James A. Michener (1907-1997) was a best-selling novelist (“Hawaii,” “Centennial,” more) and won a Pulitzer Prize for his short-story collection “Tales of the South Pacific.”
March 11, 1975
Mr. James Michener, Board of Governors
National Society of Literature and the Arts
1424 16th Street, N.W. – Suite 301
Washington, D.C. 20036
Dear Mr. Michener:
Thank you for your letter of February 7 inviting me to become a member of the National Society of Literature and the Arts.
I appreciate your invitation, but I cannot accept it because I am profoundly opposed to the intrusion of force, i.e., governmental power, into the fields of literature and the arts—in the form of censorship or subsidies or special political pull or “the creation of a Secretary of the Arts in the President’s Cabinet.”
Sincerely yours,
Ayn Rand
AR/as
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