Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1932
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EM: Yeah, and I got pneumonia. I was in the hospital and it was double pneumonia, and so they finally got Dreiser and he got me some good attention at the hospital. A nurse; it was before antibiotics, and so it was more or less a nursing job, to keep the fever down. So then Bonnie, this friend, had been in California and she had set up some friends of hers at a bookshop, and so she wrote them, the Needhams, Ida and Wilbur Needham. She wrote them and asked them if they could put me up for a month and let me do odd selling, spell them on selling. So I did. I came out in '32.
JG: So this was part of the convalescence?
EM: Yes.
JG: And the thought then was that a warm climate would be good for your . . .
EM: Yes. I was just getting out of it for the winter, but I stayed on. I had letters from people saying it was still pretty bad in New York.
One terrible thing happened. The novel did not sell, but Scribner's had a competition for novelettes (I think they were about 10,000 words). So I cut my novel down. One of the things about it was they felt it was a little short, you know publishers. So I learned to write even shorter, though, you know, in time [laughs] with working hard at it. So [laughing] I cut it down from about . . . Anyway, I cut it. I've forgotten how many words it was in the beginning.
It went in, and I was at my sister's. She was in Denver, she was having a baby. That was on my way to California. And the word came that . . . I think it was four they were going to buy, print three, no, print two. Anyway, it was just out of the running--the last one. I think there were four, and I was fifth. And God, you know, how close, how chance, really. I had a letter from one of the editors saying how sorry she was, that she felt it was very, very nice, and it was a pity. So that made a hell of a difference, you know. God, that would have--to go back to New York with a . . .
JG: Book . . .
EM: And it paid, you know. So that would have . . . It was all I needed. But instead--and California was nothing, absolutely nothing. I'd done so much editorial work and research and there was nothing like that here. So I did get a job rewriting a book for a woman whose English was very poor; she was Russian. God, that was deadly. I got jobs like that, and then a couple of times I worked in a bookshop, you know Christmas rush. What's that big one down, who is it, the end of Olympic?
JG: Downtown?
EM: It was an old, famous bookshop. Well, it doesn't matter. And then I did a lot of reviewing here, because Wilbur Needham reviewed for the Times and for...
JG: The Los Angeles Times?
EM: Yes. He also reviewed for a magazine called Fortnight, I believe the name of it was. He would give me lots of books to review, but I wouldn't get paid for them and I couldn't keep the books, because they needed the books to sell. So I got nothing out of it, but I did get published. I remember one was Buckminster Fuller's Seven to the Moon.[ note: title is Nine Chains to the Moon] What is that book of Fuller's?
JG: I don't know it.
EM: I became very keenly aware of building here, of architecture.
JG: Why was that?
EM: Well, it was wonderful. You could see it in the houses. And I began reading on architecture, all the books.
JG: Who was wonderful at that time?
EM: Neutra, I learned, very soon. And oh--the first thing I saw that I liked were the Monterey houses, you know, of John . . . ?, in Santa Monica.
JG: Parkinson?
EM: No, not Parkinson, John Byers. Over on Georgina Street, in Santa Monica.
JG: These are traditionalized Spanish?
EM: Yes. And then from that, I would stop and look at houses that were under construction if they looked interesting, and I got to see a great many of them. And Neutra I found very early, and liked him. Harris I found very early. First week I was here I met John Entenza. He had nothing to do with architecture then.
JG: He had not bought Art and Architecture yet?
EM: No. That was '32.
JG: That was '32 that he bought it or that you were here?
EM: That we met.
JG: What did you find about the intellectual life here? Was there much of it, or . . . ?
EM: No.
JG: Not much, and you missed the conversations from back East?
EM: Yes, I did.
JG: But what did you like about the city?
EM: I loved . . . It was laughed at so, Los Angeles, in New York. And they thought no one came except the people to make money, and get their money and pick up and run. But when I got off the train in San Bernardino, I said, "What is that, what is that, what is that?" And [they] said "What's what?" "That wonderful smell." "Oh, that's orange blossoms."
God, you know, that was the beginning, and then I got to Santa Monica and the Needham's shop was half a block from the ocean. So I could go down every day and swim, and God, it was close to one of the inclines down to the ocean; it was on Santa Monica Boulevard.
JG: So, you were better by that time?
EM: I got better here, yes. It was so stimulating, and I've always liked warm climates anyway.
JG: You mean just that physical aspect is stimulating?
EM: Yes. And the mountains, too. To have the mountains and the sea so close together. That was just heaven.
JG: How is it that you came to Santa Monica, rather than, say, Pasadena, or . . . ?
EM: Oh, that's because they had the Needham's bookshop. I was going to stay with them. That was the agreement, with Bonnie. I think she'd put up several hundred dollars which, in Depression days, went . . .
JG: It was a lot of money then. Santa Monica in that time was a vacation town, a beachside . . .
EM: Yes, yes, it was always end of the line.
JG: So did you stay on for longer than you thought?
EM: I stayed there about a month, and that's when I got the job rewriting the book, the Russian woman. Her husband's family had a little shed with living quarters above it. It even had a bathroom in it. That was on Pico. So I lived there. Loved it.
Then I fell in love. John didn't come out, and John became something of an alcoholic, too. It was such a disappointment to him that his book was not taken. I think I can see now, you know, "the penumbra of your silence," why it may not, but I really couldn't understand it because it just seemed absolutely wonderful to me. He was hurt. I don't know, did I say this before? That when mine would get attention and his didn't, it really hurt him. He was writing when I was working in Newark, at the department store, and I can remember he would read what he'd written aloud to me, and I was exhausted, you know, and would fall asleep. And that would hurt him. So he became very, very sensitive, and then he began getting awfully drunk. He would sort of lurch out into the street.
JG: This was before you got sick with pneumonia?
EM: Yeah.
JG: And then when you came out here, he stayed there?
EM: Yes. And I really didn't want him to come because he was too comfortable in the position of my going out and working and his staying home and writing. Because he did feel that he was the writer in the family.
JG: So you supported the family?
EM: Briefly, briefly.
JG: So out here, then, you were here and then you met somebody?
EM: Yes.
JG: And you stayed on.
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