{"id":3815,"date":"2012-08-14T12:47:19","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T16:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=3815"},"modified":"2013-11-06T16:43:01","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T20:43:01","slug":"mcnair-to-hall-august-24-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/mcnair-to-hall-august-24-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"McNair to Hall, August 24, 1984"},"content":{"rendered":"<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top; background: white; float: left;\"><a class=\"shutterset\" title=\"Letter from McNair to Hall, August 24, 1984, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire\" href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/08\/McNair-Hall-19840834-001-unh.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-2078 alignleft\" style=\"border: 1px solid gray; background: white;\" alt=\"Letter from McNair to Hall, August 24, 1984, Page 1, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire\" src=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/08\/McNair-Hall-19840834-001-unh.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a><a class=\"shutterset\" title=\"Letter from McNair to Hall, August 24, 1984, Page 2, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire\" href=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/08\/McNair-Hall-19840824-002-unh.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-2078 alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px none; background: white; display: none;\" alt=\"Letter from McNair to Hall, August 24, 1984, Page 2, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire\" src=\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/files\/2012\/08\/McNair-Hall-19840824-002-unh.jpg\" \/><\/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;\">August 24, 1984<\/p>\n<p>Dear Don,<\/p>\n<p>Before I lose them, I want to get to your questions.<\/p>\n<p>First, the one about \u201cFelix.\u201d I was troubled by the<br \/>\n\u201ctwenty\u2013five-years-old forever\u201d because I expected<br \/>\nthe narrator to recall Felix as a young man <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">before<\/span><br \/>\nthe accident. I expected <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">that<\/span> Felix because I was<br \/>\nstuck in the earlier sentence which seemed to set<br \/>\nup the recollection: \u201cthirty years passed and I was<br \/>\na young man driving \/ \u2026 with Felix.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>True, you go on in the passage afterward to<br \/>\nspeak about what happened <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">after<\/span> the driving,<br \/>\nbut that whole passage is predicated by the<br \/>\nsubjunctive \u201cwould.\u201d So when you go to the<br \/>\nnext sentence, \u201cFor a moment Felix sits beside me<br \/>\nagain,\u201d I think of driving again, and the<br \/>\npre-accident Felix.<\/p>\n<p>Now that I reread these parts, I go back<br \/>\nto being troubled by \u201ctwenty-five-years-old<br \/>\nforever.\u201d Am I worried by the repetition of \u201cThirty<br \/>\nyears\u201d? What bothered me about the phrase is<br \/>\nthat I half want Felix to be a different Felix \u2013<br \/>\nnot the undead one, but the living one.<\/p>\n<p>2\/<\/p>\n<p>The other question was about printing the<br \/>\nmetrical poems under Joey\u2019s name. I\u2019m<br \/>\nnot sure why you should be reluctant to<br \/>\nsell the poems as Donald Hall, since I\u2019ve<br \/>\nbegun to see a fair amount of formal verse<br \/>\naround, particularly in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Poetry<\/span>. Your misgivings<br \/>\nmay stem from being seen as a literary conservative<br \/>\na long time ago- &#8211; and so now will be thought of<br \/>\nas a poet who has all along wished free verse<br \/>\nwould go away. My own sense is that you\u2019ve<br \/>\nwritten some exceptional free verse, and that<br \/>\nby now you should be able to write any damn<br \/>\nthing you please. Who knows but that printing<br \/>\nthese poems under you own name, you\u2019d<br \/>\nbecome known as the pioneer of the new poetry?<br \/>\nWhy give such distinction to Joey?<\/p>\n<p>Good luck with the revision \u2013 and the selling.<\/p>\n<p>Love,<\/p>\n<p>Wes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-3815\" data-postid=\"3815\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-3815 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Click image to view] August 24, 1984 Dear Don, Before I lose them, I want to get to your questions. First, the one about \u201cFelix.\u201d I was troubled by the \u201ctwenty\u2013five-years-old forever\u201d because I expected the narrator to recall Felix as a young man before the accident. I expected that Felix because I was stuck [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60366,35504,77589,42963,293],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815"}],"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\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3815"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10669,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions\/10669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}