes so the criticism will not all be valid.
    sincerely
john

To Carl Wilhelmson
    Eagle Rock
[Early 1930]
    Dear Carl:
    I do not know how long it is since I have