Dear Georgette,

Thank you for your letter. Don't worry about Helmut. He's obviously
of limited help to you in securing publication of Anschluss, to put
it mildly.  Helmut is 79 years old, and he will soon have forgotten
the details of your negotiations, and so should you. It isn't necessary
for me review his opinions or his advice to you. I prefer to speak only
for myself and about my own conclusions.

I begin by admitting that I haven't reread Anschluss since I received
the typescript. At that time, I read it rapidly in a single afternoon
and evening. I thought it was a work to be taken seriously.  If you
permit me to keep the manuscript, I intend to reread it later, At this
time, my reading is on a strict diet, as I attempt to concentrate on
my own writing. About Anschluss, I identify three issues, only loosely
related, if at all: 

1) The profitability of hypothetical publication. One can always
pay for publication of a book. If it sells, one makes a profit,
if it doesn't, one loses money. One increases the economic risk
by adding the cost of advertising to the costs of printing and
binding. Seeking a publisher is, in effect, asking for a guarantee
of success. As a practical matter, I do not see how one could
anticipate for Anschluss, written as it is in English, publication
in a German speaking country until it was translated.

2) The meaning of the book to yourself and to an individual reader
such as me. Rightly or wrongly, I read Anschluss as a mirror of
your emotional (spiritual) experiences, perhaps somewhat distorted,
but very meaningful nonetheless. Extrapolating from my own past,
I suspect that writing this book - and potentially others - was
and will be important to your emotional equilibrium and to your
happiness. Whether or not you secure publication, seems to me a
secondary matter: I urge you to continue writing.

3) Absolute quality, the determination of whether a book is
"a good book" or "not a good book" is a delusion. Famous, sometimes
Nobel-prize winning books by prominent authors will, in certain
perspectives, appear mediocre or worse. After my year of graduate
study in comparative literature, I submitted for some prize or
other an essay on "The Reception of Ossian in England", in which
I reviewed the deceptiveness of literary judgments. I was
youthful and naive to think that the faculty might be receptive
to my iconoclasm. I learned two lessons.  Ossian, of course was
a fictitious author, but until his invention by McPherson was
discovered, Ossian's writings were the literary rage, adjudged
the greatest of poetry. Thereafter the purported greatness
of Ossian's writings faded into nothingness.  Literary critics
are not to be trusted, and just as endorsement does not guarantee
the intrinsic value of a work, so rejection cannot condemn it to
nothingness.

In the case of Anschluss, the reliance on published news reports
can be derogated as prosaic or lauded as giving the book historical
similitude. The inclusion of images may be stigmatized as diluting
the literary quality of the work, or alternatively the images can be
endorsed as adding yet another meaningful dimension to the presentation.
Elisabeth's sudden precipitate betrayal of Maria can be criticised
as unrealistic, or it can be valued as a symbolic representation of
a deep ambivalence latent in many - if not all close friendships.
Maria's survival in a somewhat sanitized Auschwitz-Birkenau may be
censured as insensitive mitigation of the horrendous suffering
inflicted on the inmates, or it may be praised as a monument to
the heroic survival of human beings under hellish conditions. The
objection that one should not lend ones imagination to depict scenes
one has not witnessed or to describe suffering that one has not
himself endured, would preclude also Dante's famous account of his
inspection of the Inferno. The concentration camps - ranging from
the torture chambers of the Middle Ages to contemorary Guantanamo
and Afghanistan, including the inventions of the Germans and
Russians, - but, as the lawyers say, not to the exclusion of
others, - are integral to our spiritual culture. Each one of us
has not only the right, but also the duty to visit them with
his imagination, and if the ensuing descriptions are painful
and embarrassing, this discomfiture reflects a reality with
which each one of us must come to terms.

In making these comments, I am not at all critical of Helmut.
He means very well. Nonetheless I explicitly ask that you
not quote me to Helmut or forward to him any portion of this
letter. I know that he values my opinions, and he would be
hurt if he thought I was contradicting him.

Our plans for a memorial serice, then a memorial concert, then
a simple burial of Margrit's ashes have disintegrated. Klemens
and his family are here. They will go on a ten mile hike tomorrow.
Margrit's friend, Anna Ludwig Wilson, who saved her life last
October by putting her on plane to Boston with an incarcerated
femoral hernia, and who asked specifically to be included in 
any ceremony, has failed to appear as she had promised, perhaps
in response to my warning that I have been unable to come to
terms with Margrit's death. It is possible that we may bury the
ashes Friday or Saturday, - or we may not. Klemens and his
family are returning to Massachusetts on Sunday; my wife
Margaret and I are following on Thursday July 23. Our plans
for the rest of the summer are very uncertain since I must
expect some sort of ruling by the Appeals Court, whose 
decision is by now almost a month overdue. As the Quakers
say, we proceed as way opens.

Jochen