You writers who are trying to write. You artists anywhere who are trying for art. You who may be successful but have not arrived. You who hold yourselves in a class apart and play the game of temperament. You fools, liars, ornamenters, hypocrites, prostitutes, of words. You who wouldn’t sell your bodies but who sell your souls. You who have taken to the street for profit. You who hunger for flattery and thirst for fame. You betrayers of the people. You who put words on yourselves as chains. You who are goods to the highest bidder. All of you. I have something to say to you. You may have said it to yourself. But I’m going to say it anyhow. Both for your good and mine. Something serious. Something that goes to the root. I’ll talk right out. For somehow you who might be are not. You to whom a trust is given have betrayed it. I believe in the sacredness of the word. I want words to be gods, paradises, service. I want words to live. I want words to be creators. Some writers are so vital they cant say and or the or but without thrilling you. There are some writers so dead they cant say immortality without a funeral. I want the living word. How can I get it? By using words instead of being used by words. By speaking out of my heart instead of out of books. By not trying to write. By living. Some authors write as if they never had been born. They say: I did my best. I say: Rather your worst. When you talk to me face to face you are worth every minute. When you talk to me on paper in a book you are a waste of time. What happens to a man in the period between what he feels and what he does? What catastrophe occurs? Why does he go to smash in the process? He is so alive in what he humanly and so dead in what he professionally says. What is the poison that comes between? Money? Prestige? Or is it some false principle of art? Do your words, do your colors, do your tones, take you away from rather than towards your inspiration? You try too hard. You shouldn’t try at all. An artist’s sketches are wonderful. His finished canvases are commonplace. His sketches are impromptu. His paintings are designed. He did the sketches. The paintings did him. He didn’t try in the sketches. He was all try in the paintings. You writers who are trying to write. Are you trying to live? I admit your display. I admit your phrases. But you? Do I admit you? Yes. But not the you you get into your books. My words belong where my heart is. I am not willing to feel one thing and write another. Let me be the servant of my emotions. Down below all my words is all my life. Rooted in the soil. Established in the unalterable laws. Dedicated to the supreme inferences. If my words dont say that they lie about me. I am the fact the words are supposed to report. If they dont express me I go unrepresented. I dont try to be anything. I just let myself be whatever results. It would be as bad for me to force myself to be something as for me to force myself not to be something. There are so many artists and there is so little art. There are so many writers and there is so little writing. There is so much painting and there are so few pictures. We are overclothed. Our wardrobe is rich. We are jeweled. We are placed on thrones. But what are we anyhow? We are humbug kings. We are fraud citizens. What we are not we are. What we are we are not. The same thing which makes some men look for social prestige makes an author look for literary prestige. We give up the same things for it. We lie and duck and play sycophant for it. We fool people. We make black white and white black. We trifle away serious things. And we are serious over trifles. All for what? In order to appear to be what we are not. We are masqueraders. Words are the tools of our burglary. Words are the cant of our religion. Words are the sophistry of our law. Words are the fog we lose our way in. We’d be safe if it wasn’t for words. Words are our peril. Words are the obstacles in the way. If you want to be understood dont talk. Whatever you have to say, dont trust it to words. Try not to try. Cut loose. Throw the reins on their necks. I see many books. And yet there is only one book. I see the broad highway and the countless journeyers. Where are they all going? The girl looks at herself in the glass. She wants to be pretty. A little paint and powder is added here and there. A few words are added here and there. It’s all the same thing. You bribe, steal, seduce. You make use of words not for the purpose of being true but for the purpose of being beautiful. Show: that’s what you want. Distinction: that’s what you want. To be considered clever. To be a best seller. To go into many editions. To be invited to lecture in colleges. To be asked to write for the magazines. To be in demand. That’s what you use words for. So as to be listed in the literary four hundred. So as to be set apart somehow. You want to be extraordinary. It has got so the writer stands above and condescends. He don’t stand below and look up. He regards the people as pawns. He’ll use them in the game. But he won’t concede their equality. He plans for so much a year. He figures at receptions. The colleges give him titles. He dont want to be average. He wants to be exceptional. So he tries to write. He gives his writing little pulls and twists so as to adjust it to the market. He takes words off here and puts words on there because he wants his disguise to be complete and impressive. Go look at the books in libraries. They are the endless roster of the dead. Most men bury themselves in books. Only occasionally does a man resurrect himself in a book. He makes his writing the parade. It marches with brass bands. Everybody knows it’s coming. And everybody knows of it after it’s gone. But nothing can make it live. Active as it seems to be it’s still a burial. You who have tried so hard and have not succeeded may yet learn that he only succeeds who dont try at all. When you try—that means that you’re up against it. When you’ve got to engineer. When you’ve got to watch your ps and qs. When you’re afraid you’ll not know how to turn a sudden corner. Then you’re no use. Then you’re firing in the air. You’re to discover how to win without caring whether you win or lose. You’re to find out that you’ll arrive without worrying over the process. He is surest who dont ask for pledges. Words are a fatality. You writers who are trying to write.

You writers who are trying to write. You who’d do anything rather than be thought of no importance. You who’d murder the language or rape it or rob it or do anything to it rather than not make your point. You: what have I to say to you? Just what I have been saying. Go on with your dance. Get what you can out of the disgraceful scramble. Poke your heads into the slop trough. Let me paraphrase the man who advised his boy to get money. Make books. Honestly if you can. But make books. Try for points. If you cant make them on the square make them on the foul. Try to write. Dont try to think. Dont try to love. Dont try to serve. Try to write. Get a reputation. Never mind your character. Do everything you can to convince everybody that you are what you know you are not. A man has to make a living. Therefore he has to do what he has to do to get it. So you have to be notorious. Therefore you have to do what you have to do to get notoriety. If you have to murder your mother to get success murder your mother. What’s one mother to one success? If you have to starve children in factories to get success starve children. What are a few children out of so many? You are the spokesman of life and death. You can be hired for so much per to aid and abet the orthodoxies. Sell your soul. What is one soul, even if it’s your soul, to one success? Your words. You can turn them into nugget values. You can set a high figure on them. And you can hypnotize the purchaser. Not a word without pay. This is a world and a time of bargain and sale. Make the world pay. Watch the market. See what it wants. Give it that. Try to conform. Try to write not your soul’s words or your heart’s words but trade’s words. Give the verbal stock market all the preferences. Everybody else sells whatever he can. You have words. Words are your only treasure. Why shouldn’t you sell words? And you will sell the words that are according to fashion not the words that are according to truth. Just as the rhyming lilting poets write the words not of faith but of formula. If the issue is between the rules and the exception the rule has to go. Write book words. And write pretty words. Even if the ugly word says more than the pretty word choose the pretty word. Be an artist. Work for the art result. Whatever you do, dont work for the human result. Keep your eye on alphabets and words and sentences. Dont let your eye wander off to life. If you give your spirit any liberties it’s liable to play the bull in the china shop and smash your fine wares into a tragic litter. You want to know whether I’d seriously advise such treason. I say yes. Why not? You are an artist. You are not a man. You want me to price you by art standards. You dont want me to price you by human standards. The art standard might just as well be crooked as straight. It might just as well be a whore as a woman. It might just as well grovel and snuff and wallow as aspire and soar. The crook says: Dont judge me by the human standards. He wants to be judged by the crook standards. And from the crook standards why shouldn’t a crook be a crook? The writer says: Dont judge me by the human standards. He wants to be judged by the writer standards. And from the writer standard why shouldn’t a writer be a writer? Artist or crook. Crook or artist. It’s the same. People think it wrong to steal money. But they dont think it wrong to steal words. The only word that belongs to the writer is the word that belongs where it’s put. If it dont belong there then it’s stolen. It’s far worse to play false with words than to play false with money. Money? The next dollar may purify the money account. Words? Words may be prostituted forever. But dont let that discourage you. Make good even if you have to make bad. I cant see any other way out for you. Let the worst in you do its best for you. Dont be too squeamish. Remember that it’s all dirty business anyway. Every step you take is a surrender. Down, down, into bottomless confusions you sink yourself. You haven’t grown into art. You have built yourself into art. You haven’t written out of people and life. You have written out of scholars and books. You have committed in words all the felonies of the calendar. But because they are words you haven’t felt guilty. You say: They are only words. Why should a man be expected to be scrupulous with words? You might as well say of love: Love is only love. And you might as well ask: Why should a man be expected to be scrupulous with love? If the right word pays use it. But if it’s more profitable to use the wrong word, use that. You express every horror of the white slave traffic. But what shall we say of the word slave traffic? There are houses of bondage. And there are books of bondage. Writers say words. But only a writer rare among writers says the word. Who is the criminal? The man who steals goods or the man who violates a thought. What are you doing with words? Giving them to life or giving them to death? Making them counterfeit or keeping them genuine? Not trying to get life from words? But rather giving life to words? You merchants in words. You traders of dreams. You who are always trying for art but who never try for love. You who always estheticise with the elect but refuse to fraternize with the crowd. You who go the way the wind blows. You who yield to art the tribute of life instead of exacting for life the tribute of art. You who are the climbers. You who would give up your souls for a phrase. You who would rather write a pretty sentence. You who would rather have a style. You who would rather be classified with the intellectuals. You who whatever you are beg, borrow or steal your way into eminence. You distorters of scripture. You criminals of words. You parricides of gospels. You executioners of discovery. You smotherers of freedom. You writers who are trying to write.

You writers who are trying to write. Stop trying to write. Then you can write. Live. Let the writing take care of itself. Trust yourselves to moods. Trust yourselves to words. Trust yourselves to what may happen. Then something worth while will turn up. The man who argues about his sins is sick. The artist who argues about his technique is sick. That accounts for all the dead books. A man who’s busy telling a story is spending no time wondering how his English is. I wouldn’t advise you to study to be an artist? No. I’d rather have you study not to be an artist. If you’ll only let yourself alone your art will come. And if you’ll only let your art alone your life will come. In that perfect result your spirit will triumph. But if you interfere with the fine balance either way you’ll nullify the victory. Sometimes when I see all the liars of the world I wish all the books might have remained unwritten. But sometimes when I read a great book I see how even all the little books are excused. The man who tries to live generally dies. But the man who is indifferent to life becomes immortal. The super man is the man who’s superior to life or death. The super book is the book that’s superior to technique. The super merchant is the merchant who’s superior to buying and selling. Super writing is the writing that’s superior to authorship. You are not to be curious about writing. You are to just write. You are not to be curious about the reward. You are to just take what comes. If you’re prosperous you’re to ask: What’s wrong with me? And if you’re a failure you’re to ask: Do I deserve such honor? You are not to say: I’ll put a book into my life. You’re to say: I’ll put a life into my book. You are not to produce a work of art. You are to produce a work of life. You may have to give up your best adjectives. Or maybe your largest nouns. Or maybe a virile verb or two. To get what? To get life. You’ve got to give up everything to get life. The whole language if necessary. The whole fabric of delicate grace. All the flowers of speech. All the rhymes and lilts. All the niceties of manner and the assurances of routine. They must all go. All effort must go. You’ve not only got to be free of the alphabet. And not only free of the traditions. And not only free of the cliques. But you’ve got to be free of effort. You’ve got to cease trying. You’ve got to get where you have stopped caring or not caring. My call is for indifference. I say you are not to go round humble about what you dont do and proud about what you do do. Life dont call for arguers and hairsplitters. Do what you cant help doing. Refuse to do what you can help doing. Ease up on your nerves and your ambitions. Desire is richest in the absence of desire. A man’s lungs dont ask any questions. They just breathe. His feet walk. His eyes open and shut. Shall a man’s art do less? Shall it consume itself in quibbles? Shall it dress itself according to the mode? Or shall it stay in rags? You cant have both things. So which will you have? You cant advance and retreat at the same time. So which will you do? Can you imagine yourself neither alive nor dead? Can you see yourself neither anxious nor not anxious? Can you conceive of yourself as staking all and staking nothing on the survival of a book? No man can become an artist short of that. No artist can become a man short of that. Nirvana to technique. Oblivion to rules and traditions. Letting the soul retreat to nebula every time it wishes to advance to creation. Starting all over again with every word. Making every word again the first word. Are you to refrain from scheming? Yes. You are to let the waters flow unto their normal levels. You are to let the law take its course. The law of words. The law of books. A man may get into the way of looking too much into himself. A book may have a man’s fault. It too may brood too much. Most every book that ever tried to be a book has gone bankrupt. And most every book that didn’t worry whether it was a book or not has won a place in the human circle. It’s an awful thing for a man to want to be good. It’s as awful as for a man to want to be bad. It’s an awful thing for a man’s style to want to be a book. It’s as awful for a man’s book to want to be a style. It’s terrible to want to be the worst man in the world. But it’s far more terrible to want to be the best man in the world. You writers who try: you must keep on trying till you get beyond trying. The man who tries: he may sell out: he may go into the market with his equity. But the man who’s got past trying: he’s unshakably defiant. You fraud rhymers. You humbug versifiers. You dictionary hunters. You users of crooked words for straight. You professors and poets. I call on you to stop trying. I dont want to hear any more of your claims. I only want to hear of your love. I dont want you to waste your time naming yourselves. I dont care what you are called. I am only interested in what you are. You make me sick trying to be clever. Now make me well not trying to be dull. I’m as tired seeing you try to write as I’d be seeing you trying not to write. I want you to quit. I want you to get where you couldn’t sell if there was a buyer and where no one else could buy if there was a seller. I want to see you who have been in verbal bond set spirit free. I want to see you who have given up all the life you know for words willing to give up every word you know for life. You writers who are trying to write.

Every seed counts in the harvest:

In the harvests of orchards and fields: in the harvests of bodies and souls:

In the harvests of the topless years: in the harvests of the bottomless spaces:

In the harvests of cruelty and war: in the harvests of fires and frosts:

In the harvests we win in our love: in the harvests we lose in our hate:

In the harvests that are swept into graves: in the harvests that finish before they begin:

There is no better or worse in the harvests: all counts for all in all:

Every seed counts in the harvest.