From the Elephant's Back
“I’ll tell you why.[1] You choose a title with the word Hamlet, and ring an old psychic chord in the cranium. You excite the critics in your first letter by some real death-rays on the subjects, immensely profound: then you begin rough-necking and capering the theme around in your second: AND THEN SUDDENLY the whole arena shifts round and empties for a duel between you and Fraenkel.[2] Your last letter is magnificent. MAGNIFICENT. It’s all magnificent, but why kill the book by calling it Hamlet? Because somehow it’s so unexpected, this tissue of mirth and magnificence. It’s all Henry Miller, PRINCE OF DENMARK. When I said in a previous letter that Hamlet’s major problems you had solved for yourself, I was nearer the mark than I realized. You cannot write anything about Hamlet because the place it occupies in the Heraldic pattern is below you. There is only going up, not down. This peculiar English Death[3] which is epitomized in the play is foreign to you. I say foreign, and I mean by ...that—China.MoreLess
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