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Woody Guthrie

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:5,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Woody Guthrie

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Auction Date:2015 Feb 11 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS signed “Pvt. Woody Guthrie,” four pages, lightly-lined both sides, 8 x 10.5, November 3, 1945. Letter to frequent correspondent Charlotte Strauss. In part: "Your little knack of quoting words of mine and others is one that could really be a lot of deep interest. I think I will go through your letter, Charlotte, and see what I can find to quote.

Before I commence my quoting, I want to tell you that 90% of your whole letter set up some pretty sad aches and pains in me, and it is just because you have worked so hard to live according to a whole science that seems to me to be just backwards. (all in good grace)…

on Page Three (3) you tell me, ‘And I say to you now, my words to you—my deepest treasured, innermost thoughts must never be read by others. That would be sacrilege.’ (What a pretty world it would be if all of our thinkers, artists, doctors, teachers, scientists, farmers, workers, inventors and writers all lived in such a little shack, all locked and barred so heavy….)…

‘If my words mean as much as you say they do, I beg of you not to capitalize on them by letting even a word be published.’ (‘If these potatoes taste as good to the people who are hungry, I beg of you not to sell them nor to let them be distributed’)…

About the 1200 page manuscript, you say, ‘I weep for the injustice of it. I marvel at their insensibility. Good God, is it any wonder I’m bitter?’…(‘I repeat your thought here, it is a wonder that I am not tied up in knots. I refused the job of tying the knots, and I turned down several fine chances to be bitter. Oh, I get sore and smart up and down a road shoulder once in a while, but it leanes [sic] out over that field of dry corn just about as fast as I can fan it up’)…

Thank you for sending the Jim Tully piece about the armless vagabond. Yes, the piece was a little too dressed up. I am sorry, Charlotte, to have to tell you that because I work most of my new pieces up out of my old papers it will not be possible to mail them to you to read. I would certainly like to have such an eye as yours go over every mark that I make. But, it would be like an artist mailing you all of his old paint tubes, you know how it is. assure you that they are not kept in any ‘tomb’ because my thoughts bust out of tombs lots faster than my fears can build them…

You are a feeling and passionate sort of soul that lets other more noisey [sic] and popular souls take the reins and the lead too often, and your heart does hurt with the big hurt of a world that looks pretty bad all around you. This is not because you are too hurt nor too sensitive, but because you feel an extra pain in you which is a clear kind of knowing power that aches and burns in you because you have kept it in your secret place too long. And your next letters to me are going to have to be lots longer in order to make me understand more of what is boiling around in your heart. I want your next letter to be at least half again as long, twice and clear, and three times as deep…

If you knew me better you’d understand that I would never decieve [sic] myself—or you—in that manner. You must not confuse me with others who are so mentally, mixed up that they go about hiding their true thoughts under all kinds of symbols or pretensions.’ (‘Well, here is the paragraph that I want you to use as your blueprint and plan to live by, to think and dream by, to speak by, and to write to me by’)…

I want to try to thank you for your unselfish and impersonal thoughts which both of your letters brought to me. And now, hardest of all, tell me all about yourself, your age, your work, all of your goings and comings, tell me all about your past trouble and worry, all of the things you ever hoped and tried to do, all of the things that caused your failures and your successes, and what you like in life and all of the scenery that you ever saw, all about your neighbors, their hopes and houses and jobs and salaries. Tell me all that is in you. Tell me the deep, the treasure, your innermost. Tell me the centre, the core, and all that’s in your sundowns, sunups, hazy mornings and foggy dews. Tell me all. Open up the gates and let the words unjam, and open up the jam and watch the words float past. And this of course will sort of serve in its crippling way to tell you, yes, I want to get a Charlotte Strauss flood everytime [sic] I ask that mail clerk how empty my box is." A fantastic personal letter from Guthrie’s difficult years in the army.