Got to thinking about the telephone call the other night, and how you weren’t going to mention this or that, and well, I think pretty slowly, but I hope now, thinking it over, that you aren’t going to make a white rabbit outa me. I’ve got nothing to hide. Feel free. It’s a person’s eccentricities that give him whatever he has. Don’t be too cautious with excerpts from letters, except I agree with you that mentioning a name directly (false initials will do) might be bad taste, especially if that person has very little literary standing. If he has literary standing, use the name and the hell with it. I hope this does not get to you too late. That I drink or play the ponies or have been in jail is of no shame to me.

As you can see, I have recovered from my depression [* * *]

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

December 27, 1962

Got your six page letter which I read through a couple of times while drinking a Miller’s, and the sun’s out good, but it’s cold & I have a heater on and the stove on, and somehow there’s a feeling of peace today—I feel like a fat man who ate a lot of turkey, and since this feeling does not arrive too often, I take it, I take of the good of it without examining it, without feeling selfish. That’s what’s good about being 42: you know when to go with what’s left of the soul. I spent Xmas in bed asleep. I hate to go out on the streets on Xmas day. The fuckers act like they are out of their minds. They strain at the thing; round-eyed and hacked-out they drive through red lights, they look at each other and say things but they don’t know what they’re saying: their mouths have long ago been cut out and thrown away. Christmas, to most of them, is like owning a new car. They’ve got to do it. They don’t have the guts—or the sense—to pass it up. Enough. Did I say I was feeling at peace? [* * *]

[To Jon Webb]

[December 28, 1962]