TLS: Tuesday, September 10, 1935

(Letterhead: CASA GENOTTA / SEA ISLAND / GEORGIA)

Mr. León Mirlas,
Córdoba 962,
Buenos Aires,
República Argentina.

Dear Mr. Mirlas,

I am deeply preoccupied with my work just at present, so I know you will pardon me if I do not reply to your letter at length, as it deserves, but simply answer the questions you ask in it.

I am sorry but it is impossible to grant your request that I write a preface for your book. For this reason: Some years ago I became involved in a most disagreeable mess with publishers and an author and as a result I saw no way to avoid a recurrence of the incident except by making it a strict general rule that never again would I consider writing an introduction or preface for anyone, anywhere, anytime. I could not break this rule now in your favour without being extremely unjust to authors, some of them friends of mine, whom I have refused in the past. I know you will understand this.

I am sending you a copy of "The Straw". My own feeling about this play is that it has good stuff in it, and it is my favourite among my strictly naturalistic long plays.

Your outline for the book interests me immensely. No, I have nothing to suggest. You seem to have everything there.

One point, very minor, in the Expressionistic section XI. Rice's "Adding Machine" came after "The Hairy Ape". Perhaps I am mistaken when I deduce from your sequence that you think it came before.

As for your last question, I have to confess that my Spanish was, at best, a very sketchy affair - and what little I ever knew had been completely forgotten, as I discovered on a trip to Spain in 1930!

All good wishes to you,

Eugene O'Neill

Sept. 10th 1935.