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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Jane Wolfe
10 Hanover Square W.1.
March 31 [1942]
Show this to 132 [Wilfred Talbot Smith]
Dear Jane,
Karl [Karl Germer] sent me (on Feb 17 by air from N.Y.—it reached London last night!) a copy of your Liber 77 [Liber OZ] booklet, with Capricornus.
This is a very noble effort, and ought to bring in a lot of people. It is the beginning of visionary effort.
B U T —oh why can't you get a thing done properly? You are in the World's Centre No. 1 of slick photography, and I have sent you countless examples of what reproduction and printing ought to be. Yet you get out a photograph so vile as to be hardly recognizable; the printing is entirely without character or style. The whole booklet would disgrace a hot-dog stall.
I can only suppose that you simply do not know the difference, that none of you have ever learnt to use your eyes. [I remember "Songs for Italy", how bad that was. I was silly enough not to tell you, as I thought it might hurt your feelings.] Yet you personally were wonderful for your use of margins, adjustment, indentation and so on in typing, and you did the most accurate and exquisite work on the Chambres des Cauchemars. How then do you let such vile production get past you? At the very least, you could have gone to a good firm (they would have advised you): it would have cost no more. ["Songs for Italy", again: when I saw the bill, I was astonished. The best printer in London would have charged at least 33 1/3% less.] Can't you see that any Hollywood Studio would have dropped dead on seeing that Goat? No. I suppose that somehow none of you have any idea of decent presentation. It's beyond me, but there the fact is, and it's horrible! Really, that booklet has every fault that is possible; it just breaks my heart. I see now how comic you must look to the Enquirer. I understand why you send every one with any taste in headlong flight. For God's sake, Jane!
Yours,
A.C.
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