LETTERS & DOCUMENTS: WOODLAWN 1964-67

Christiane Pflug to Michael Pflug in Chicago, Toronto, October 4, 1967

Thank you for your letter which arrived this morning. I would have answered earlier, but did not find the address.
xxxThe first few days of work are already over for you. I imagined McCarty and his family in the hotel, celebrating the birthday of their son. Some people don’t lose their calm because of changed circumstances.
xxxTomorrow there will be a day of supply teaching, we will see how it will work out. Otherwise I continue to work on everything. I watch the Miezen, go to bed early, (11 p.m.). Bill visits every day, for supper, afterwards Lynne goes to work in the coffee mill, and he goes home.
xxxThis morning I saw Asch. Everything is much more complicated. On one sheet for printing eight drawings fit, though they will have to be decreased in size by 3/4 of an inch. With twelve copies the whole will cost $125 to $150. Otherwise, six drawings fit onto one sheet. If we take two sheets we could print twelve drawings, and it will cost the double, therefore, ten drawings are not very practical. He can’t print a larger number of copies. His firm is not a printer but a cliché business. We should turn to Rous and Mann, which would also take over binding and cover. He wonders about cost, but couldn’t say anything in detail. One has to get a layout for the cover page and the text, and that would cost $50 more. He suggest the following:
xxxTo produce two sheets with ten drawings, two pages for title and text, and to reproduce a typewritten text, and to produce folders ourselves with the twelve prints, to bind it into stiff paper, not to sew it but to staple it, and then to send half of those, and to sell the other half to cover our costs. We have started to produce eight clichés. If we stick with one sheet, then the drawing, as mentioned, will be 3/4 of an inch smaller.
xxx(The cliché will be produced in the real size.) Then we have to ask Rous and Mann what that will cost. In any case we did want to have a small selection of prints. The question is only one or two sheets.
xxxI can’t think of anything else. Miezchen writes a letter to Grandmother. The light outside is mild and autumnally. The foliage gets lighter in the trees. If one only could abandon oneself to that and lift out of one’s own depth something, which is not similar to that outside but corresponds to it. Matisse says in the book of Gilot, "I don’t copy nature, I work like nature."
xxxShould I send you the New York Book Review and the Scientific American? On Sunday we want to go to the island for a picnic. I said to Lorraine, she probably had enough of picnics, and she said, "I haven’t been to one yet...."
xxxxIt really is only a walk with sandwiches. Now goodnight. I am thinking how you perhaps take a walk in the evening in the huge city. When you leave it is still at dusk, and when you come back it is quite dark. The streets look changed, with the lamps and lit windows and the dark figures of the people and through the smoke and mist of the huge city, the stars. Goodnight, Little Father.

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