June 27, 2021

Dear Donald,

a) Below is a very rough translation of my letter to Dr. Busch, which I copied to you a few minutes ago.

b) I have looked into the interoperability of our respective word processors. Adobe Systems has cornered the market and is impeding compatibility so as to maximize its profits.

c) My suggestion is that you postpone any editing you might wish to do, until I have completed my translation, or if you don't want to wait for me to finish the whole of it, I can complete it one section at a time, e-mailing it to you section by section as I proceed.  

d) Meanwhile, I will do nothing until I have a reply from Dr. Bush.

Best wishes, Jochen

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX    

rough translation:

Dear Dr. Busch,

The attachment is an unfinished fragment of my translation of "Verstreut über alle fünf Kontinente", which I send to you as a present on my 91. birthday, in return, as it were, for your efforts on behalf of us Rosenthal descendants, efforts for which I thank you again.  

My translation is incomplete not only because at this point it comprises only 39% of the pages, but also because I have hardly begun translating the footnotes.  It is also incomplete because I haven't had time to make corrections and possible improvements.

Please excuse the extensive expansion of the biography of my family and myself.  Please compress or excise these unasked for additions as you see fit, or specify what items you wish to have omitted, and/or to what lengths they should be truncated.

Permit me to mention various matters I have deliberately omitted, such as certain disagreements within the family, as well as my lawsuit against the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary for requiring my complicity in experimental surgical procedures for training purposes which I considered unnecessary and harmful for patients for whom I was nominally responsible.  Today I consider my naughty rebelliousness as part a post traumatic stress disorder expressing my life-long anxiety about becoming or not becoming a concentration camp guard, an issue addressed in the seventh chapter of my first novel.  I have also omitted all mention of my ultimately unsuccessful appeals to the Massachusetts courts from an order by local authorities for the destruction of a clearly code compliant plumbing installation in my summer house on Nantucket, which issued in a show trial with anti-semitic slurs and perjured evidence duly endorsed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In retrospect I interpret my desperate reliance on an imagined rule of law, also a post traumatic stress syndrome, as if I were able, by resorting to unrefutable legal arguments, to protect myself against a mini-Kristallnacht on this side of the Atlantic.

I admit that I have concealed much that has been of great importance to me, not least the substance of my life-long literary efforts, but I consider your book to be anything but an appropriate stage for presentations for which it has been proved that they arouse no public interest.

Please let me know whether you have any use for my translation, or what changes you might wish. I should not be offended, or even sad, if you found what I have written to be unusable.  Please feel no obligation to persist with the production of an English version on account of my efforts.  The many things that I have learned about my family and about myself in the process of translation, has made the effort worthwhile.

Please feel free with respect to everything I have sent you, to correct, revise, expand or subtract. Perhaps it would be a good idea to ask a native American, such as Donald Strauss, who is more attuned to the contemporary literary atmosphere than am I, and who with his wife paid me a very pleasant visit a few weeks ago, to adapt my translation to todays American tastes.

As soon as I have your response, I would try to proceed with the translation, to the extent that my old age permits.  But I'm too old to promise anything.