Steinbeck (33 page)

It's nice sitting in here by the fire and cold as hell outside. I'm working on a funny little book that is fun and it is pretty nice [possibly Cannery Row]. I don't even go to movies. The crowds are so great everywhere and you get pushed around so much that I don't bother to try any more.

 

Well—we'll be back before too long.

'Bye,
John

New York
January 10, 1944

Dear Sirs:

I have just seen the film Lifeboat, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and billed as written by me. While in many ways the film is excellent there are one or two complaints I would like to make. While it is certainly true that I wrote a script for Lifeboat, it is not true that in that script as in the film there were any slurs against organized labor nor was there a stock comedy Negro. On the contrary there was an intelligent and thoughtful seaman who knew realistically what he was about. And instead of the usual colored travesty of the half comic and half pathetic Negro there was a Negro of dignity, purpose and personality. Since this film occurs over my name, it is painful to me that these strange, sly obliquities should be ascribed to me.

John Steinbeck

MEXICO CITY
FEBRUARY 19, 1944

PLEASE CONVEY THE FOLLOWING TO 20TH CENTURY FOX IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT MY SCRIPT FOR THE PICTURE LIFE BOAT WAS DISTORTED IN PRODUCTION SO THAT ITS LINE AND INTENTION HAS BEEN CHANGED AND BECAUSE THE PICTURE SEEMS TO ME TO BE DANGEROUS TO THE AMERICAN WAR EFFORT I REQUEST MY NAME BE REMOVED FROM ANY CONNECTION WITH ANY SHOWING OF THIS FILM

 

JOHN STEINBECK

330 East 51st Street
New York
April 12 [1944]

Dear Dook:

It has been a very long time of not writing and not hearing. During my fuss in California I rather purposely cut myself off because I didn't see any reason for putting a very unhappy thing on other people and then the war came along and I got mixed up in it. You will laugh to think that for a year and a half I tried to get into the army but was blackballed from this largest club in the world. I am very glad of it now but at the time I was very sad about it. Had I succeeded I would either have been guarding a bridge in Santa Fé or writing squibs for the Santa Ana Air Force Monitor. As it is I've had a look at the war, too much of a look I guess.

Having some strange symptoms which continued, I went to a doctor last week and found that both ear drums had been burst and that there are probably little vesicles burst all over my body, in the head and under the skin and in the stomach. He says that in some cases where post mortems have been performed the vesicles even in the marrow of the bones were found to be burst. Anyway it will take from a year to two years for the little clots to absorb and it just has to be weathered. I can hear quite well now so the drums are healing or are healed but the others, the nervousness, dreams, sleeplessness etc. have to take their own time. I took a very bad pasting in Italy but oddly enough was not hit at all. It occurs to me that there are about fifty thousand men who are having the same trouble. There is going to be a frightening amount of it after the war.

We are living in an apartment at the above address and Gwyn is going to have a baby in July which makes me very glad. Then I am going to make a picture in Mexico
[The Pearl
] next winter and after that we hope to get back to California. I am very homesick for it. The kid will be old enough to travel by next winter so we will take a house and work out of it. The film is to be made in Lower California with an all-Mexican cast and director and money. It should be a lot of fun. We just got back from a couple of months down there. I hadn't realized how tired I was until I went into a partial collapse and just sat and watched things for two solid months. Had intended to do some writing but had no heart for it.

Now I am back at work and working every day on a silly book that is fun anyway. We have here the lower part of an old brownstone with a yard and we have a sheep dog who is as crazy as all my dogs are. If in New York at all this is a pleasant place to live. It doesn't at all look like a New York apartment and it does have a yard. And like most people who live here a while, we rarely go out of our neighborhood. This is the most insular town. Little islands of people who never go out of their districts. It is very different in the west although you always stuck very close to home.

I wish that you would let me hear the things that have happened to you and what you are doing.

Ours is a comfortable relaxed house and we like each other very much and that is a good thing. I didn't know it was possible. And this might be a very good baby because of that easiness and relaxation. I am looking forward to it with great pleasure.

The war news is good but I know how it is warped by the papers. When we were winning great victories in Italy and marching triumphantly on the Germans, we were actually getting the shit shot out of us. And I remember one report how we had broken through the German lines. Actually what happened was that Jerry retreated during the night and we couldn't find him, and that's how we broke through his lines. But there were some strange and wonderful things that happened too, things to be told later. But to tackle the cosmic foolishness of war is beyond me and I just get tired thinking about it.

Do write and let me know all the things that have happened in the great blank. I'd like so much to hear.

as always
jon

[New York]
July 4, 1944

Dear Toby:

I have been working madly at a book [
Cannery Row
] and Gwyn has been working calmly at a baby [Thom Steinbeck] and it looks as though it might be a photo finish. That should be a good omen if you like omens.

It has been a very cool summer so far, thank God. We'll catch it later but it would be bad for Gwyn now. She will be about ready in another week. And still she isn't puffy. In fact she is prettier than ever and she is very calm and nice. It has been a very good pregnancy.

Working at home today. I have been working over at the Viking office.

Ed writes that he had a vacation and spent it in the library at Berkeley. He seemed in good shape and in good spirits. It has been hard to do a book because I've had to work for the treasury and the army too and it is kind of sneaking a book out. But it is a kind of fun book that never mentions the war and it is a relief to work on.

It is a long time since I have heard from you. Do things go all right? I haven't been drinking anything because of work and because Gwyn lost her taste for it and it is no fun alone. Maybe we'll pick it up when the baby arrives.

The war goes well, doesn't it—the fighting part of it anyway. The Russians will win it pretty soon perhaps.

Well anyway let me hear from you.

John

NEW YORK
AUGUST 2, 1944

BOY NAMED THOM SIX POUNDS TEN OUNCES BOTH DOING SPLENDIDLY

 

JOHN

[New York]
August 25, 1944

Dear Toby:

This has been a busy and an exciting time. Thom seems to be a baby-shaped baby and I like him very much. There isn't much to like about him yet. He just eats and sleeps and shits but I can think of worse kids. Gwyn is still a little peaked but is on the mend now. We're planning to go out there about the ist of October. Our lease is up here and we won't renew. Probably rent a house until we find the place we want. Have lots of energy and a good desire to get to work. I think getting back will be good for me.

We may settle up the valley or on the coast but we'll take a long time looking first. And I don't want a place so big or so complicated that I can't leave it some months out of the year either. This has been a good fiat. The nicest and most comfortable I have seen in New York, but I surely don't want to live here.

I have a good feeling about going back. Hope nothing overturns it. And I do want to sit on the rocks and fish and not catch anything.

Thom is a good healthy kid with red hair and blue eyes and he can't see yet but there's nothing to look at anyway.

We'll be seeing you before too long.

‘Bye,
John

New York
September 27, 1944

Dear Dook:

The apartment is all torn up now. We are getting out—going back to Monterey. I've rented two small houses down the coast—one to live in and one to work in. I've had a wonderful sense of going home but just lately I'm a little scared. Probably the same thing as your saying you aren't at ease with me. There must have been a change in me and in everyone else. I'd like to settle there if I can. Gwyn and baby are flying out and I am driving a second hand Buick station wagon with household goods. I'll make it in six to eight days with luck.

 

There's so much horse shit about babies; schools change every ten years. Mary raised a couple of nice ones by forcing them to be considerate or leave the room so I think it can be done. And this fatherhood is interesting but also surrounded by horse shit. I think people act the way they're expected to act. I see nothing remarkable in this child at all. He's going to be reasonably pleasant looking and he has all his members and is healthy. And because he is healthy he doesn't cry unless he is hungry. If I can I'm going to build a cell for him because that's where they belong for several years. They are mean little animals. And that is that. Neither of us are gaga but we're very glad to have him and we'll have some more.

I finished the book called Cannery Row. It will be out in January. If Pat Covici sends me an extra proof I'll send you one. I don't know whether it is effective or not. It's written on four levels and people can take what they can receive out of it. One thing—it never mentions the war—not once. I would be anxious to know what you think of it. You'll find a lot of old things in it. I find I go back to extensions of things we talked about years ago. Maybe we were sounder then. Certainly we were thinking more universally. The crap I wrote over seas had a profoundly nauseating effect on me. Among other unpleasant things modern war is the most dishonest thing imaginable.

Anyway, from October 15 until Xmas I am going to try to do a script for a picture to be made in Mexico
[The Pearl],
all Mexican direction and acting and even Mexican money. Then in January, I'll go down and watch them make it. It is a chance to do an honest picture and I am going to try it. I have complete control of the picture and very good people are involved in it.

Within a year or so I want to get to work on a very large book I've been thinking about for at least two years and a half. Everything else is kind of marking time. Work is still fun and still work. It hasn't ever got any easier.

After all these years I'm learning to use a pencil and to write big. One of those incredible things happened the other day. When I was off the coast of Italy I went with British torpedo boats for a while—raiding the shipping at Gaeta and Genoa and over between Corsica and Sardinia before they were taken. I had a little school note book and one night we were off Genoa and I was below making some notes and an alert sounded so I went on deck and it was pitch black. Then all of a sudden a flak ship started firing on us and I hit the deck because tracers scare hell out of you and the boat started running and twisting. Well that was the last I saw of my note book. Recently it arrived in the mail from England. Sent by the Ministry of Information. I suppose it got stuck in the slats some place and the skipper sent it in. Now I remember that skipper. He was 26 and his name was Greene-Kelly. He was killed eight months ago when he attacked two E boats. He sunk one and crippled the other and then two more came down on him and sunk him. But my note book got back.

You can reach me through the lab. I'll write you the other address when I know it. It will be a rural box number. Meanwhile, I'll hope to see you soon.

bye
John