we've taught each other? Be firm. All great women flout convention. Think of Edna St. Vincent Millay! Would she listen to her parents? Courage!
Love,
Salome
2 August 1929
Dear Theda,
Of course I wish you well. Of course you can still be a free woman and a flapper though married. Of course I will never stop being your best friend. Of course I know you are not doing it for your parents. The only reason I am not coming to the wedding is Innuendo. Love is love but I have a responsibility to my deadlines. This is what it means to be a publisher—even an avant-garde publisher.
Love,
Salome
5 Sept 1929
Dear Theda,
Life gets crazier and crazier here. Last night I went to a ball where most of the women exposed at least one breast and were painted gold or silver. Before that there was an art show with no lights at all—very Dada—we were given flashlights and lanterns to see the pictures. I am learning more here than I ever learned in school. And I have met everyone. The talk of literary Paris is a book published privately in Florence by a chap named Lawrence which details a love affair between a lady and her gamekeeper. He twines violets in her pubic hair! And other things too unprintable to mention. I will try to find a copy for you as a wedding present. Hot stuff!
Love,
Salome
12 Sept 1929
Dear Theda,
It didn't require a cable. Stop. I will keep the book for myself. Stop. Don't want to shock your old man. Stop. Keep the aspidistra flying! Stop.
Salome
NOTEBOOK
3 April 1931
I am overcome with guilt for not writing in this notebook for so long, but everything changed after the Crash! A lot of the Americans packed and went home, and the ones who stayed were a different breed. The remittance kids went home, I mean—except for me (since linen supply is a Depression-proof business)—and the ragamuffins arrived. One ragamuffin in particular, a certain H. Valentine Miller of Brooklyn and Yorkville and Greenwich Village, arrived. I decided to stay.
NOTEBOOK
12 June 1931
Sex in the thirties—just like in the twenties—is plentiful if not always dependable: a tremendous amount of passing out goes on because of the absinthe . I'm told that when Pernod (an artificial absinthe that the old-timers always complain about) came in, it was an excuse to drink even more . And then there are the fins à l'eau everyone drinks and drinks and drinks . Sex and drink do not great sex make—as Zelda Fitzgerald was forever telling everyone. The Fitzgeralds too have gone home after following the Murphys to the South of France. I met all these birds since Innuendo gave me entrée everywhere.
But the most exciting person I've met is this bald writer on a bike—he calls it his racing wheel— who always needs a meal or a place to stay. He's from Brooklyn, is in love with astrology, philosophy, and sex—in reverse order—and he is definitely the sort of vagabond who comes into a woman's life and turns it upside down.
[undated]
Dear Theda,
So I was sitting in the Dôme and writing one day—because even though I have been away from New York almost two years, I still have only bits and pieces of my novel. Too busy leading the literary life to actually write, I guess. (No wonder Flaubert said, "live like the bourgeois." Or words to that effect.)
Anyway who should be writing at this other table but a sinewy guy with Asiatic-looking eyes, a slouch cap on his head, and a wide mocking mouth. As I walk to the back of the café to find the W.C., I peek over his shoulder. The Land of Fuck, I read, in his sloping rhythmic hand. Suddenly he turns around, looks in my eyes, and asks:
"Do you wanna go there?"
This with a heavy Brooklyn accent.
"Every cunt needs to go there regularly, don'tcha know?"
I laugh and continue to the W.C. But the phrase strikes me. In fact, like Lady Chatterley, I start to throb you know where! "The Land of Fuck" is what I have been looking for in Paris—as you know better than anyone—and
Love,
Salome
2 August 1929
Dear Theda,
Of course I wish you well. Of course you can still be a free woman and a flapper though married. Of course I will never stop being your best friend. Of course I know you are not doing it for your parents. The only reason I am not coming to the wedding is Innuendo. Love is love but I have a responsibility to my deadlines. This is what it means to be a publisher—even an avant-garde publisher.
Love,
Salome
5 Sept 1929
Dear Theda,
Life gets crazier and crazier here. Last night I went to a ball where most of the women exposed at least one breast and were painted gold or silver. Before that there was an art show with no lights at all—very Dada—we were given flashlights and lanterns to see the pictures. I am learning more here than I ever learned in school. And I have met everyone. The talk of literary Paris is a book published privately in Florence by a chap named Lawrence which details a love affair between a lady and her gamekeeper. He twines violets in her pubic hair! And other things too unprintable to mention. I will try to find a copy for you as a wedding present. Hot stuff!
Love,
Salome
12 Sept 1929
Dear Theda,
It didn't require a cable. Stop. I will keep the book for myself. Stop. Don't want to shock your old man. Stop. Keep the aspidistra flying! Stop.
Salome
NOTEBOOK
3 April 1931
I am overcome with guilt for not writing in this notebook for so long, but everything changed after the Crash! A lot of the Americans packed and went home, and the ones who stayed were a different breed. The remittance kids went home, I mean—except for me (since linen supply is a Depression-proof business)—and the ragamuffins arrived. One ragamuffin in particular, a certain H. Valentine Miller of Brooklyn and Yorkville and Greenwich Village, arrived. I decided to stay.
NOTEBOOK
12 June 1931
Sex in the thirties—just like in the twenties—is plentiful if not always dependable: a tremendous amount of passing out goes on because of the absinthe . I'm told that when Pernod (an artificial absinthe that the old-timers always complain about) came in, it was an excuse to drink even more . And then there are the fins à l'eau everyone drinks and drinks and drinks . Sex and drink do not great sex make—as Zelda Fitzgerald was forever telling everyone. The Fitzgeralds too have gone home after following the Murphys to the South of France. I met all these birds since Innuendo gave me entrée everywhere.
But the most exciting person I've met is this bald writer on a bike—he calls it his racing wheel— who always needs a meal or a place to stay. He's from Brooklyn, is in love with astrology, philosophy, and sex—in reverse order—and he is definitely the sort of vagabond who comes into a woman's life and turns it upside down.
[undated]
Dear Theda,
So I was sitting in the Dôme and writing one day—because even though I have been away from New York almost two years, I still have only bits and pieces of my novel. Too busy leading the literary life to actually write, I guess. (No wonder Flaubert said, "live like the bourgeois." Or words to that effect.)
Anyway who should be writing at this other table but a sinewy guy with Asiatic-looking eyes, a slouch cap on his head, and a wide mocking mouth. As I walk to the back of the café to find the W.C., I peek over his shoulder. The Land of Fuck, I read, in his sloping rhythmic hand. Suddenly he turns around, looks in my eyes, and asks:
"Do you wanna go there?"
This with a heavy Brooklyn accent.
"Every cunt needs to go there regularly, don'tcha know?"
I laugh and continue to the W.C. But the phrase strikes me. In fact, like Lady Chatterley, I start to throb you know where! "The Land of Fuck" is what I have been looking for in Paris—as you know better than anyone—and
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