a) 3-page typed draft, unsigned, undated from Bruce to an unknown recipient explaining why Bruce voted for John F. Kennedy. “I voted for Kennedy because I’ll be able to … see the reflection of a human being with dimension….I could never visualize Eisenhower even kissing his wife, not on the mouth anyway.” Other reflections on Nixon, Jerry Lewis, tits and ass, nudity, Puerto Ricans, Moses and Jesus. 

 

b)  2-page letter from Bruce to Max, Sol, and Saul [Fantasy Records] about possibly breaking their contract.  Sept 12, 1960. “Gimmee, Gimmee, Gimme!  I made you guys and you could at least have the decency to keep away from my wife, Ann Dee. [owner of the Club 440 in San Francisco].  She told me the whole dirty, stinkin story and believe me brother, how could anybody be so low. I never would have found out about that gang-bang you subjected her to on Natoma street ….as soon as she has the baby, I am sending it up to you air-freight.”  … “By the way, Roulette Records offered me a lotta lotta money to sign with them. I don’t know if you know who is behind Roulette Records, but none of their names have an Anglo-Saxon ring to them. …You need me boys and here’s what I want.”…And anthr thing…if you want a safe album, record George Gobels and have the cover of him waving out of a trailer.”  

 

c) Bruce’s 7-page reply to a club owner who read a critic’s review in Variety, criticizing his use of four-letter words.  “The study of semantics in relation to the noun dirty-word, has made us aware of the ominous peril of dirty-word impact and the mental block it causes.   No word is dirty, but the stimulus it causes in the mind of the beholder can be dirty, perverted, and filthy.”   Bruce then discusses the common meanings of the words “bastard” and “son-of-a-bitch” and how they are seen as dirty by others only in certain contexts.   He then posits a 6-page mini-script of a dialog between Bruce and Paul Purist “It is if I’m on the road and it’s three ‘clock in the morning and I meet a girl who loves paintings and I have an original Degas … and all I want is to show her the painting.  But because the majority of the sub-intellects has made “hotel” a dirty word, I can’t say, ‘Would you go to my hotel?’ because hotel is a dirty-word at three o’clock in the morning. It’s not dirty at two P.M. the next day when the B’nai Brith or Kiwanis meet there. But at three A.M., it’s a dirty word. “.  …[I]n 1941, it would have been safer to call someone a m-th-r - f--k-r than a Jap.”