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typed letter 19 April 1973 Jackoboy I:
Iffen you write to him, tell Larry and Goldie hello - I
have a color slide of Goldie some place, taken in the famous or infamous Wash. BOOKSHOP. My membership in the Bookshop Association was listed as cause for my 5-year suspension from guvmint job, but my fine lawyer, Hon. Byron Scott (former Congressman from Minnesota I believe), and the Civil Service Commission, concluded that I was a member of the Bookshop BEFORE it was on the notorious Attorney General's List. I was even in the army when the Bookshop made the subversive list. I noted in the book on Commonwealth College that the subversive school in Mena, Arkansas, is STILL on the Attorney General's written in red List, altho Raymond Koch doesnt know WHY, unless the school is expected to be revived. I thought the Attorney General's List had been abolished ?
Hope the ANVIL anthology sells, it just might once these here
young revolutionaries and student dissidents get a holt of it . . . you never can tell. I saw Eudora Welty's novel about that Kintucky family " Battles" ? marked down to $1.00 in our local cut-rate bookstore - I bought Hildegarde Kneff's "The Gift Horse" for $1, a hardcover book - I had read it, but I gave it to my daughter, I so enjoyed it and her unflattering portrait of Hollywood's dirty-old- men producers or seducers. She is one Nazi I would be proud to shake hands with - she is completely honest and not ashamed of her past.
I hope ANVIL lasts long enough to use my stuff - Olafson seems
to see a threat of vigilantes against them, but aside from Trotskyites in Minneapolis I didnt think part of the country went in for vigi- lantes, but I suppose anything is possible anywhere today ? Olafson says the next issue is very radical, but I dont find the NC ANVIL in comparison to the old ANVIL, REBEL POET, or the NEW MASSES, RADICAL. Do you ? I think radicalism today does not mean the same thing it meant in the 1930s - there is so much literary and artistic freedom today that you have to be way out in a political sense to be called "radical". I can get Zugsmith's THE SUMMER SOLDIERS on an inter- library loan if they dont have it and I am certain they dont have it. Librarian in those days was a nice old Cat'lic lady who seemed to do her own censoring of books, now they seem to stock books without reading them - I read a few way-out novels full of four-letter words, last one about blacks in Chicago: WE CAN'T BREATHE, by Ronald Fair. I also dont think our liberry carries JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE, but will check. Will send as you suggest, something to Ray Browne's Popular Culture Center - sounds like a groovy spot and I like his idea of collecting odds and ends of our culture, all I have now is some blockprints - my photos are with N.C. ANVIL - the good ones. As for NEW LETTERS, again all I have are a few prints and I havent written a story for years, altho I would like to - still, will try to send NEW LETTERS something, if only blockprints, story maybe later. in red ink I do have one Short piece the NEWS didnt get around to using - about a lonely, drunken Irish fellow I met in Alexandria square. That might make the grade.
Cheers, JCR (OVER)
Soon be poke time, yum, yum.
in black ink on left-hand side Wrote to Ray Koch, Lucien gave me his address - but no reply yet - yes, I guess Lucien just became "tired" - a common ailment easy to come by. My son now working for the railroad CRF & P) - apprentice brakeman - good pay - more than I ever earned. on top of letter above typed part only thing, the hours are bad. He can join the Union in 60 days and things should be better.