Here is your copy of Boom Town.¹ I think it’s swell, and hope you and Mr. Perkins² will too. There are a few more persnickety changes that Lieber and I thought of for the last ten pages we did when we were all so exhausted. They are so slight that we’ve sent the manuscript to Cosmopolitan today as planned, but some time after you’ve read this over we might have one more session to discuss it. How would next Wednesday night do? I promise you it’ll be a very short and peaceful session.

I hope you had a swell time on your week-end and are all rested up so you can sweep on with your book. We’ll try to leave you in peace for a while now, but any time you want to bring the other stories over I’d love to start reading them.

Here are some voluminous reactions to “In the Park.” I hope they won’t drive you wild and that you’ll agree more or less. I’m not mailing the story because I think you said you had another copy and I didn’t want it floating around in the undependable Christmas mails too much. Whether you agree more, less, or not at all I hope you’ll give us a ring when you feel like it and hash it all over with us some night.

However, I may as well burst into the old refrain now as later. As it stands it is a narrative or a reminiscence and not what our friends the editors call a story. The more we can center it on the automobile idea the better the chances will be for selling it and the better the price, so I hope you won’t mind too much if we harp continuously on that.

Therefore, what I wish you’d do—roughly and open to discussion—is this:

I’ve been trying to leave you in peace but the time now seems ripe to burst in where the angels fear to tread so I hope you and Perkins will forgive me.

First of all, about “Boom Town.” We’ve been bickering with Harper’s about it for almost a month and have finally had to accept defeat at their hands. After reading it twice they finally said they might take it with certain cuts which they specified, so we tried cutting it and showing them the result on the understanding that your approval would have to be obtained. We didn’t want to bother you and take you away from the book until we were sure they would take it, which they’ve finally decided that they can’t do. The reason I’m writing you now is that we think this shorter version is better and infinitely more saleable. The various people who saw the first version all complained about its length and also about the stuttering brother whose presence they couldn’t understand. Of course in a book he would work in all right, but I do agree with the editor’s complaint that in this he’s too much of a shock and bound to take away the emphasis from the real estate theme. Of course too there’s the old taboo about stuttering planted firmly in editor’s minds because they think it slows up the reading too much, but the chief trouble is that Lee overshadows the boom theme. Anyway, instead of going into more explanations, I’m enclosing a copy of the new shorter version so you can see what you think of it. If you think it’s all right we want to keep on trying the other magazines with it instead of the longer version.

In the meanwhile, Gringrich, the editor of that new man’s magazine in Chicago, “Esquire,” came in to see Lieber and said he was anxious to have something from you. He practically promised to take anything at all possible and to pay $175 for it which is $75 above his usual rate. The catch is that he can’t use anything over 3000 words. I’ve been wondering if you’d want to try him with the part of “Morning in the City” about the man getting up.¹ There really isn’t a chance in the world of selling the four parts complete and it seems as if this would be ideal for Esquire because it would be looked askance at by the more prudish magazines like Harper’s, Atlantic, and the mass periodicals. It would have to have an ending tacked on to it to be a real story, but I wonder if you couldn’t think of some kind of catastrophe that could happen to the man to round it out and to break off all his luxury and power with one short, sudden jolt. Perhaps he could find he’d lost his shirt in the Market, or was going to be called before the Senate Committee, or could get angina pectoris or something, but I mustn’t let my imagination run away with me, especially when yours can run so much farther, faster, and better.

Anyway, we’ll be looking forward to getting your reactions to both these situations when you get a chance to let us know. And I’m still hoping you’ll do something with the automobile story sometime. I never thanked you for your Christmas card but I do now very much. I hope we can send you one for Easter or Valentine’s or something in the form of a check for one thing or another.

Thanks for your letter and for the revised copy of “Boom Town.” I have not been able to read your revision carefully yet, but I shall read it over the week-end.

I am sorry you have had to work so hard on this and have had no better luck placing it. Of course there’s no use arguing with Editors who know what they want or think they do, and I don’t know of anything I can do to free them from their quaint superstitions concern...