Letter from Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 17, 1943

              v-  SINCLAIR   LEWIS  Minneapolis  Nicollet  Monday, May 17  Your letter of May 13, about the Seabrook-3orel-  Say lor-Saturnine-Satanism was really brilliant. I  loved it and fondly and with vanity remembered that  I had always said you could write if youfd Just let  yourself go.....Even if you did spell celebrate as  celibrate.  I think I shall not stay out here more than a month  or six weeks more, and be in New York by July 1st,  with a vague scheme that during July and August I'll  stay at Intolerable Towers and take some mild bus  trips up into the nearbyer portions of New England  and do some work, and maybe in September we could  wangle a week at Provincetown.  It isn't that I don't like the city and the people  here, but tha't this time I feel I've seen enough  of them — ""there isn't any more.""  I would not be  enormously surprised if this proved to be my last  visit here for five or ten years — not that such  satiety would keep me from running off to Colorado,  Rumania, Kamchatka, and BridgeportConnecticut.  I haven't done much of anything but amble around the  city, go to a movie and, much less dramatic, to a  renowned Methodist Pastor's show, and see my old  friends at mild friendly dinners. Yesterday afternoon and evening I spent at Long Lake with the Addison Lewises.  Dana, the oldest daughter — married  to Harold Atkinson, who is 4F along of diabetes,  has a baby, and has changed from a pretty girl to a  tall ravishing beauty — really.  Charlotte staying  patiently at home with John in the army; Ginny, the  other married daughter, sees her husband go into the  service in a week; Gretchen and Carol hell around the  country; they have a new horse — and if you were  part of it, 1 &&M# would envy them their real HOME.  Will you from this last time, upon meditation and  resolution, learn never, never, never to flare up  and suddenly enjoy being a bitch again, enjoy thB  drama of suddenly being superior to all the world?  For every one else, it is hideous; for you, I think  it is unhappy, and very rumpling and creasing to the  fabric, after the first tragedienne exultation.  Don't you think so?  The scheme just now is that I expect Joseph tomor-