To Otto Kyllmann
Hotel Bristol,
Rome. October 22, 1935
Dear Mr. Kyllmann,
In regard to the Canadian edition of The Last Puritan and the Book-of-the-Month Club any arrangement that you think suitable will satisfy me. I abandon all hope of understanding the mysteries of the book-trade in the U.S. but I bow piously to its dispensations, at least in this case, since I understand I am to receive 5,000 dollars in a lump to begin with, which is much more than I had expected in the end.
I don’t subscribe to the Press-Cutting agencies, preferring to let my consciousness of my books fade naturally into the past; but I have seen the Times review and one other (both sent to me by these Press-Cutting Bureaus, as advertisements) and I quite understand the tendency of the criticisms to be, as you say, “muffled”. They don’t like to venture on dangerous ground, or to risk an opinion about a book that doesn’t quite fall into the usual categories. Both these reviews were rather favourable; yet neither of them mentioned humour, as you were kind (and perceptive) enough to do in your note printed on the jacket. To me the humour, the fun, makes the soul of any description of human society that can be read for pleasure. If people don’t hear the scherzo in the symphony, no wonder they find the andante tedious and long.
Somebody some day will probably attack this book furiously on moral and religious grounds, but for the moment the critics seem to be benevolent, or else shy.
Yours sincerely
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA.