Beschreibung:

STEINBECK, JOHN. Four autograph letters signed, three typed letters signed, and one autograph postcard signed to Katherine Kempff (addressed as "Dear Rosef) mainly in Washington, D.C.; written from various places in California (an estate near Lake Tahoe, Pacific Grove, and Montrose), [31 January 1928-19 August 1935]. Together 7 letters and 1 card, 13 1/2 pages, mostly 4to, all signed "John Steinbeck," five of the letters with envelopes addressed in Steinbeck's holograph, one typed letter single-spaced, the other two double-spaced (one with an eight-line holograph postscript); the first letter with a few fold tears (two repaired with transparent tape), the second in poorish condition with two long fold tears (repaired with transparent tape) with loss of a few letters. "I'VE WRITTEN WHAT I WANTED TO WRITE. THAT IS THE MAIN THING" An excellent, charming and revealing correspondence to a young girl (about age 12 at the time of the first letter) whom Steinbeck had met in the summer of 1927 while working as a caretaker on a large estate near Lake Tahoe. In discussing this friendship in his The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer: a Biography , pp. 111-113, Jackson J. Benson writes: "...he could be very charming. While he was friendly with the boys, he made a special effort to become friends with one of Mrs. Brigham's granddaughters, Catherine Kemp [ sic ]...He had a rapport with youngsters like Catherine, since he felt in looking back at his own childhood that he, too, had been left out and alone... Catherine...remember[ed]...the kindness and patience of the caretaker and the sense of wonder he conveyed in response to nature. The next summer [1928?], before he left the employment of the Brighams [who owned the estate], he gave Catherine his old Corona portable that had been with him through Stanford and on which he had finished one novel [ The Cup of Gold (?), published January 1929] and had begun another..." [21 January 1928] from Lake Tahoe: "...Rose, Rose, you are growing up. I realize it with horror and forboding. I didn't expect that you would, and I don't like it. Couldn't you stop it even for a few years? You are altogether too nice as you are to chance being anything else...I am going away pretty soon. Perhaps I shall disappear altogether for a while. I don't want you to forget me--ever...When you have reached such an astounding age as eighteen or even twenty, will you still write to me now and again? By that time I may have wings and live on top of a cathedral like a gargoyle. I have often noticed my resemblance to a gargoyle...Maybe when you are twenty or even twenty-one you will climb up the spire of the Notre Dame to see me there, spouting rainwater out of my mouth..." 26 January [1929], from Pacific Grove: "Now the enchantment is dis-pelled. The musty muggy old manuscript [a version of To a God Unknown ?] is finished, and I can swim out of millions of pages like this one, all covered with ink like this one. It was a messy job, but now it is finished and I may go to a moving picture if I wish...I didn't send you a permanent address because when I am working, I am not a proper person to write to. It is worse than a headache to be working. And now I have one more book to write, for I promised a man I would, and then I shall go to live in New York for a time...Pretty soon -- I shall have some stories you may like to read -- in a year or so. Do write to me, Rose, it isn't fun to be buried under yellow paper for six months." 7 January [1932], from Pacific Grove: "...You know I am married [to his first wife, Carol]. It isn't nearly as terrible as it sounds. There's something doom-like and inexorable about the sentence 'He is married. She is married.' But it does cancel our engagement in a way. I'm sorry for that but for no other reason...I work and work, making very little money but enough. It is good to be permitted to work and not to be forced. Hundreds of pages roll out gradually growing better and stronger and mo