Best-selling author and screenwriter (1916–1990), well loved for his straight-forward, blue-collar approach and extensively researched—extensively sexual—novels. Four items: two ALSs, 5.5 x 8.5 and 7.25 x 10.5, both on personal letterhead, The first, October 9, 1975, Irving writes to Mr. and Mrs. Ed Heller, Sr., in full: “‘And almost everyone in the group solemnly agreed.’—The last words of The Chapman Report. And everyone joyously agrees your 50th is a happy and exciting occasion”; and the second letter, addressed to Reverend M. J. Forwood, dated April 2, 1977, reads in full: “‘The ultimate prize is to know that each day’s challenge is meaningful & offered for use, that it must be taken to the bosom, & it must be used…’ From The Prize. The happiest birthday ever!”; an AQS signed “Irving Wallace, April, 1984,” on an off-white 5 x 3 card. Irving writes, “He knew where he was going. And so, at last, at last, he could go on…”; and a TLS, one page both sides, 7.25 x 3.5, personal letterhead, October 24, 1979. Irving writes to Brother Norbert, in part: “What makes literary work lasting? A lot of that happens in a phoney way. The academics get behind a book, push it to their college classes year after year, and that does it. But often it is because people want to keep reading one writer generation after generation. The professors looked down their noses at Dickens. But people, decade after decade, loved his stuff—and so he lives.” In fine condition, with trimmed edges to the TLS. RRAuction COA.
