Undated Letter #3, 1963

Undated Typewritten Letter 3 (1963)

We in America have become a nation of “intellectuals”, ready to expound lengthily and predictably in a torrent of cynical cliches about anything and everything whenever we get the horridly false feeling that we might not know everything; who have read an infinetesimal [sic] amount of fact and a mountain of books about angry young men; whose entire intellectual range really goes no farther than a smirk and a vocabulary half of which consists of ambiguous polysyllabic cliches and the other half expletives; who “rebel against conformity because the hip thing to do “You’re not hip unless you’ve read this or that book, been a homosexual and a mental patient and can talk for hours without knowing what you’re talking about.” The contradictions and imbecilities within those quotation marks are so disgustingly self-evident that I won’t even bother to speak of them; lastly, we are a nation of ignoramouses [sic], half of whom are afraid to say “f**k you”, and the other half worshiping the phrase for its “hipness”, rather than for any regard for the beauty of f**king.

                                    Tamara, you say that its [sic] no use to try to save the world because the world isn’t worth saving. You’re wrong, you damned fool! Don’t be so goddamned apathetic. I say that, despite the fact that the world as a whole is hopeless, there are people in it who aren’t. In fact, if you can make just one person see the beauty of life and love, then it’s worth working you’re ass off and knocking your brains out and yelling till you’re hoarse and fighting till you’ve won. If all the intelligent people in America had your idea that the world is not worth saving and beauty is not worth beating your guts out for and a fool is not worthy knocking sense into and that the individual will never win out over the mass, then the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the John Birch society^[1], the communists, the pimplefaced hotrodding teenagers the phony intellectuals, the bigots and ignoramouses [sic] would have won out long ago. I love you, Tamara and t[h]ere’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, but I want you to see that, just because that great insane juggernaut of mass conformity doesn’t crush you doesn’t mean it can’t, that it’s only because others stand up to them and battle them that you can sit on your apathetic ass and talk about your individuality, and that, despite what even I myself have said, I do now tell you through my anger the individual can win. Materialism doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Too many of our philosophers equate materialism with evil, and that’s a lot of sh*t. The only reason they rant on about about [sic] the evils of materialism is because they’re shivering penniless because they’re bad poets and worse philosophers, and they don’t have those material[s], and the poors [sic] dupes who do have these and believe that are jyst [sic] doing it because “it’s hip”. Bullsh*t. Next I turn to the angry young men. I am sure that you already have or are about to compare me to a angry young man out of one [of] those moronic books. Wrong. Those angry young men are all frust[r]ated psychotic adolescents with no talent and no guts, whose rebellion is hurting no one but themselves. They are like those spoiled children who throw temper tantrums, beating their fists and kicking on the floor, because they can’t have what they want and don’t know what they want and are too lazy to look for something. I know, because I used to be both spoiled child and spoiled angry young man.

                                    In summary, Tamara, idealists built the world, not lazy genuises [sic] who give up before they start, or when stormy weather approaches. Signed, your mad friend, whom criticizes your every action but loves you never the less, Lester…

P.S. ... Always remember that there is a difference between self consciousness and thinking before you act or speak, and the difference between being uninhibited and being childish. LIVING a noble life is not easy, but it’s damn well worth

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