Autograph Letters, Manuscripts & Historical Documents
Nov 29, 2022
Urbanizacion El Real del Campanario. E-12, Bajo B 29688 Estepona (Malaga). SPAIN, Spain
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LOT 46:

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SCHULBERG BUDD: (1914-2009) American screenwriter, remembered for his Academy Award winning screenplay for the crime drama film On the Waterfront (1954). An good series of five T.Ls.S., Budd, six pages (total), mainly small 4to, n.p. (the final letter written from Sarasota, Florida), 1946-56, all to Leonard Lyons. Schulberg writes on a variety of subjects, in particular Isaac Babel, in part, 'At cocktail parties so many people say so many things they don't remember later that I wanted to let you know that I had not forgotten my promise to send you the short stories of Isaac Babel. But at the stores I tried Babel was out of print….I'm a Babel enthusiast. As I said…..Gorki felt that Babel was his logical successor. Unfortunately he disappeared in one of the early purges in the 30's' (18th June n.y.), 'The Isaac Babel book mentioned to you previously has just arrived…..When I went to the Soviet Union in '34 I was curious about him and learned that Gorky had discovered him…..But he had fallen out of favor with the Party's literate favorites; in the late 20's and early 30's his work had been banned. In 1934 there was a World Writer's Congress in Moscow, precided (sic) over by Gorky, and the censorship seemed to ease a bit. I happened to attend this Congress. It was quite fantastic, for Gide, Malraux and other towering figures were there. One of the speakers…..was Babel, who had been silent and obscure for several years. He made an odd speech, apparently eating crow and accepting orthodoxy, but with sly, interior allusions that were not lost even in translation……Babel said there was also another right, the right to write badly. In other words to write as you please, regardless of the official, cultural needs of the moment. Around the start of World War II I heard that Babel had disappeared…..He had been one of the victims of the 1936-1939 purge of intellectuals……As far as I know no one has ever heard of him again and the tragic presumption is that he no longer exists……What a loss it was. The Russians seem to have succeeded with rockets and moons and grafting legs to the heads of live dogs, but they failed with Babel and I still think that was a frightening and terrible failure' (28th July n.y.), 'Thought you'd be interested to know that the Sat. Eve. Post has taken the Riefenstahl piece I told you about - including the Dolly Haas item, for which I thank you' (25th January 1946), 'Enclosed is the piece on Hannukah I mentioned to you…..The American Judaism version is somewhat condensed. I thought you might be interested in running it or some excerpt from it during the Hannukah season' (4th December 1956). A group of letters with interesting content. Some very light age wear and minor creasing, generally VG, 5

 

Leonard Lyons (1906-1976) American newspaper columnist for the New York Post where his columns, The Lyons Den, became a New York institution covering theatre, movies, politics and art.

 

Isaac Babel (1894-1940) Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator, best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories. Babel has been acclaimed as 'the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry'. He was arrested by the NKVD on 15th May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage and executed on 27th January 1940.


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