A LETTER FROM WOODY GUTHRIE

(WRITTEN IN LONG-HAND TO PRESIDENT TRUMAN, 1949.)

Reproduced in the current issue of The Paris Review.

July 31st, 1949

My dear Mr. Truman
If you so much as lay a small claim to be a human with a brain, a soul, a heart, a mind, a feeling you could call the warmth of the blood of man, please, good sir, take a good look at these bills you are signing to make more high explosives to blow us all off of the map. Your face will look a whole lot blanker if the little atoms blow our world away and all of your pals and kinfolks along with the rest of us.

I'm not ready to blow just yet.

Your old buddy,
Woody Guthrie