ALS in pencil, signed “John,” four pages, lightly-lined, 8 x 12.5, July 17, 1963. Lengthy letter to Howard Gossage. In part: "This is the first day I have been permitted reading or writing in over a month and it will have to be short. Two days after I brought the Rover out here, the retina of my left eye detached—then there was surgery and hospitalization and blinders…I am not writing this as a tale of any woes but to ask what in hell I do now. This Rover affair is so sweetly imaginative that applying the tool steel mind for which I am infamous, I come up with an equation that ends = ? In effect I am borrowing a car and I have never borrowed anything in my life…If I had devoted the time and prose to Ford or General Motors I have lavished on this car I could charge them a minimum of twenty thousand bucks. But the fact is I wouldn't do it at all…What in hell do I do? Shall I hire someone to drive it to town. Hell! I'm figuring and I want you to figure for me. And if you can't read some of these words, I can't even see them, I can see the page and what look like a parade of Dyonisic (Dionysic) earthworms…Next page for campaign slogan. Slogan—Barry Goldwater has promised to lead us out of Egypt and I believe he could do it. Trouble is—we're not in Egypt…If all goes well with eyes, we are going to Finland, Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia in October for State. Not to be spoken of yet because Russia has not been informed." In fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Steinbeck’s own hand. Steinbeck was a close friend of Democrat Adlai Stevenson, and had hoped that he would be nominated in the 1960 campaign—he was weary of JFK as an untrustworthy 'bed hopper,' but voted for him and eventually they became friends. As he mentions in this letter, in 1963 he accepted an invitation to travel to the USSR, behind the Iron Curtain, as a cultural emissary from America. He was in Poland when he heard the news of Kennedy's assassination, after which he detoured to Vienna for a funeral service and returned to Washington; shortly thereafter Jackie asked if he was interested in writing a biography of her late husband, but he did not feel ready for the project. A fantastic letter concluding with mentions—both humorous and serious—of the leftist political involvement that defined much of his life and work. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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