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#1732: Willa Cather to Sigrid Undset, May 20, 1946

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Dear Sigrid Undset1:

How many times I have read over your letter, which tells me so much about what you are doing and how you are in mind and heart. Of course, there were sad things about your home coming; of course, your little town3 cannot be the same place, and many of the young men have died. The big losses in wars do not hurt us so much as does the death of a friend's son or a neighbour's son. But it must be an inspiration for you to be at home, where everyone is working for one purpose and working together. I think nothing puts hope into one like that feeling of working together.

We are in a very sad way here in the United States4. There has never been such confusion here. Well may you say, ''Oh, if Roosevelt5 were still alive''. John Lewis6, President of the United Mine Workers, seems to be the most powerful man we have, because he can stop the entire coal output7 and all manufacturies and public utilities, including railroads. Coal, of course, is the basic generationr of so many sorts of power. Just now wheels are standing still everywhere. I am not even sure that Miss Lewis8 and I can get up to Maine9 this summer. In Washington10 nothing is ever done, and nothing is ever settled. If we were up against great difficulties and shortages, I think we would not be so disheartened. But our troubles seem all to come from mismanagement and disagreements. We absolutely dread the morning newspaper. If you, in Norway11, find anything hopeful in the American news, your reporters must spare you the worst. I think that everybody here feels the paralysis of ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ a bitter disillusionment.

How fortunate you are to be where there is no "bigness" except that of the spirit,! and wWhere everyone stands shoulder to shoulder, and everyone is doing the best he can. I am glad that you saw this country when you did see it, and not as it is now.

Instead of living in the present, I have been trying to live in old Histories and in great books, which are always a source of strength. I am so gratified that your great trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter12, has appeared again in three volumes, as it should be, and not crowded into one unwieldy tome. I hope you will never let lose horrible producers at Hollywood13 put any of your books into films.

This is a sorry answer, dear friend, to your splendid letter, but one must have a spirit of hope to be anything but dull. Perhaps, if you we get up into the country again, the forests and the big tides on the Maine coast may put some heart into one. and Then you will hear from me again., and I shall then be a very different person, I hope.

Since you sailed I had a rather severe illness and was in the Roosevelt Hospital for several weeks. I think I am fairly well physically now, but there is a stagnation in the air which rather chokes one.

Sigrid Undset1 Lillehammer3 Norway NEW YORK, N.Y. CHURCH STREET STA2 MAY 22 1946 530 PM