Steinbeck (81 page)

There are people who would like to contract for writing about it in advance. But since I don't know what it will be, I think any agreement might have a governing effect and I should want to see and hear what is there, not what I expect to be there. I nearly always write—just as I nearly always breathe. So there will be writing in it but I don't know what. That's one of the reasons I am so excited about it. I will not shape it. It must make its own form.

It is still very early in the morning. I get up at dawn, make a thermos of coffee and come out to my little work house on the point where I stay until I am finished. I never answer the phone and rarely answer a letter.

One thing is so—I must finish Winter before I start on Windmills. That is fixed. And I will, barring the unforseen.

That's all, Pat. I'm not good nor thoughtful but I do work and am working.

love
John

[Sag Harbor]
June 21, 1960

Dear Frank:

At the risk of being impertinent, I am well. How are you?

My book goes ahead. Books are such strange animals and this one particularly strange and willful. Sometimes it surprises and shocks me. I'm pleased with it but I don't want anyone to see it before it is finished.

 

I got that far and went to my yellow pad of pain and behold it was another day. And a new letter came in from you on the paper of the Lancaster which did give me a wrench in the stomach of longing for Paris. But I know now there's going to be no respite in my life for this longing to be one place or another. There it is like a lumpish
“thing
.
”
What was the name of the “thing” in Peer Gynt? Always in the path. You couldn't go over nor under nor around. There are so many of those things in the path. Sometimes I weary deeply because many of the things in the path have no business being there at all except for their own advantage.

I hope you liked Copenhagen. I love that town and have many fine friends there. I'd rather sit in Tivoli than almost anywhere I know, and to come sailing into Elsinore or Helsingör in the early morning is a fairy experience full of dream reality. Once I saw Hamlet there—in 1936 with a budding Olivier and a dewy-faced Leigh, and it rained and they got wet and called the show and I and four thousand Danes demanded our money back.

I am very much interested in your darting thinking about the something of great price [
The Pearl,
another Steinbeck work that Loesser was contemplating turning into a musical]. It is so strange because you have to make another language. If I write whatever it is I write and do it well, the show goes on in back of the reader's eyes and I can use his experience for sets and his memories for props and his desires for certain lines. But once you put it on stage, the audience makes you prove everything. And you are right—faces they can't see—lines they only half listen to and you must force their attention and keep it through rustle and cough and what dinner they ate and can they get to a bar and back at intermission and can they lay the girl they brought. It's tough. But when it works, you have them as they are not had in any other medium.

I used the gesture of stroking the braid of hair because once in Mexico I saw a fine fierce man sitting on the steps of a straw jacal. A girl lay on her back, her head in his lap and with such an infinite tenderness and yet with great skill, he combed the black and shining waterfall of her hair. Her mouth was half open with pleasure and her eyes closed, and it seemed to me I had never seen nor felt anything so beautiful and I wished that some day I could be a part of such a closeness, but of course I never can nor will. Maybe it's enough to have seen it. Some things there are that continue happening forever. I can see them now, his left hand supporting the hair, his right hand combing, and I can see her breast rise high and fall as though the air she breathed had taste and texture, as though the light around them was beloved. That hair was combed over twenty years ago and it is still being combed. There are immortal things you know.

I read in the paper that a Beefeater on battlement duty at “Caesar's ill-erected tower” was apprehended playing “It must be jelly 'cause jam don't shake like that” on a guitar. How I would have loved to see that. I'll bet he played it lousy. Once in Green Park I heard the regimental band of Irish Grenadiers play “St. Louis Blues.” It was a strange, puzzling performance. One wonders why it was chosen.

Why don't you go down to Somerset where we lived last year? Glastonbury is one of the most moving places I know.

You can see the restlessness I know now I'll never get over. I want to be everywhere at once. Perhaps I am lucky in my trade because in a way I can be. Just now I saw the half-arches of Glastonbury rising to be completed by the eye.

I like your letters. They dart like chipmunks but they tell me what you want to say. And there's no greater joy than what you're doing—putting together something new, something the world never said before out of the rubble of the world. I'm doing the same thing. Why should I envy you?

Love to Ducks,
John

Sag Harbor
June 29, 1960

Dear Adlai:

Forgive the pencil as I forgive those who trespass against me.

Two little sequences occur to me.

“Harding had his Teapot Dome; Eisenhower his Kishi; and Richard Nixon—(‘Treason!' cried the Speaker)—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.”

“He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly companionable when he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill; despitious and cruel, not for evil will always, but after ambition and either for the surety or increase of his estate.” No, it's not Poor Richard. It's Holinshed on Richard Crook-back. Perhaps it is an accident that the names are the same —but the theme of Richard III will prove prophetic—Blood will get blood and evil can only father evil. Damn it, those boys knew what they were talking about.

About every two years I rediscover the Sonnets with wonder. Always fresh, always with increased meaning. May I suggest for your refreshment and a kind of shining joy that you go alone and read aloud to your listening heart #54.

or the great 29, “When in disgrace—” or 25, “Let those who are in favor with their stars—” or 6 or 14. But as you know, it's like a dictionary, one leads to another.

Do you not find that in the litter of a day, it is a kind of poultice to go back to beauties beautifully arrived at? I had from my father a tiny volume of Marcus Aurelius, the sovereign Meditations. It was pocket size and had been so pocketed that the title was worn off and the edges of the covers soft as sponge. In the insanity of divorce, my wife who was not insane, kept all my books. I got to brooding about that one. A new copy would not do, and one day, visiting my boys, I stole it from the shelf and stuffed it in my pocket. I have many sins but theft is not one of them. I guess it is the only thing I remember to have stolen since apples long ago. And I feel little guilt. In the fly leaf in my father's hand is written—“John, when you are troubled, open this anywhere.” And if I were in New York I would try to find you a small pocket copy. I know you have one but this is a dear book of the mind and very good to carry with you, a strong drink after a weary day, and a reassurance that somewhere in us there is a noble taint.

If I am solemn today, it is because I have a litany to write, and somehow jokes glance off an holy shield.

But tomorrow I'll be a mug again.

You do sound free. It's wonderful.

Yours,
John

Sag Harbor
July 1, 1960

Dear Pat:

I guess it is characteristic that I am writing a book called Winter in July. But, maybe it's all right because the line goes, you remember—Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.

The scene I work on today falls on July 1st, 1960. The date of the last and final scene will be July 10, 1960. I've never done that before. I am writing not only about this time but this time to the exact day. This is no trick. The story hinges on this date. And the date has fallen right into my lap.

I appreciated your letter. Few people know how completely the attention must be concentrated, and it is. Family, friends, duties must be put aside for the time being. I go through the motions of being a husband, father, man, householder like a sleepwalker. It must be very hard to live with but Elaine is very patient with me. It's a dreadful thing to say, but if it happened that she weren't—it wouldn't change anything. I have thought that perhaps the failure of my first two marriages might have been caused by the fact that most women can't live with a Zombie.

I've made a little change in method which is very great. I used to get the papers in the morning and read them before I went to work. Now I get up at six, hear fifteen minutes of news and go directly to work unconfused and undeflected. This simple thing works so well that I shall never go back to the other. I read the papers in the evening, after work.

This is an egocentric letter but I thought you might like to know these things. You say it isn't a novel. Maybe you're right. It's not a novel like any I have seen or read or heard of, but as far as I know a novel is a long piece of fiction having form direction and rhythm as well as intent. At worst it should amuse, at half-staff move to emotion and at best illuminate. And I don't know whether this will do any of those things but its intention is the third.

That's all. Write to me.

yours
John

Saint Johnsbury, Vermont
September 24, 1960
Sunday evening

Dear Bogworthy:

I didn't get you written last night as I thought 1 might. There was the yearly Pow-Wow when the new boys are taken into the two tribes. It was beautiful—big bonfire, and Thurston Chase in a war bonnet looks exactly like Thurston Chase in a war bonnet, glasses and all and speaking Longfellow Indian. I swear it. He wrote it himself in Hiawatha hexameters, and it was as sublimely dreadful as anything I ever heard.

The first boy I saw on arrival was Cat [now fourteen]. Rocinante was in the parking lot and everybody came to it—all the teachers and Mrs. Chase, and I made them coffee. It was fine. John acted as master of ceremonies, passed cups and canned milk. At one time there were twelve people—three on each side of the table and six standing. Then I was asked to lunch and went, sat at John's table.

He told me he was working hard, and he said he was beginning to enjoy it. He loves biology, and he kept talking the kind of French we did at Sag, and when we sent you the photograph he wrote the French himself. We talked well and easily and he was genuinely glad I had come. I got him back at 3 for soccer practice and watched that.

Charley and I had onion soup in the truck and after the Pow-Wow they let John go out with me. We went to a doleful little roadside place and had a steak—a bad one. I got him back at 9:30 and went up and camped in an orchard at the hilltop farm. Went to sleep and overslept so that I barely made church.

I think John was pleased and proud that I came. For one thing he had just been elected head of the band committee and was wearing his red eagle—the first one he ever got, and then he knew that he has been doing well in school. We liked each other and were easy together and that's the best. And so I left him with good feeling all around and I'm crazy about him.

I've had a reluctance about writing about the trip so far but I know now it was because the trip hadn't started until this noon. John is nuts about you. I think notes from you will be very valuable to him. I am going to write him every few days. He feels very close now and needs to.

And of course I adore you.

The country up here is just beginning to burst into flame. It was thirty here last night—in Vermont, I mean. Tomorrow I'll get as close to Deer Isle as I can without pounding. Talking with people is easy because everyone loves the truck. And Charley is a big hit. He takes his guarding very seriously and sticks very close. And he prances around like a puppy. As I get farther out, people have more opinions. But it isn't “talk back to the Russians”—it's more—“Let's figure what they're up to before we talk back.” And this is healthy.

I've been gone just two days and it seems forever.

That's all for now, my love.

Charley sends a wag. And me too—

Me

Deer Isle, Maine
September 27, 1960
Wednesday morning

Dear Sonya:

It's fairly early. Fog among the trees and the water observed. Yesterday saw the island and talked to people. Had lobster for dinner last night. Got to bed early. The nights cold. Have discovered the insulated underwear makes wonderful pyjamas, toast warm. Charley loves this. Sleeps in the cave under the bed. Wall to wall carpeting is there. Had to take it up. Got too dirty. Yesterday repacked Rocinante. I had loaded it like a boat. This is wrong. Different motion. Had to learn. I don't know whether or not I will go on today. Must think. Maybe that's what I came to do. Except near the cities, the roads are unpopulated and empty and no one moves about in the villages much. Charley sticks near the truck like a fly. He is sitting in the pine needles right outside the door now. This is his favorite kind of life. What stories he will have.