TLS: Sunday, May 24, 1942

(Letterhead: TAO HOUSE / DANVILLE / CONTRA COSTA COUNTY / CALIFORNIA)

Mr Whit Burnett,
432 Fourth Avenue,
New York City.

Dear Mr Burnett:

I'm laid up in bed and feel rottener than rotten, so this will be short.

Can't agree to "The Moon Of The Caribbees", although it's true I do regard it as the best of all my early works in the short one-acters. But it's a bad choice for your anthology, not only because it does not, in my opinion, represent my most significant and original dramatic writing, but also because the four "Glencairn" series one-acters, of which it is one, have been done to death. One or the other of them have been included in numerous anthologies, both here and abroad, and lately they were even made into a movie. They are pretty stale stuff now.

If you can afford that much space, my choice is Act One, Scene Three, of "The Great God Brown" - much shorter than "The Moon Of The Caribbees".

My comment to go with it: "Rereading "The Great God Brown", written in 1925, which I haven't looked at for ten years or more, I still consider this play one of the most interesting and moving I have written. It has its faults, of course, but for me, at least, it does succeed in conveying a sense of the tragic mystery drama of Life revealed through the lives in the play. And this, I think, is the real test of whether any play, however excellent its structure, characterization, dialogue, plot, social significance, or what not - is true drama or just another play.

I choose this particular scene for the anthology because it is one of the best, and the most self-sufficient when taken out of its context".

There is one condition I have to make. I must be given proofs to read on the above in case I want to add or subtract a bit. And for Act One, Scene Three I am sending you via Saxe Commins of Random House a copy of the play with a few minor revisions. There is a mistake in the printed stage directions for this scene I never noticed before and want to correct, for example, a mistake which makes a sentence ridiculous and meaningless.

However, I will wait to hear from you that you find my choice and conditions acceptable before I go ahead.

All good wishes to you.

Very sincerely,

Eugene O'Neill

May the 24th 1942.