SIR,—How can I adequately express my gratitude to Mr. Howard
Wyce? 'Be honest, courageous and generous, and never let yourself be deceived by phoney values?' This simple injunction, he says, is based on his own mature experience. It comes to me at a time when I need it most.
I am an intensely lonely person. To pass my time I read a lot—Thomas Mann, Stendhal, Moravia,
Henri de Montherlant, comics, detective stories, Westerns, Melville, Elinor Glyn, Colette, Kafka, John Cleland, A Practical Guide-Book to Sex and Marriage by Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone, the South Wales Echo, the South London Observer, Hemingway, and, of course, the writers Mr. Wyce mentions.
For a few weeks now a pile of Woman's Own stands in a corner of my bedroom. Did I realise, when I bought them, that they would one day open the gates of the real world for me? Do I deserve such good fortune, when all I did was to take the questionnaire one fills up when applying for a Civil Service job and use it to tabulate questions on those short stories—What was your age last birthday? Your full name? Your nationality? Have you ever been abroad? Have you ever been in romantic difficulties? What is your occupation? Have you had any sexual experience? Have you ever had any serious illness? and so on.
Now that article has resulted in a penetrating analysis of my own nature. Since reading about my- self I cannot sleep; I have lost all taste for books; I cannot talk to strangers; I have not touched any food for the last five days; I have not even read Taper in last week's Spectator—indeed, when I see the paper, it is only to ask myself again, and again, and again, 'Can I ever be a normal man?'
I shall be eternally indebted to Mr. Wyce if he could suggest for me a list of books/magazines/ pamphlets, or any kind of course or institution which would help me re-adjust myself to some truer values. As a token of my sincerity I promise, when I am cleansed and healed, to review his 200 stories, if he will let me read them, in a collected form. You will not abandon me now, will you, Mr. Wyce?—Yours faithfully,
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