?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
WARTIME DOLDRUMS: "SOMETHING OR OTHER IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN" STEINBECK, JOHN. Two Autograph Letters Signed, "John," to his literary agents Elizabeth Otis, Annie Laurie Williams, or Mildred Lyman, complaining about mail delivery problems and uncertainty about the future, wishing for a Christmas holiday with his friends and without war, expressing lack of interest in his project for the Army Air Forces [adaptation of non-fiction book: Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (1942)?], anticipating that film studios would accept a project he proposed with Jack Wagner [A Medal for Benny (1945)?], and expecting to move soon [to New York City]. Each 1 page, 4to, ruled paper, first torn from spiral notebook, second with two punch holes in left margin, horizontal folds. [Van Nuys, CA?], circa December 1942
The first: ". . . This place is nuts. High School children are delivering the mail. This morning we got the mail of three neighbors and ours is lost entirely. . . . My own affairs have disappeared into Limbo again. If I don't hear something soon after the first of the year, I'm going to give that one up and try something else. "I'm pretty mixed up. We're going to give Xmas the go bye this year. There's no one here to celebrate with. We went to Pacific Grove and closed the house. We wanted to stay very badly. It would have been so nice if the war were over and we could have settled in with all the fish. I've been working at a picture for the Flying Training Command. Not interesting and I'm not interested. Jack Wagner and I worked out a synopsis for a comedy over the weekend. Probably no good. . . ." The second: "Well Christmas is over. We didn't do much. . . . We didn't send any presents at all. . . . ". . . Still no word about my future but I have a strong feeling that something or other is about to happen. I wrote to Annie Laurie and sent her the little scenario Jack Wagner and I did. Please tell her that since then I've talked to Nunnally. He likes it and the studio likes it. But Nunnally has four pictures ahead and it would be given to another producer. . . . I have no interest in 20th Century outside of Nunnally. . . . "For some reason I have a lot of energy and am meaner than cat dirt. "Larry [Lawrence Kiser, husband of Elizabeth] said that you and Mildred called while decorating the tree. How I wish we could have been there. . . . I'm not going to stay here much longer. Thoroughly sick of it and I think Gwyn [Conder, who became Steinbeck's wife in 1943] is sick of it. . . ."
