Typed letter signed : [Camp Gordon, Ga.], to [Mary Cheever], "Monday" [1943 Feb. 22].

Record ID: 
380967
Accession number: 
MA 5026.116
Author: 
Cheever, John.
Credit: 
Gift of the Family of Carter Burden, 1998.
Description: 
1 item (1 p.) ; 27 cm + envelope
Notes: 

Envelope with postmark of "Feb. 23, 1943," a Tuesday; this letter was written the Monday before, Feb. 22, 1943.
Envelope is addressed to "Mrs. John Cheever / 19 East 8th Street / New York City." Return address is "Pfc. John Cheever, ASN 32332516 / Co. "E" 22nd Infantry, U.S. Army / APO #4 / Camp Gordon, Georgia"; place of writing is based on return address.
Part of a large collection of letters from John Cheever to his wife, Mary Cheever. Letters are described in individual records; see MA 5026 for details.

Summary: 

Calling a letter from Elizabeth [Ames?] "a new low"; telling her not to answer the letter because "it's [his] responsibility"; mentioning a letter from Flannery [Lewis]; calling [Ernest Hemingway's] A Farewell to Arms "a wonderful book" and noting that "it doesn't have anything in it about spending a year or two in the Carolinas or Georgia"; asking if it's true that "beef liver cost[s] $1.15 a pound in N.Y."; discussing his dreams about the end of the war; remarking that he "picked up [John P.] Marquand's Wickford Point in the library a couple of days ago, and while it certainly isn't a good book, it was good to read about the Merrimac and the farms around there."

Provenance: 
The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature.