Mason, Ellsworth, 1917-2013

Scope and Contents "I am going to assume, I am as from now assuming, that the person who over three years ago was headed for being 'my' bibliographer, and gradually fell into a state of paralysis as such, is not going to reply to my letter of recent days indicating that I held the relationship to have come to its term, and putting to him two questions."....."You said, either a check-list or a bibliography. I don't know what is done with check0lists, if anything, besides the publication...

Scope and Contents "He who had been as 'my' bibliographer, and gone out of reach, has spoken to me by telephone. He replied thus to my query as to his material. He is ready to hand over his material to another approved by me, he to receive, according to my suggestion, credit on the basis of this as a collaborator."...."I shall tell you something of his story, for your use in forming a view of the possibility I have envisaged as to his material."...."If you wan...

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"I am at this writing concerning myself a good deal with one feature of your reply-work. This is your introduction of the name of Mr. Kirkham into your reconstruction of the bibliographical background of which I gave you what seemed to me an adequate account. It firghtens me that you should press upon my account for filling it in for yourself with an attempt at factual specificness, which in respect to the matter at leat of who it was who had agreed to do the annotations part..."

Scope and Contents "For your orientation, for what correspondence there might be between yourself and the was-to-be bibliographer, I want to put it on record with you that the circumstances immediately behind his expressed readiness to act according to what I proposed are these."...."It has not been my thought that you should necessarily supply short descriptive comments on my writings. It was my thought in the case of the former person-his name is Walter K. Thigpen-though I perceived...

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"As to what I contributed, what help I gave Walter Thigpen:he came here 3 times."

....

"[I note you are doing a paper related to your work on Joyce. I remember: you have collaborated with Richard Elman. For a time last year I was in correspondence with a colleague of his at Yale..."

Scope and Contents "I have perceived in you an intolerance towards the pari passu mode of relations: the drive to go steps ahead, and not treat the relation with another as belonging to a common course. But I was not prepared for anything as extreme as this letter of yours in which you present me, after coming to me about doing bibliographical work in my connection, and with myself, in a fashion, at reasonable hand, with a decision you are making for my good, in my interest - quite dismissing myself as a...

Scope and Contents "I do not respond in kind by accusing you of baseness in what you did to me in that letter, or in in what you do to me in this present one, with charges of disdaining you while trying to cnceal my disdain but doing so 'poorly', and with acting towards you on the spur of dislike oof having impressed on me the importance of my concentrating on my husband's and my work on language-"...."As I have indicated, I was affected by what you did in that letter and closing out...

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"My idea is, that we go on, in a relation with each other, allowing for its being at present attended by some difficulty, inhering in disparities in viewpoint, in certain areas of thought and sensibility."

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"I want to tell you about Focus. I think I have, actually, told you my all about 'Of Others': that I incline very strongly at present to the view that there never was such a book published by the Seizin Press or begun by my organizing labors-"

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Typewritten letter:

"I don't understand 'The Enemy No. 3'. What is that? Perhaps Wyndham Lewis' magazine?"

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"The Len Lye etc. pamphlet: I have only a copy at Cornell - I mean, they have, it is now theirs but restricted from access except by my consent."

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"I'll just say here that I shall plan for your taking on The Private Library article."

Scope and Contents "I am very grateful to you for the xeroxed pages of The Shout; and for the 'meticulous' definition. The American Heritage dictionary is the one I had in mind, but I can make do with what you sent, and well: it provides adequate substantiation of what I suspected: that within a short time, lexicographically speaking, the degenerative process in word-treatment has here got itselg, conveniently for the abuse, officialized."....."I am going to ask you - here, now - to try...