Dear Bill: --/--/ I know you’ll be glad to know that there is a good chance of my first book of poems, _White Buildings_, being published by next spring. In fact Boni & Liveright (at Waldo Frank’s persuasion) have practically agreed to bring it out if Eugene O’Neill will consent to write a short foreword. They have lost so much money on the better kind of poetry (which simply _doesn’t_ sell these days) that they want to hook the book up with an illustrious name and catch the public that way as much as possible. Gene is a good friend of mine and admires my work--I know that--but whether or not he feels like performing this favor I haven’t yet heard. Frank thinks he can engineer the matter anyway--in time, but I don’t know. He would gladly write the foreword himself if he thought his name would count sufficiently, and at any rate will write a whole page of praise for it in _The New Republic_ when it comes out. This and other favorable reviews that I am sure to get from friends of mine ought to make quite a sensation for the book. I’m a little up in the air with the uncertainty and excitement of the present situation. It would be fine for me in so many ways if the thing did go through! Have been reading Ernest Hemingway’s _In Our Time_, a new book that is full of startlingly simple and vivid description. --/--/ 219: TO HIS FATHER [_Brooklyn_] [_November 21, 1925_] Dear Father: I was very glad to hear from you and it was generous of you to thus come to my aid.[40] The only pity is that artificial theories and principles have to come so much between us in what is, after all, a natural relationship of confidence and affection. You may not believe it, Father, but in spite of what opinions you may hear that I have against you (and, not knowing what is told you, I still refuse to acknowledge them, either way), I still resent the fate that has seemed to justify them and God knows how much we all are secretly suffering from the alienations that have been somehow forced upon us. If we were all suddenly called to a kind of Universal Judgment, I’m sure that we would see a lot of social defenses and disguises fall from each other, and we would begin from that instant onward to really know and love each other. I feel rather strange these days. The old house sold in Cleveland; Grandmother ill in Florida; Mother somewhere in Cuba or the Isle of Pines; and I not hearing from either of them for the past month. Altogether, it’s enough to make one feel a little foot-loose in the world. But I’ll have a job soon, and will probably be reassured in the mail that everything’s all right. At such times, though, I realize how few we are and what a pity it is that we don’t mean a little more to each other. Please let me hear from you when the spirit moves you. 220: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK _Brooklyn, NY_ _Dec. 1st ’25_