{"id":1691,"date":"2012-03-30T13:53:59","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T17:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2013-12-13T14:22:28","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T18:22:28","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-september-3-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-september-3-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: September 3, 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top; background: white; float: left;\"><a class=\"shutterset\" title=\"Letter from Hall to McNair, September 3, 1980\" href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/01\/Hall-McNair-19800903-001-colby.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-2078 alignleft\" style=\"border: 1px solid gray; background: white;\" alt=\"Hall-to-McNair-09-03-1980\" src=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/01\/Hall-McNair-19800903-001-colby.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\">[Click image to view]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td style=\"background: white; padding-left: 30px;\">3 September 1980<\/p>\n<p>Wes McNair<br \/>\nNorth Sutton<br \/>\nNew Hampshire<\/p>\n<p>Dear Wes,<\/p>\n<p>A week from today I teach my first class. This Friday<br \/>\nI go to a department meeting. I know it is ridiculous, dis-<br \/>\ngusting, and revolting \u2013 but I <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">practically<\/span> feel sorry for<br \/>\nmyself, and here I am teaching only one course in three years!<br \/>\nDo not tell anybody my disgusting secret.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know why this poem doesn\u2019t work but you are<br \/>\nperfectly right to be worried about it. It does not work.<br \/>\nIt makes me nervous all the way through, and not nervous in<br \/>\na good way. It trembles on at the side of making fun of them,<br \/>\nand somehow or other that is too dreadful. Yet it is a wonderful<br \/>\nidea, and I would think that there <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">is<\/span> a wonderful poem <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">here<\/span> \u2013<br \/>\nbut not yet, and not in these words. I would put it deep in a<br \/>\nfar drawer, \u201cforget about it,\u201d so far as you can, and discover<br \/>\nit by accident three years from now, sit down and write it out<br \/>\nperfectly. Well, that is what I would <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">like<\/span> to do, if I were<br \/>\nyou. I would not struggle with it now. It is not a matter of<br \/>\njust changing a word here or there. It is something profounder<br \/>\ngoing on here.<\/p>\n<p>I was delighted to see the poems in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Poetry!<\/span> They really<br \/>\nlook good. And as I told Diane, old Nims puts them in a place<br \/>\nof honor. One is honored to be either first or last of the<br \/>\ngroup of poets there. This has been true forever and ever.<br \/>\nIt means he thinks well of you. After we hear from the Atlantic,<br \/>\nunless the Atlantic buys everything we send them, we will go<br \/>\nback to see if we can sell some more to Nims. That\u2019s a good<br \/>\nplace to publish.<\/p>\n<p>Best as ever,<\/p>\n<p>Don<\/p>\n<p>Will write on the new version<br \/>\ntomorrow.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><em><strong>A note from McNair about this letter:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The class Don refers to at the outset of this letter is the one he is teaching at Colby-Sawyer College to prepare notes for a new edition of his college textbook on composition, <em>Writing Well.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-1691\" data-postid=\"1691\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-1691 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Click image to view] 3 September 1980 Wes McNair North Sutton New Hampshire Dear Wes, A week from today I teach my first class. This Friday I go to a department meeting. I know it is ridiculous, dis- gusting, and revolting \u2013 but I practically feel sorry for myself, and here I am teaching only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35324,596,42965,35504,42973],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10958,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions\/10958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}