IRWIN SHAW - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 09/12/1979 - HFSID 206119

IRWIN SHAW. TLS: "Irwin Shaw", 1p, 8¼x10½. Klosters Suisse (Klosters, Switzerland), 1979 September 12. To Pat Searle. In full: "Your letter touched me. It's nice to know that stories one wrote so long ago-before World War II-are still being read and taught to children and perhaps forming a whole new generation of readers for the author of them. I've signed all the pages and am returning them with this letter. Perhaps you ought to use some of the war stories in the volume Five Decades. For most young people War seems to have happened centuries ago and it might be useful to let them know something about it. I'm sorry I haven't the time to do a drawing. It wouldn't look like me anyway. Tell them that I'm an (sic) beat-up football player and look like it." Enclosures not present. Beginning in 1976, Shaw maintained residences in Southampton, Long Island and in Klosters, Switzerland. Shaw's book, Short Stories: Five Decades, had been published in 1978. In the year he signed this letter, Shaw's book, The Top of the Hill, was published. Novelist, short story writer, playwright and screenwriter Irwin Shaw (1913-1984), born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff, is best known for his novels, The Young Lions (1948), one of the most famous novels about WWII, Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), which was made into a highly successful TV series, and Beggarman, Thief (1977). In the 1930s, Shaw wrote short stories for "The New Yorker" and "Equire", many of which were published in book form in The Sailor of the Bremen (1939) and Welcome to the City (1942). The writer of a number of screenplays, Shaw was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942 for Talk of the Town. Slightly creased with folds, not at signature. Fine condition.