From: Jack Saunders
To: Pete Knickerbocker, Spider's Nest Pottery
Subj: Reply to "Jack Neff"

Walter Anderson was in an out of mental hospitals.

A psychiatrist told his wife that he could live a normal life if no demands were put on him to be a responsible husband, father, and son. If he were let alone to paint, all day, every day, he'd be fine.

She left him alone. He was fine.

Well, who wouldn't be.

That's the existential dilemma of every man, certainly of every artist.

Claude Lévi-Strauss ends The Elementary Structures of Kinship,

At either end of the earth and at both extremes of time, the Sumerian myth of the golden age and the Andaman myth of the future life correspond, the former placing the end of primitive happiness at a time when the confusion of languages made words into common property, the latter describing the bliss of the hereafter as a heaven where women will no longer be exchanged, i. e., removing to an equally unattainable past or future the joys, eternally denied to social man, of a world in which one might keep to oneself.

I think Jack was deeply hurt by his inability to be a provider. His mother was a divorcee, and he once said, "I didn't have a father, and it didn't hurt me."

I think it hurt him very much. He was in denial.

But to say someone is in denial is a cliché, and a debating trick. It's never that simple. There's always some truth to the charge.

I was a good friend to Jack for a long time, but I didn't realize until I lived with him that I could be his friend, but I didn't want to be his wife, or his son.

And yet you can't criticize a friend, particularly a flawed human being, with a complicated history--particularly an artist--on how he manages his private life.

Also, we both were Virgos. I didn't realize what a pain in the ass a Virgo is until I saw Jack hollering, "The towel is off the rack."

An artist has an obligation to be a decent human being, just as any person does. Being an artist doesn't give you any slack.

Still, artists are driven to do something the world doesn't want, and it drives them nuts. They can't stop it, and lead a normal life. If they could, they wouldn't be an artist.

I have battled with this my whole life, written about it again and again, indeed, it is the theme of all my work. Vocation and career in conflict.

You can really see it playing out in Jack Neff, but also Walter Anderson, a diagnosed mental patient.