Steinbeck (29 page)

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Authors: John Steinbeck

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As for myself, and you say you are worrying about me—I would give up worrying. I am working as hard and as well as I can and I don't dare do anything else. I've been pretty near to a number of edges and am not away from them yet by any means but I find safety in work and that is the only safety I do find. There is no ego in my work and consequently there is no danger for me in it. All of it is extension. If it once became introverted I wouldn't last twenty-four hours. But I know that and thus I am able to take care of myself. When this work is done I will have finished a cycle of work that has been biting me for many years. Some one has to sit out these crises in the world and try to see them in perspective. Perhaps this book does that and perhaps it doesn't. But it does say by implication that the world will go on and that this isn't the first time.
My personal life is a curious thing which I won't permit myself to think about yet. I don't want it to get important until I have finished this work. And don't worry about my cracking up. I won't. You'll get the book and you won't be ashamed of it, I don't think, although you will probably be pretty much scorned and excoriated for having printed it. Because it does attack some very sacred things, but not at all viciously. Rather with good humour which may be much more devastating.
You say that you hope all will be well with me. That is a nice thing to hope although you know it won't and can't be. I haven't a hell of a lot more time but I have some. I make messes every where but I guess everyone does only with some people they don't show. So don't worry about me. I can see myself pretty objectively and the picture is a little silly.
love to you all
John
 
 
Among the reports on work and questions about business in letters of this period, there is always a paragraph that reflects his personal crisis. On June 24, to Elizabeth Otis, he wrote:
 
“Letters from Carol full of goodness and sweetness and they help a lot. I suspect that I am in such turmoil that I won't have anything to do with myself for a good long time. I don't have to as long as there is work to do. And after that there will be more work to do.”
 
And on July 4, to Pascal Covici, “still shaky” from having finished a first draft of
Sea of Cortez:
 
“Thanks for the thoughts. Certainly there is fulfillment here but the haunting is here too and I don't know when I will lose that. Maybe never. There are great changes in me, some for the better and some, socially at least, for the worse. Word comes to me from Hollywood that I am drinking myself to death and indulging in all kinds of vices. As a matter of fact, I am drinking very very little and if that other is a vice then I'm vicious. And I'm doing more work than I ever did. I love the things people say. See if the manuscript sounds like drinking.
“This book is very carefully planned and designed, Pat, but I don't think its plan will be immediately apparent. And again there are four levels of statement in it and I think very few will follow it down to the fourth. I even think it is a new kind of writing. I told you once that I found a great paltry in scientific thinking. Perhaps I haven't done it but I've tried and it is there to be done.”
To Elizabeth Otis
[Pacific Grove]
July 18, 1941
Dear Elizabeth:
We are working like beavers and should finish second draft about next Wednesday, that is of my part. Pat says he wants carefully corrected second draft rather than waiting three weeks for perfect third draft so we will send it to you as soon as it is corrected. I think it reads pretty well.
I am of course holding my breath about C. [Carol] I wish I could get over the horrors about her. It comes back and back in a blind blackness that is awfully sharp. There is only one possibility for me, only one in all of them, and that is that she should meet someone whom she could fall in love with, someone who is good and strong and good to her. If that doesn't happen the haunt is not going to be laid over. I know how much she needs help. God knows I'm no bargain. Probably as difficult to live with as anyone in the world. But I haven't been lately.
Throughout all of this people say and think that if I had just done so and so and if Carol had just done so and so it would have been all right. But there was no trick that would make it whole. It was a basic disagreement that went even into our cells. You can't get peace and unconscious understanding out of some trick of behavior. Well, enough of this. I'll try to work it out. I wonder why you think September is a critical month. I am making no plans except work plans because I think hell will pop and that before very long. But I'm sure I can take it now whatever happens. And that is a good thing to know. I wish I could lose the pictures of abject horror though. I wish you could come out.
The ranch is a worry. It just lies there and I can't bring myself yet to go back to it. Haven't had time of course but soon I must do it.
I hope you have a good vacation.
Love to you all.
John
 
 
The worries continued, obtruding themselves into all other preoccupations. At the end of September, he wrote Elizabeth Otis and Mavis McIntosh, apparently in response to a suggestion of the latter's:
“I really can't see any reason for my staying and ‘taking it,' because I've taken it many times and no good comes of it. So we had more or less planned to go East and then it was taken out of my hands. I had a request which amounts to a command to go to Washington for a conference. I had made certain suggestions. Then we will go on to New York. I may write my play there. [This is the first mention of the play that became
The Moon Is Down.
] I suppose it is cowardly to run away but if anything could be accomplished I would stay. I shall write Carol the truth—that I intended to go so that she would not be embarrassed and then that I had to go too. Galleys on the
Sea
started coming today and we'll whip them out. What will hurt more than anything else is that all our friends like Gwen. My sisters and all the acquaintances. And I guess that's all. I hope Carol can find some peace somewhere. She couldn't with me.”
Steinbeck and Gwendolyn Conger moved East at about this time, and his old friend and now his attorney, Webster Street, became for a while his most intimate correspondent.
To Webster F. Street IN MONTEREY
[c/o Burgess Meredith]
[Suffern, New York]
[October 18, 1941]
Dear Toby:
I should have written you before but I have been terribly rushed. I've been working on script and doing some work to try to get The Forgotten Village released and now at last I am up at Meredith's place and I'm working on a play. It is very beautiful up here and I am working and resting at the same time.
Thank you, Toby, for everything. I know I'm socially wrong —the wife deserter and cad—but I suddenly gave up. I tried for thirteen years, did everything I could and failed. Maybe a better man than I could succeed. I wasn't good enough. But maybe I'm good enough for someone else whose standards aren't quite so strict and who thinks in terms of giving as well as receiving. I don't want her feeling hurt about any of this.
Let her think anything of me she wants. She will want to think me bad or she can't think herself good and that doesn't matter to me. I'm neither bad nor good but some of both. I know how hard this is to handle, Toby. As to a divorce, that will have to come from her since she has committed no crime against the marriage and I have. That must be her decision since she is the wronged one. Let her take anything out of the house that she wants.
Love to you and
many thanks
John
To Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
c/o Burgess Meredith
Suffern, New York
[Late October 1941]
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt:
I want to thank you for your interest and help in the matter of the censorship of The Forgotten Village. I spoke with Miguel Covarrubias a day or so ago and he told me something of your help. I detest the application of the words “inhuman” and “indecent” to this film. It seemed to me that it was undertaken and carried out with considerable purity of motive.
Anyway, I am exceedingly grateful for your advocacy.
Very sincerely yours,
John Steinbeck
To Webster F. Street
[Bedford Hotel]
[New York]
November 17, 1941
Dear Toby:
Your letters to Gwen and me came last night and we were very glad to get them. I had been away all day working. This funny small hotel and the little kitchenette have become a haven for us. Very few people know we are here. It is mostly thought that we live in the country and we do often enough to keep up the illusion. It's rather a pleasant room.
I finished my play and heard it read and the last act is very sour and has to be done over. I started and suddenly got one of those gray barriers that come from overwork. So I took two days off. I went to the meeting of the Board of Regents and heard the arguments about The Forgotten Village and I think they will uphold the censorship, not because of the picture but because the censor board is an authoritative committee and to interfere with its findings would be to weaken its prestige.
I have seen [Herman] Shumlin one day and [Oscar] Serlin another day and I'm seeing another producer this afternoon. None of them have read the play yet. No one may want it. And I really don't care very much. There's no imminence. I have now four irons in the fire. The Play—which has no name yet, The Forgotten Village, The Red Pony, The Sea of Cortez, and one new one. All of them may crash for all I know. But I feel singularly free and a little wild. I don't know why. Something in the air, something crazy. I might even go and buy a suit and a red dress for Gwen.
 
Monday
It was a little wild. I got two dresses for Gwen and ordered three suits. My clothes were falling off me and I needed them. Gwen wrote you Saturday. Did she tell you the Regents reversed the censor board and The Forgotten Village can now open?
Very low today. Went out in the country yesterday but I didn't drink much. One of my periodic lownesses. I don't have them terribly often any more. And this one will go. Sense of frightful complication and confusion and fun. Well, I'll finish my play this week anyway and it may be absolutely no good. But at least I am a little rested from it.
Guess that's all right now. I have a sense that something terrible is about to happen but that is not very unusual for me.
 
Love,
John
 
 
At this point, Gwendolyn Conger changed the spelling of her name to Gwyndolyn, and is henceforth referred to as Gwyn.
To Webster F. Street
[New York]
November 25, 1941
Dear Toby:
Two good letters from you and made us feel good to get them. We spent our Thanksgiving in a hotel room, Gwyn with a cold. At last the cold weather is here so the colds can go. I don't know why that is so but it is. I deplore your doglessness in beach walking. You should have your own personal dog marked private or clipped private.
The play? It's about a little town invaded. It has no generalities, no ideals, no speeches, it's just about the way the people of a little town would feel if it were invaded. It isn't any country and there is no dialect and it's about how the invaders feel about it too. It's one of the first sensible things to be written about these things and I don't know whether it is any good or not.
 
He was writing broadcasts for what was to become the Office of War Information.
 
I have to go to Washington to do some work in about a week. May have to move there which is terrible because of the housing shortage; but the work is to be done and I have to do it. So there's no lack of work. In fact I have a wonderful idea for a book I'd like to work on. It's wonderful how much work I can do. I'll see that you get a copy of the book, the Sea I mean when it comes out. They haven't even got manufactured books yet.
[unsigned]
To Webster F. Street
[New York]
December 8, 1941
Dear Toby:
Last afternoon was the attack on Honolulu. Wasn't that a quick one? We'll take some pretty brutal losses for a while I'm afraid, but I think the attack, whatever it may have gained from a tactical point of view, was a failure in that it solidified the country. But we'll lose lots of ships for a while. I'm going to work very soon now. Got an extension for purposes of this play. Its new title is The Moon Is Down and it should go into some kind of production this week. I just finished the play script last night.
The reviews of The Sea of Cortez are extremely good and lively. Tomorrow I'll send you one. I wonder whether I should send one to Carol? I sent her a carbon and she never mentioned it to me and she told Pat it wasn't any good. What do you think? What would hurt her least—to get it or not to get?
I wonder whether they picked up my [Japanese] gardener. I guess they will before very long. I suppose if they do you might just as well lock up the house. I wish you would sell the truck. There isn't any reason to keep it that I can think of. I'm taking a job which will probably be for the duration and there is no need to hang on to that truck. I'll keep my car though. I'll try to put things in pretty good shape before I get into the work. I may have a day or a week or a month. But I'll let you know and where I can be reached. Things move fast.
Love,
John
To Webster F. Street
[Bedford Hotel]
New York
January 12, 1942
Dear Toby:
I'm up a little earlier than usual so maybe I'll be able to write you a letter without being interrupted. I've been working on my play, testing lines and words and scenes and Lee Strasberg the director has been here every day. The trouble with Shumlin was very simple. He didn't want the kind of play I had written and he did want another kind of play. Serlin does want this kind of play. Maybe it's no good but it is this way. And I'm very tired of it. I should get it all done this week.

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