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The letter reads in full:               

“Dear George

Thank you very much for your letter. I get nice letters from people from time to time but I’ve had few if any as nice as yours and I thank you for it.

I think you’re very right about the kinship of humor and horror. Its there. The people who won’t acknowledge it I suspect have been trained out of it. Eric Hoffer says somewhere that the origin of the smile is probably a grimace (of pleasure) [inserted above] at the misfortune of others. But maybe that’s another – if related – topic. I don’t think its really a matter of using humor to make the unbearable bearable. I think we just don’t understand humans. I don’t think we know anything about it at all.

Thanks for the Knoxville paper. I think I liked them better when they had more crime and scandal.

I have a brother in Knoxville (and sister in law) and I go visit usually at Christmas and sometimes at other times. I’ll give you a call next time I’m in town. Good luck with the magazine.

All the best

Cormac McCarthy”.

RECIPIENT: George Spencer, editor of Tennessee Illustrated.

Eric Hoffer is the important American moral and social philosopher who wrote, among other works, The True Believer, regarded as a classic, and The Ordeal of Change.