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head. His description of himself to me: "I am an aesthete...I don't believe the C P speaks the language of the American.worker...Boy, am I having a helluva a good time writing this story (his first novel)...Lend me Das Kapital, will you, Abe (I left it in the coffee shop for a period of two weeks. Each of us went in daily, though seldom at the same time. He never read the thing)...I don't believe the American workers will ever stand for any kind of dictatorship...The Daily News advanced me ten dollars on a story...Have some coffee...Have you read the Humanists...Goddamndest crap...I'm not going to write for the newspapers; I've kept my work pure so far and I'm not going to stop now...The Daily News..." I believe the boy is honest enough. He always impressed me as being slightly cracked. And, though I have not read the Nation review, I believe that fundamentally he attacks you because he believes you are sectarian and regimented. I believe there is a neurosis there, his honesty, already mentioned, being that to be expected of one whom I might describe a socio-pathologic neurotic. He is a Mencken of the proletariat without Mencken's critical faculty, an embryonic fascist from the depths attempting to flower on the heights. But he does have n ear for idiom and a background which might make him a proletarian except for the fact that he is so confused philosophically that I doubt that he ever will emerge. Comradily, Abe P.S. I'll send you the money for the book about 1/18, for the 5 magazines about two weeks later. Better send me ten of #5. My family, my friends etc. will want copies. My mother is very sick. Out of the hospital now, but too weak even to walk about the house. Don't think I am always expecting answers to letters. I don't answer (or write at all for that matter) so often myself. I'm going to [make?] a stab at review of [Hieler?] last. I doubt that I shall submit for #4 of Left Front, though I may. Jordan says, "Why not?" I don't think I ought to get in my own paper in every issue with both story + review. I wish I hadn't [made?] my "From the Far East" so speculative in tone. Some good comments on my story have come into the office, but none of the kind of criticism like yours which gives me a guide for study + correction. Abe