768

Woody Guthrie

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:NA Estimated At:NA
Woody Guthrie

Bidding Over

The auction is over for this lot.
The auctioneer wasn't accepting online bids for this lot.

Contact the auctioneer for information on the auction results.

Search for other lots to bid on...
Auction Date:2020 May 13 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:15th Floor WeWork, Boston, Massachusetts, 02108, 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, 42234634,” two pages both sides, 8.5 x 11, December 8, 1945. A pensive, humorous, and moving letter to Charlotte Strauss, describing Guthrie's life on a Nevada airfield. In part: "I walked into the PX, seen a sign: 'No stationary nor envelopes of any kind.' I asked the lady where she had them hid and said I had some writing on my mind. Writing that the health book speaks about caused by fights in your head you must get out caused by some several visions whirling there of dreams you see and know and ones you doubt. I rattled money but she shook her head, she pointed at another sign that said 'no pans, no ink, no matches, soup nor salve,' and so I walked out pale like people dead. Up at my barracks I flopped on my bunk and heard the boys around fire up a chunk and seen one soldier writing naked letters piled around with all his photographs and junk. I lay there with my hands behind my ears and watched a thousand roads burn into fears and waded pictures scattered through my head that seemed to stand for all the walking years I saw the jellyfish, the whales, the ape, ten dozen glacial ages lose their shape and leaves pile in on empty stews and limbs and winds blow all of this out on the gape. None of I took a shape like battle lines, none of it took a form like picket lines, none of it sounded like the word I heard, none of it like a homestead in my mind." In fine condition.

Written entirely—and impressively—in verse form, Guthrie tells Strauss of his recent wedding to Marjorie Mazia, and of life in the Nevada desert where the "sun drains heavy on my pen" and the "mail gets pitched and tossed." An utterly fascinating epic tale of his life in the Army.