Note 35 — PART TWO New York (1923-1925) (continued 2)

“And there have been other complications which may afford you the pleasure of vindictiveness against my ideas and standards....” (Letter, Feb. 14, 1924, H.C. to C.A.C.) Crane’s father resented this remark, and denied ever being able to derive pleasure from such an attitude to his son’s life and work. He explained his attitude as a failure to understand how his son could ever hope to support himself unless he took his advertising work seriously, and stated that he would be more sympathetic if his son were to regard his writing as an “avocation” rather than a “vocation,” a hobby similar to the pastime of “golf.” (Letter, Feb. 21, 1924, C.A.C. to H.C.) In the letters which follow Hart Crane’s rejection of a place in his father’s business, the elder Crane appears bitterly hurt that his son doesn’t want to work with him. At the same time, he makes it quite clear that he has a genuine affection for his son, and reiterates that he does not question the devotion to poetry, only its inability to provide financial returns. Later, in a letter of Nov. 25, 1925, he introduces the point that he believes his son to be interested in “pleasure,” rather than in following his own example of a man who “worked strenuously.”