August 1938
The item of $168.40 is
also part guesswork, as there is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s
sustained creation – when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and
hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
October 1938
(On the pressure,
when living in the country, to go deer hunting) …By and large my hunting has
been with a .22 rifle and a mechanical duck, with dusk falling in gold and
purple splendour in the penny arcades along Sixth Avenue. I imagine I would
feel mighty awkward discharging a gun that wasn’t fastened to a counter by a
small chain.
This business of going after some
deer meat is a solemn matter hereabouts. My noncommittal attitude has marked me
as a person of doubtful character, who will bear watching. There seems to be
some question of masculinity involved: until I slay my dragon I am still in
short pants, as far as my fellow-countrymen are concerned. As for my own feelings
in the matter, it’s not that I fear buck fever, it’s more than I can’t seem to
work up a decent feeling of enmity toward a deer. Toward my deer, I mean. I think I’d rather catch it alive and break it to
harness.
Besides, I don’t really trust myself
alone in the woods with a gun. The woods are changing. I see by the papers that
our Eastern forests this season are full of artists engaged in making pencil
sketches of suitable backgrounds for Walt Disney’s proposed picture “Bambi” –
which is about a deer. My eyesight isn’t anything exceptional; it is quite
within the bounds of probability that I would march into the woods after my
deer and come home with a free-hand artist draped across my running board, a
tiny crimson drop trickling from one nostril.
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