Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
Textual Feature | Appearance |
---|---|
passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
printed letterhead text | printed text |
text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
I envy you, off on that high plateau3!
The heat here has been Hellish for the last week, night and day. But I am afraid I
am stuck in it for the present. In addition to my other work, I've had the French
translation4 of Antonia5 dumped upon me for revision. It is to be serialized in La Louvelle Revue6 next spring, and the translator7 wants me to attend to the natural
history and botany, and to supply footnotes on
explaining Western farm terminology. I could do this with more zest if the
translation seemed to me really first rate. It's not dreadful, but stiff and flat;
here and there it reads like French, and then again it's like English lifted over
into French,- about the literal way in which I would do it myself. I thought I had
written that Damned book once, and was done with it; and now here it is with the
same old problems, and in a language I know nothing about. He always uses too many
words, and makes the landscape and people too detailed and precise, someway- - -
drives in the last carpet tack! When I knock out a dozen word to page, he says, or
writes from Paris8, "That's not French!"
Well, then this story is not French, and can't be made so; it's absure to combine
a
tight precise style with anything so informal and even lax in outline.
Mother9 has written me begging me not to come home10 until the heat is over there. She knows it makes me rather short-tempered, poor lady! So that probably means I will go to her in September. I will go to the Grand Manan11 for August, if I get my work done up to a certain point before that.
You know that Greenslet12 had his shoulder broken13 in London14?
At present they15 have not one of my books
in stock; the printers' strike began in April, and a little increase in thes sales cleaned them out. Meanwhile, the Knopf book16 has been selling merrily. What can one do with
such people? Four different jobbers have sent me letters, saying that H. and M.
won'tg give them any date as to when the strike
will be settled, or when they can send them any of my books.
This is a grubby sort of business letter I'm writing, but I'm that subdued by the heat it's a wonder I can do even that. My fingers slip on the keys! Be glad you are there where there is some life in the air and that you haven't got smoky soup to breathe. Good luck!
Yours W. S. C.