De Gourmont’s _Une Coeur Virginal_ has just been published here, (trans. by Aldous Huxley), and I have snatched it up against its imminent suppression along with _Jurgen_ and other masterpieces. If this is a fair sample of its author, and it’s supposed to be, I cannot see how his _Physique d’Amour_, translated by Pound and to be published by Boni & Liveright, will ever get beyond the printers’ hands. Yet how mellow and kindly is the light from de Gourmont! One hates to see him on the tables with Zane Grey and Rex Beach. Maybe, after all (and since I have procured my volume), it will not be so heart-rending to see the destruction of the jealous Puritan at work again. Two weeks of book-service to the “demands of the public” in a store have bred curious changes of attitude toward the value of popularity (of the slightest sort) in my mind. The curious “unread” that slumber lengthily on the shelves, and whose names are never called, are much nearer my envy than I had once thought they might be from the mere standpoint of neglect. This pawing over of gift-book classics in tooled leather bindings, etc., etc., is a sight to never forget. Poor dear Emerson must slumber badly. Aristocratic is Whitman, though--no one ever calls for that “democrat” any more than for Landor or Donne. And Edgar Guest and Service, death heads both, are rampant. Of course you have heard of Anderson’s winning of _The Dial_ prize. I was quite certain of it anyway, but intensely gratified at the fact now he has. He will probably go to Mexico now as money was all he needed. He wrote me an answer recently to my criticism of _Erik Dorn_, praising parts of it much and damning others. The book still puzzles me, which makes me dislike it a little more than ever. As a whole it is deficient, but I have always admitted certain parts good. But when one compares it with such a book as Anderson’s _Triumph of the Egg_, it fades out terribly. This latter is an anthology of recent short stories of Anderson and re-reading them together I get the most violent reaction. He has written of ghastly desolations which are only too evident in my own experience and on every hand. I am more enthusiastic than ever in my praise for him although I feel in an odd way, that he has, like a diver, touched bottom in a certain sense, and that his future work must manifest certain changes of a more positive character than the bare statement of reality, or conclude his promise. --/--/ 84: TO GORHAM MUNSON [_Cleveland_] _Dec. 25th, ’21_