The article I wrote for Valerie Eliot about novelist Djuna Barnes
Valerie Eliot agonized about writing anything. It drove me crazy. There was, for example, a footnote about a reference to “charflappers” in a letter from T. S. Eliot (TSE) to his American publisher Scofield Thayer that she rewrote, or rather we rewrote, dozens of times. I’d think we had put that question to bed, and a day or two later she would say, “Remember that footnote, dear, the one about charflappers?” I don’t think I ever showed my impatience, but that kind of fussing was definitely one of the reasons [...]