TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS). 1 page, dated 9 April 1979, to "Dear Kirby" [McCauley], signed "Manly." On plain letter-size paper with Wellman's Chapel Hill address typed at the top. While finishing up AFTER DARK, the second Silver John novel, Wellman is thinking about a third, which "would find John under a sort of informal assignment by the government to look into what's happening in a certain little village. I know the place well. And what's happening is demonalotry in a high degree." This would become THE LOST AND THE LURKING (1981). The remainder of the letter is devoted to Wellman's response to McCauley's suggestion that he try a Civil War novel. He says he started one years ago, but that such a project would "take some real deep thought and an elaborate organization." He then sketches out the plot of the multigenerational story he has in mind, and asks, "Is this sort of book sought after right now?" He adds that his upbringing (in Arkansas) would make him "deeply sympathetic to the Confederacy, whatever its faults. Often I consider that war as America's great tragedy; and wonder if both sides weren't right and both sides wrong." He mentions another unsold novel manuscript in his files, "about a Carolina mountain banjo-picker of the 1930s who got pulled up to New York, could have been successful, but decided to go home again." A poignant and very personal letter, scintillating with those flashes of literary fire that show Wellman to have been a true writer. Wellman, rising above his pulp roots, was accomplished in nearly all genres of popular fiction, and was noted for bringing a pungent American flavor to his work. Kirby McCauley was probably the most important literary agent of horror, fantasy and sf writers in the boom years of the 1970s and 1980s. Faint creases where folded for mailing, other creases and wrinkles elsewhere, faint reddish smudge at upper left corner, some ink doodling on verso, very good. (#102743).
Price: $200.00
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