Sold for $4,250

"CAN YOU 'WRITE'?": POUND ADVISES LAWRENCE
 
An exceptional response from Pound to Lawrence, who had solicited advice about publishing. "Thou hast in thee an exceeding hot, intemperate, swift and precipitate manner of judging thy fellowe men, and in the present case mightest have weighed against six or eight pages of BLAST the dozen or more volumes and thousand or more scattered pages of my other labours and opusculi." Pound had just been appointed correspondent to the Dial, which he describes as "an aged and staid publication which I hope, rather rashly, to ginger up to something approaching the frenetic wildenesse of The Athenaeum. They are much more afraid of me than you are."

Lawrence, evidently concerned about revealing his identity in his writings, is given advice by Pound: "... I don't care a saffron .... whether you use your own name or not; only if you don't you will be under the shameful and ignominious necessity of writing something which will interest the editor. Can you 'write'? Of course, having vortex'd a large section of Arabia you are fed up with vortices; but why reprove me, who have merely created a market for one or two artists and got a half dozen good books into print despite John Murray, Sr. G. Macmillan e questa puttazaia?... In sending copy to America, let me caution you to use an incognito as well as a pseudonym. [Scofield] Thayer is, I think, quite decent (He is the Dial), but I trust an American publication about as far as I wd. trust a British government; my bright compatriots are quite capable of printing an article by Mr Smith, and then printing a leetle note at the end of the number saying 'The article by Mr Smith is really written by a distinguished Shiek-tamer and Tiger-baiter etc.... Who for reasons of modesty has concealed himself 'neath the ridiculous name of Smith-Yapper. If you want to write about Arabia, I cd. simply write to N.Y. that I was getting copy from the one man who knows, or you cd. get a written promise from Thayer not to reveal your identity. I shd. prefer not to be instrumental in publishing anything likely to incite either Moslems or Xtns. to further massacres etc." Pound further cautions Lawrence against the hope that his writing will bring him much money. Published in Letters to T.E. Lawrence.