Three Revealing Typed Letters, Signed

1940. Ephemera. Fine. Three typed letters, signed, on Caldwell's full-sheet letterhead, addressed to "Cap" (Charles A. Pearce of Caldwell's publishers, Duell, Sloane and Pearce). The letters are five to seven lines and each is signed "Skinny", Caldwell's childhood nickname. The letters serve no business purpose, they are chatty, joke-y notes dashed off in a few minutes, and as such, they are more revealing than Caldwell's more formal, business letters.

In the first letter, dated January 22, 1940, and stamped received the next day, Caldwell makes a cruel, sexist attempt at humor, writing in part, "I've just finished writing letters to every body in the office except you and the swell-looking cunt at the switchboard."

The second letter, dated February 28, 1940, and stamped received on February 29, reads in full: "I've decided to ask you to give my wife a good talking to when she gets back. Having covered the ground yourself, you'll know exactly what to say. In the meantime, I'm sitting up here drinking coca colas like mad."

The third letter is dated March 6, 1940, and is stamped received on the next day. He opens with a line about the Collier's editor and Communist writer Kyle Crichton, who had supported Caldwell early in his career. "My wife told me," Caldwell writes, "to stay away from Kyle Crichton because he was a book-reading, infinitive-splitting old bastard."

A particularly revealing group of letters by the author of Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre. The letters are folded for mailing, else fine. Housed in a quarter-leather folding case.