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Catherine Moore
2547 Brookside Parkway, South Drive Indianapolis, Indiana July 14, 1937 |
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Dear Ron Hubbard: If it really were an ivory tower in which your letter reached me I’d probably have answered it much sooner. It’s been more like an ivory madhouse since my return from California, and though I’ve been home two weeks I’m not entirely unpacked even yet, which should give you some idea. Were you in Hollywood at the same time I was? And one of the many interesting people Forrest told me I was missing by leaving for San Francisco so soon? If so I’m awfully disappointed and can only look forward to next fall and your possible trip East, which I hope nothing interferes with. The nice lady of the secondhand magazine shop has written me since you did, sketching a personality that I certainly don’t want to miss – one to match your hair, she implies. I bought FIVE NOVELS several days ago, and last night finally succeeded in finding time to read your “Dive Bomber” —which, I noted with vicarious pride, had first place in the magazine. And I’m pleased and flattered, but not convinced, by the suggestion that our writing is similar. Your taste is so much better than mine. I mean, your very vivid and colorful descriptions come in small doses, instead of encrusting the story so thickly that one’s slightly sick from the richness by the time the tale’s finished. My stories are like making a meal off chocolate pie and plum pudding, while yours have a sufficient admixture of rare beef-steak and beer and salad to make the dessert welcome instead of cloying. I think I’ve come to a crossroads so far as my fantastic writing is concerned. Looking back, I itch for a blue pencil. So much of it would be so much better if a lot of the rococo were cut out. I write in iambic pentameter, for one thing, and too much prose poetry is too much. You’ve got a feeling of sustained rhythm in your own writing which happily stops short of the sing-song, as mine so often and so unfortunately doesn’t. When I have evolved through morasses of over-writing and wordiness and rococo into something approaching what I want to be like, I think the finished product will be very like your own style. Restrained and succinct, yet capable of brief and vivid descriptions all the more vivid for their brevity. Like a couple of lines in a poem I’m fond of, describing a Japanese print, “The skill to do more – With the will to refrain.”
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