(2 of 2)
In summer Edmonds writes on the family farm at Boonville, N.Y. There he has built himself a cabin on a hilltop, can write in peace "because people won't take the trouble to walk up the hill." In the fall the whole Edmonds family moves to Cambridge, Mass., where they live in one of the reclusive streets around Harvard. There in his first-floor study Edmonds works according to an erratic method all his own. He never knows when he begins a novel how it is going to end. He never takes notes on his research. Having a very poor memory, he often has to do research over & over. He never makes carbon copies of his novels. "Something terrible is going to happen as a result," he says, "but I can't write if I've got to fiddle around with carbons in the midst of writing."
A few years ago Edmonds had to give up smoking because of incipient cancer. Now he drinks water copiously to alibi those constant work-stoppages that most writers find so necessary when facing a piece of blank paper. At such times Edmonds' three-year-old daughter often stands outside his forbidden door and sighs: "My daddy is working in there." With a pang of conscience he takes his feet off the desk, begins hammering his typewriter like Young Ames on the make.
By such methods Edmonds has secured a following of some 250,000 devoted readers ; a successful Marc Connelly dramatization of Rome Haul (The Farmer Takes a Wife, with Henry Fonda); three Henry Fonda movies (The Farmer Takes a Wife, Chad Hanna, Drums Along the Mohawk). Young Ames, too, looks as if he might some day find himself metamorphosed into Young Fonda. Author Edmonds hopes not. He is worried about the recurrence of Fonda in cinematizations of Edmonds books. "One more," says he, "might make him think he had written them."