Steinbeck (26 page)

2017 Hillyer Place, N.W.
Washington, D. C.
June 24, 1940

The President

The White House

 

 

My dear Mr. Roosevelt:

For some time I have been making a little moving picture in Mexico. In this line I have covered a great deal of country and had conversations with many people of many factions.

In the light of this experience and against a background of the international situation, I am forced to the conclusion that a crisis in the Western Hemisphere is imminent, and is to be met only by an immediate, controlled, considered, and directed method and policy.

It is probable that you have considered this situation in all its facets. However, if my observation can be of any use to you, I shall be very glad to speak with you for I am sure that this problem is one of the most important to be faced by the nation.

Respectfully yours,
John Steinbeck

Los Gatos
July 9, 1940

Dear Dook:

It was good to get your long letter. I've been too raddled and confused to write letters for a long time. But with the decline of the pressures on me I'm feeling better and if it weren't for the coming war, I could look forward to a good quiet life for a few years anyway. You know my nature and my old prospects so you must know what a terrible experience this last two years has been.

You ask about the ranch and whether it is an estate. If we were going to sell it, the description would surely sound like an estate. But I'll try to give you some idea of it. At the Greenwood Road place we were finally surrounded with little houses and right under my work room window a house was built by a lady who was studying singing—the mi-mi-mi kind, so we finally went nuts. Carol's father found this little ranch far up the mountain. It is forty-seven acres and has a big spring. It has forest and orchard and pasture and big trees. It is very old—was first taken up in 1847. The old ranch house was built in 1858 I think. So we came up, built a four room house for ourselves, much like the Greenwood road house. There had been an oil well on the place and we used the big timbers and boards for our house. Then we refinished the inside of the old ranch house for two guest rooms and a big winter playroom where one can have parties. So far in our ad we have “two houses—four bedrooms.”

Then since Carol loves to swim I asked about swimming pools and I discovered a curious thing. The cost of swimming pools isn't the pool but the machinery for filtering the water over and over since water is expensive. Using city water it costs fifty to sixty dollars to fill a pool once. But we had a four inch head of spring water. Now we built a long narrow swimming pool and turned our spring into it. If it were a city pool with the big pumps and filters, it would have cost between eight and ten thousand dollars. But a concrete tank with a spring running in cost $1,500. So we have a swimming pool to add to our ad.

Then we have a Japanese boy who cooks, gardens, and looks after the place when we are away. And in the summer I have an Okie boy by the day to work around mainly because he needs the money so dreadfully. So there's a staff of servants. You see it really is an estate. But it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. And I hope you'll see it soon now that we have something of a normal life again. The telephone number by the way is not listed. I wish you would write it down. It is Los Gatos 293RI. The operators will not give it out. We had too much trouble with such.

I'm sorry about the Chronicle deal. Wish I had been there because I know the managing editor quite well. And I don't think one gets jobs from below. My weight is decreasing daily and it will continue to do so. If you can think of any way to use what I have left, please tell me. Trouble is that I've refused all favors to papers but maybe I could help a little.

Have you saved any money? I know you have. You always do. Your mystical luck will work and you'll get another job. I would help as much as I could. And of course, you know that in the matter of money, I'm always available while I have any.

I wish you would come down to the ranch. We could stand some talking now. It's time for it. And I'll work with you at anything you want to do.

love
John

Los Gatos
August 12, 1940

Dear Carlton (if you wish):

I'm taking flying lessons up at the Palo Alto Airport and I love it. There's something so god damned remote and beautiful and detached about being way to hell and gone up on a little yellow leaf. It isn't like the big transports at all because this little thing floats and bobs and yet is very steady and—there's no sense of power at all but rather a sense of being alone in the best sense of the word, not loneliness at all but just an escape into something delightful. I think you used to get it after you had had a lot of guests and they all went home and the house was finally cleaned up and you could turn on the radio and cook your own kind of stew and read and look up and know god damned well that you were alone. And there's something about seeing a cumulus cloud way off and going over there to see what it is like.

My first reason for getting a license was that here I am only about a year and a half from forty and I wanted to learn to handle the controls while my reflexes were still malleable. I saw my father try to learn to drive a car when he was sixty five and he never could do it unconsciously. He had to think every time for the gear shift and he had to think about how to get out of a mess. Well, I wanted to get the controls into my unconscious before I got too old. And the moment I began going up I found something much more than that. Some very delicious thing with no name for it yet anyway, but it does seem to be some extension of aesthetics.

 

There were callers just then so I had to leave this and come back to it. Yesterday afternoon a car came up and I went out to see who it was. When I got out to the porch there was a group, an elderly man, his wife beside him and three boys arranged on either side. They stood very stiffly and I began to get a little nervous and then suddenly the man bellowed, “Do you know Jesus?” and launched into a sermon. It was five minutes before I could stop him. Gestures and all, and me standing in the door in nothing but a pair of swimming trunks. It was awful. I finally told them I did know Jesus and got them out, but they were prepared to save me even if it killed me.

So long. I'll hope to see you soon.

Love
jon

Los Gatos.
August 13, 1940

Dear Mr. Roosevelt:

I assure you that if there were any alternative, I should not bother you with this letter. When you were kind enough to receive me I said I did not want a job. But after listening to the growing defeatism in the country, especially among business men, I find I have a job whether I want one or not.

When I spoke to you I said that the Germans were winning in propaganda matters through boldness and the use of new techniques. This has also been largely true in their military activities. At the time I had been thinking that our weapons and tactics would have to come not only from the military minds but from the laboratories.

Perhaps you have heard of Dr. Melvyn Knisely, who has the chair of Anatomy at the University of Chicago. He is a remarkable scientist and an old friend of mine. Discussing with him the problem of the growing Nazi power and possibilities for defense against it, he put forth an analysis and a psychological weapon which seem to me so simple and so effective, that I think it should be considered and very soon. I would take it to some one less busy than you if I knew one with imagination and resiliency enough to see its possibilities.

What I wish to ask of you is this—Will you see Dr. Knisely and me in a week or ten days—see us privately and listen to this plan? Within half an hour you will know that we have an easily available weapon more devastating than many battleships or you will not like it at all. Afterwards—if you agree —we will discuss it with any one you may designate on the National Defense Council.

Please forgive this informality, but frankly, I don't know anyone else in authority whom I can address informally.

May I have a yes-no reaction to this letter at your convenience?

Sincerely yours,
John Steinbeck

Los Gatos
October 15, 1940

Dear Dook:

After a furious exchange of telegrams with Mexico City I guess I am going down on Friday as scheduled.

I'm very glad that you like the ranch. It is so beautiful that often I am embarrassed to be living here. I think it would be a better thing to visit than to own. But I haven't any sense of ownership about it anyway. If I think of owning, I consider it Carol's ranch and feel that I really am just visiting it.

The loneliness and discouragement are by no means a thing that has passed. In fact they seem to crowd in more than ever. Only now I can't talk to anyone much about them or even admit having them because I now possess the things that the great majority of people think are the death of loneliness and discouragement. Only they aren't. The last time I saw Chaplin (this don't repeat please but it is a part of the same thing) it was the night when the little lady [Paulette Goddard] was leaving him for good. And he said, “When I get this picture opened and all the formal things done, can I please go up to your ranch and kick all the servants out and just talk a little bit quietly about how lonely and sad I am? It will be self indulgence but I'd like to do it.” He is a good little man. And he knows so much better than I do the horrors of being a celebrity.