To Charles P. Davis
C/o Brown, Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland. September 6, 1936
Dear Davis,
It is all right about your not liking my book. Of course, it isn’t a novel in the ordinary sense; it is a study of characters and moral contrasts. No obligation on anybody to like it. But I should be curious to know in what direction you and your friends find it wrong: plot, style, morality, tone, character-drawing, or what? The book is done: I shall never write another “novel”, you may at least take comfort in that; but your judgements would tell me what you and your friends are attached to, and that is always interesting. The last American novel I have read is Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”. Do you like that? And how about Aldous Huxley’s “Eyeless in Gaza”?
As to the success of my novel with the public and the reviewers, it has been immense. 148,000 copies were sold in the U.S. before Aug. 1st, in England less than 10,000. But of course I am making money—not yet paid, most of it. Altogether, when the harvest is all in, it will not be far from $50,000. I am being translated into French, Spanish, and German, and printed in raised letters (in England) to be read by the blind! Me and the Bible.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY