'Thank you for sending me your novel. I think that there is much good writing, and that you have a strong visual sense, but I do get tired of the perpetual pillow fights. Frankly, don't either of you young men know anybody who is capable of getting into his own bed and staying there? If you do for goodness sake cultivate his acquaintance, and write about him next time for a change. Also, calling a spade a spade never made the spade interesting yet. Take my advice, leave spades alone, or if you must mention them, then mention the garden too. All the miners round here - they are not an expressive race- use words which recur over and over again on your pages. But I don't find they add anything to my consciousness. No, no, you[should] develop your talent along different lines, and let us have some more writing like that page about the girl and the sailor - with the last phrase left out. P.S I mean that our forefathers, though an ignorant lot in some ways, were no more ignorant of the process of excretion than are their descendents today. But apart from medical treatises, these things do not in themselves make interesting reading. The prose rythms of your book really do deserve a more worthy subject, next time.'