You and I had better stay at home3—we seem bound to get hurt at one extremity or the other. I will trade you a game ankle for a game shoulder. I'm still wearing bandages, and a metal brace in my shoe.
You will find a letter from Mr. Llona4, asking you for an extension of time, which I beg you to give him. The first part of his translation5 is here, and is so interesting that I am putting a good deal of work on it. He s may groan at some of my suggestions, as I write very funny french, but there are some places where he has clearly missed the suggestion of the English6. For the most part it seems wonderfully well done. La Nouvelle Revue7 is the most interesting of the French literary magazines; publication in it would give one the best French audience,—and is by way of a compliment as well.
Since you like "Main Street"8, I know you will be glad to hear what nice things Sinclair Lewis9 has been saying about my books10 on his lecture tour. I was ill when he lectured here11, and could not go to hear him, but he said such cordial things that newspaper men kept coming to the house all the next morning. I wrote him a polite note12 of thanks, and have just had such a nice reply. I used to tell you, you remember, that the younger fellows would speak louder for me than the old ones, someday. Lewis and Floyd Dell13 have done14 a lot of press agent work15 for me this winter. I've never met Lewis, but he must be a generous sort of fellow.
I do hope your shoulder isn't a very bad one. You and I have nothing on Elsie Sergeant16 now! You've heard about poor Cameron Mackenzie17? I suppose we ought to be thankful to get off a boat alive!
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letters from Houghton Mifflin staff. It is possible Cather wrote "April 27th" in error, as the letter from Greenslet she is responding to bears the same date, and it is unlikely that both letters were written on the same day.
On 27 April 1921 Greenslet sent Cather her semi-annual copyright statement and reported that he had just returned from England, where "inspired by [her] illustrious example" he had fractured and dislocated his shoulder his second day in London.
See #0540 for more about his lecture in Omaha, NE.
In a review of Youth and the Bright Medusa, Floyd Dell praised Cather for "ma[king] the artist real--for almost the first time in the history of literature."
Dell, Floyd (1887-1969). American editor, journalist, and writer. Born in Barry, IL, Floyd Dell moved to Chicago in 1908 to work as a journalist and became assistant editor (1909) and then editor (1911) of the Friday Literary Review of the Evening Post. In 1914 Dell moved to New York City and became the associate editor of the left-wing magazine the Masses and then a staff member for the Liberator (1918-1924). His first novel, Moon Calf (1920) was a bestseller. In 1935 he moved to Washington, DC, to join the Federal Writers Project. An admirer of Willa Cather’s work, Dell positively reviewed O Pioneers! in the Chicago Evening Post (1913). Cather and Dell became acquainted through Greenwich Village literary circles, and in 1921 she noted Dell’s “press work” promoting her fiction (#0542).
Mackenzie, Cameron (1882 -1921). American magazine editor and journalist. Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Cameron Mackenzie graduated from the Lawrenceville School, which his father founded, and studied at Yale University for a year before enrolling in the New York University Law School, from which he graduated in 1907. In 1907 he also married Elizabeth McClure, daughter of S. S. McClure. His father-in-law put him on the editorial staff of McClure’s Magazine, where he worked with Cather. In 1912 he and Frederick Collins wrested control of the magazine from S. S. McClure. Mackenzie resigned from McClure’s in 1915, subsequently writing two novels and serving as a correspondent for the London Morning Post during World War I. He died unexpectedly of pneumonia on board the Cunard liner Aquitania shortly after the ship departed London for New York City.