More news on Eric Mottram and our lives in the saga of two men: one White and the other Dusky. Further evidence of EM's rise into the higher echelons of literary influence....

AIR-LETTER
E.N.W.Mottram, 15, Vicarage Gate, London W.8, England
Addressed to T Wignesan, N° 3 A, Lorong Thamby Abdullah, P.O.Box 2211, Kuala Lumpur, Malaya
December 17, 1962

Dear Wignesan,

It's some time that your letter arrived, but you know how it is with me in term time -- and now I write letters all day making up for the gaps and rudeness with the same old apology. But I trade on the fact that you'll understand. Well: so you're coming back, the dews of the East sopping into you like fertilizer, the anthology all done, and, I personally hope, your nerves complete and straighter.

[I accepted the Congress for Cultural Freedom's roundtrip ticket and per diems for only TWO MONTHS - of just over a thousand US dollars - to find an outlet for their publications and to write for them; besides having to introduce their Asian representative Prabhakar Padye to local intellectuals: I introduced him to the one Indian Minister in the Government at his home. I was supposed to see a newspaper editor in Jakharta, but his house-arrest by President Soekarno made me refuse that chore. Otherwise, I spent the rest of a year and a half working for the local publisher as his editor and as a roving correspondent for the newly-established national newspaper: "Malayan Times". I was offered the editorship of their tabloid version but I turned that down for I didn't want any interference from the owners or the government. The CCF agreed to publish the anthology - entitled Bunga Emas - but there again I managed to obtain Anthony Blond's partnership with Rayirath Raybooks with me as the principal contractant with the printer in England.]

Certainly I'll select your poems [for Bunga Emas: I left my poems out, in any case] if that would help: how many, will you tell me ? Or perhaps we'll meet and do it. How did it sell, by the way ? I suppose you are a great literary man in Malaya, now, and I'd like to see some of what you have written journalistically. You sound as though it paid, too: why are you returning then ? Only to leave suddenly, for ever ? [ The powers that be had second thoughts about " a recalcitrant" and had decided to "expel" me à la douce !]

I have nothing to report of any interest really -- articles in Ark 33, Spectator, London Magazine, Lucifer -- a lecture I gave at the US Embassy which was good enough to get invited to give again at a conference in Edinburgh in April and at Hull University -- the external examiner at the new American Studies Department in Manchester -- more control over American literature in London University at last -- more students than ever -- my books going therefore slower than ever , therefore more nervous frustration, therefore more longings to be free of it all. Plans for huge works on [Henry] James as an American and [D.H.] Lawrence as an American shelved perhaps for ever except as articles and inadequate at that. Tremendously excited practically all the time (working on a Burroughs piece now -- if you come through Paris get me [Henry] Miller and Burroughs latest [underlined]) Through my writing at last got to know the newer poetry crowd in London -- Hollo, Raworth, etc. -- and Jonathan Williams here now (introduced me at the Embassy and I returned the service when he read his poems). Party at Peter Russel's shop: all the oldies like Wrey Gardner, Heath-Stubbs, Peter Owen, that sort, and a host of lovely Africans and West Indians.

America in the spring was so good I barely crept home to work. In fact I turned down a professorship there, [Rutgers University ?] , but I may take it up this coming year unless something else happens. But I plan to get away and away this summer for the first real holiday in years, right away with two good friends who will secret me in the hinterlands of Europe. Then I will at least have had a bit of life before the grind grabs again : Grendel.

All the best,
Eric

(c) T. Wignesan, Paris: 1962-2023.