Dear Klemens,

Thank you for your letter. By the time this reply reaches you
I hope your back and your leg are feeling at least somewhat better.

Thank you also for your attention to my novels. You understand
of course that I don't expect you to spend your time reading them.
Since writing has become essential to my emotional existence, I
hope that you also have found, or will find, a pattern of creative
expression as I did, which will make your life more and more meaningful 
as you grow older. I understand now that I write primarily or perhaps
solely for myself.  When I consider the library here in Konnarock
which my parents salvaged from Germany and the frequency with which
they quoted Rilke and Angelus Silesius, and the foci which these
quotations constituted for their thoughts and feelings, I understand
why, many years ago, I elaborated the theory that literature is an
instrument of communication especially among family members. I explored 
this notion in Döhring II, pages 60-79, and found it wanting.

Neither novel is autobiographical. It's perhaps laziness that persuades
me rathetr than inventing a new landscape. to describe places that 
I have visited, such as the Rockies, the White Mountains and Nantucket, 
and where I have lived such as Braunschweig, Konnarock and Cambridge.
But the characters that I introduce are not intended to be "real";
they are caricatures of persons I have met as well as of myself. 
I deliberately exaggerate facets of their personalities in order 
to 
their personalities.