The Press: I Write As You Please

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Write as You Please

Words have been Walter Duranty's stock in trade. As a Cambridge honor graduate, he tutored in Latin, sold stories to Argosy until the New York Times's Paris office hired him in 1913. He covered French armies in World War I.

In 13 years as a 'tween-wars Timesman in Moscow, Duranty won a Pulitzer prize for reporting (1932). wrote a best-seller (I Write As I Please) and some undistinguished fiction. A gay and worldly-wise little man, he got to know the Soviet Russians, stored up a vast stockpile of anecdotes for U.S. lecture audiences.

Last week in Hollywood, old Walter Duranty, 61 and ailing, set up shop in a new kind of stall. For $1 a month, he offered to send potential customers a "personal" (but multigraphed) letter a week, with their choice of topics: from travel and world affairs to letters for children "and, finally, letters of affection, which might mean any kind of love letter, imaginary, of course. . . ." Aside from an income, Man-of-Letters Duranty said he just wanted "to share with you my experience & knowledge."