'Beware Also of Tellers of Tall Tales'

Advice can be dangerous stuff. If taken and the result is unfortunate, disappointment and resentment will likely follow. “Advice is offensive,” Dr. Johnson warns. Often it is motivated not by a wish to be helpful but simply by presumptuous egotism, a desire to impose one’s will. If advice is ignored, it’s the advice-giver who may turn resentful. Johnson again: “[A]dvice is commonly ineffectual.” There are exceptions. Consider this wise counsel from Yvor Winters to Thom Gunn on July 21, 1956:

“Beware of rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, alligators, Mississippi dogfish, bad liquor, and characters out of Faulkner. Beware also of tellers of tall tales. Do not allow your speech to be corrupted, no matter what strange predicament you may encounter. And above all, keep a diary, so that you may read it to me next fall.”  

Two years earlier, Gunn had graduated from Cambridge, published his first collection of poems, Fighting Terms, and came to the United States from his native England to study with Winters at Stanford. He met Gunn at the train station, invited him home for dinner and made sure he had a place to stay. I’m always touched by Winters’ thoughtfulness and hospitality, despite his reputation among certain readers.

Gunn was in San Antonio when Winters sent him the letter in 1956 and intended to travel around the country before returning to Palo Alto. Some will be surprised by Winters’ compassion, basic human decency and his sense of humor. For the rest of his life, Gunn remained grateful to Winters, publicly acknowledging the debt he owed the older poet. I’m reminded of Alcoholics Anonymous, which suggest we offer not advice but “experience, strength and hope.”

[See The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (2000), edited by R.L. Barth and published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press.]