Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, December 23, 1941

              —  1%  Tuesday, December 23  Do you know that this is the shortest, day of the year --  that from now on the days, stalking toward spring, will  grow longer and longer, till we have the sweet summer  twilights at ( /•  A  Before I forget it-, I'll be right!: here at the Beverly, Hills (4» ^-2 ,  till the evening of^Thursday, January 8,.so you'll be able  to write, airmail, till about noon of January 6. From  Portland,,Oregon>.where, on January 11, will be our last  debate, I may go to Minneapolis for a week or two,.on  my way East. But I don't know now what addrese to give^  you for after January 6.  I've lust been talking to you on the phone.  As I said,  I don't think that without training you'd have a chance  to get on a New York City newspaper or into a publishing  house•  All! the newspapermen from all over the country,  all the kids just out of college or school of journalism,  converge on NY.  If you really wanted enough to get onr  a newspaper, you'd be willing to go worktwo or three or  four years on papers in third-rate cities,tas Wells started3  to do*. But somehow I can't see you in the rather hard-  boiled atmosphere of a newspaper office; I can't see you  as a Dixie Tighe, or a~beginning reporter waiting to  interview people,  I think that just now you ought to do one of two things:  G-e* on — since you don't particularly need the money —  devoting everything to trying to get a stage job; keep  on the weary haunting of managers' offices; and — something you've never done — get associated with some small  groupy, no matter how mum trivial, so that you'll have a  chance to go on acting,  OR, go to college — only not just for stray disconnected:  courses, but under the hard discipline of a regular  stated3course*  For many jobs today— for example,,  publishing  it's nearly necessary to have a B,A, degree.  With your quickness and maturity,,and your1 knowledge of the world"" — which will! be greater than that  of many of your teachers —you ought to be able to finish  Wm^mffi'Mffl$miS8mim  the four-year course, and get a  degree,, in three yearsn— at most.  You have spoken of Hunter College and1 the advantages of  staying in New York. You may be rights But it will be  no good unless you take it just as seriously, and regularly,, as you would a series^ of rehearsals,  I'm going to dinner at Edgar Selwyn'sr on Friday — oh yes,  we were both sweet as pie on the phone —and I'll talk to  him about his future plans. And I may see Max G-ordon,  But of: course in the long run, it's you who'll have to  get any job.  I just can't see you happy in any jobs except on the  stage: and writing,,not in an office,, but freelance. You  might: be able to do the latter,,after a -few years appren-