The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

From Bal-Makhshoves in Kaunas, Lithuania, to Yoysef Opatoshu in New York, n.d. He thanks Opatoshu for sending him his novel In poylishe velder and the anthology of his some of his other works, and says that the novel is now being passed around. Dovid Bergelson is the first to have read it and talks every evening about what an impression it has made on him. Bergelson is going to review it for Bal-Makhshoves's Yudishe shtime. About Opatoshu's suggestion that they form a Peretz Society, he can't yet say anything. All the locals are still "too exhausted" to take on something like this, but he expects that in a few weeks they might be in better shape to consider it. A poet, Leyb Kvitko, is helping Bal-Makhshoves edit the "anthology." "I'm sure you have some idea how people, even literati, who come from the Soviet Union, throw themselves on books, all but ripping them out of your hands, and then tirelessly gulping them down." Yiddish. RG 436, Joseph Opatoshu Papers, F32.