Steinbeck (89 page)

Oh! It's a grim and wonderful day. Nearly everything clouds can do, clouds are doing. In a while there will come a burst of rain and then it will be over. The weather is very formal.

A card from Terrence in Siena says they will be here Monday or Tuesday. They will have been out a month. They will be well informed, well travelled and filthy. They are supposed to wash their clothes as they travel. Boys of that age smell terrible. We'll probably have to isolate them until they are clean. But they have had adventures, some of which we will hear. If all goes well, we'll let them rest here for a week before we send them out again.

The little girls downstairs came boiling out last night, with much excitement because they had heard my name on television. It's the new status. People used to say—“It's true. I read it in the papers.” Now it has become “I heard it on television.” They were so excited that they could hardly talk.

Well it's good to have the yellow pads. I'm going to guard them now, in case I have something to write.

Love to all there
John

Capri
February 19, 1962

Dear Gadg:

Your letter received and will begin an answer but never know whether or when it will be finished.

I should think that Molly [Mrs. Kazan] wants to write something for the same reason that you want to make the pictures about your uncle. It may be the tearing desire to prove that we have been here at all. Such is our uncertainty that we have been. Here on Capri on the ruins of old, old walls and buildings you can find names or signs or initials, some of them thousands of years old. Even our kids carve their initials in things. Maybe that's their way to the same end—just to prove they were here at all. When the cave paintings are found, archeologists always build up some obscure religious emphasis. Maybe those people also were simply writing down their own experiences, to fix them out of time. I even have a name for the impulse. I call it the Fourth Dementia.

When this last illness struck me, it was like a moment of truth. All kinds of things got washed away and my eyes became much clearer because the fogs of purpose and ambition blew away. My own past work fell into place in relation to other people's work and none of it with few exceptions was as good as those cave paintings. So I will go on working because I like to, but it won't be like any work I have done before. It won't be like the way-out theater either. Those people are blinded with a petty hopelessness that has built a very feeble despair—a kind of nastiness. I think I'll write a play or something to be said, because I don't know what a play is—dolls on strings mouthing incomplete sentences. Words should be wind or water or thunder. We only learned to speak from what we heard and we've got too far from our sources. The prostate is too small a gland to be given center all the time.

Meanwhile, see if you think you need anything of me in your film. Maybe I'll be glad to help. But my impulse to carve my initials on time is definitely weakened and sometimes non-existent.

That's all for now. See you soon.

Yours,
John

Leto Hotel
Mykonos, Greece
May 28, 1962

Dear Elizabeth:

We are winding up here now. It is a beautiful place. As usual the boys are putting all their time in on their show-off tans for their girls.

Now this trip is over technically. Thom will fall in love twice more and on ship's food gain another ten lbs. John will preen and worry about his hair. Terrence will gadfly them with school work. But now an era is over. It must have been good. But we will not be together again in this sense. Actually we haven't been together much anyway but we have been able to call directions. Now they have to do something for themselves or not as the case may be. I have put this creative year into them and probably have bankrupted us to give them this chance. Now I have to try to pick up my own pieces. This is of course of no interest whatever to the boys nor should it be. But the era is changing for me as well as for them and I no more know my direction than do they.

I am very anxious to get back. It isn't homesickness. I just want to root down for a time, for a goodly time. The coming year is going to be one in which many decisions will have to be taken, some of them large. I want to be prepared for them.

Thom has developed a passion to go to Athens College—of course he hasn't a bat's chance of getting in. And yet there's something in this boy, which if released would do wonders. John has come out of it I think. We feel that he will sail ahead now. But old Thom is still his own unique enemy. It's the other thing, the strong creative thing that can't get loose. I don't think John has it at all. He has something much easier and better in terms of success—a facility. Well, we'll see.

But I'm glad we're coming home. It's time now. Outland places are losing their sharp outlines and becoming of a sameness.

 

Love to all there,
John

NEW YORK
OCTOBER 25, 1962

AM GRATEFUL AND HONORED AT THE NOBEL AWARD STOP I SHALL BE PLEASED TO GO TO STOCKHOLM

JOHN STEINBECK

[Sag Harbor]
[October 30, 1962]

Dear Bo and Greta:

Thank you for your wire. It found us in complete confusion. At first I thought I could keep up but now it is like one of those old-fashioned comedies when the character gets deeper and deeper into wet plaster. You will know that I will do what must be done and then retire to the old life. You know, I have always handled things myself and without a secretary but now we must call in help. The mail is coming in sacks. There is utterly no way to take care of it.

Anyway, we will go to Stockholm. Perhaps there will be no escaping to one of our old-fashioned singing and wine-drinking parties but I wish we could. We will not stay very long. Four or five days at the most. Where would you suggest that we stay. The Grand as before? I'm going to ask Bonniers [his Swedish publishers] to get someone to handle telephones, people etc. If this sounds overweening, it is because I have seen what happens here. When we went in to New York we were met by 75 reporters and cameramen and that was the worst day of the Cuban Crisis. This prize is a monster in some ways. I have always been afraid of it. Now I must handle it. I shall rely on you for advice.

Sunday night we saw you on “I remember Dag Hammarskjöld.” I thought it well done and that you were very good.

Anyway, we will be in touch. Do you mind if I ask that you be included in a luncheon at our Embassy?

Isn't all this silly? We'll laugh about it soon but right now it seems insufferable.

Love to you both
John

Sag Harbor
November I, 1962

Dear Dook:

When this literary bull-running is over, I can complete some kind of communication, castrated of self-consciousness.

One thing does occur to me. This prize is more negotiable than the America's Cup although both are the product of wind. Meanwhile pray for me some. I've always been afraid of such things. They can be corrosive. This is many times harder to resist than poverty.

love
John

Sag Harbor
[November 1962]

Dear Tal:

Yes, Ed would have grinned and done his mouse dance but also he would have put it in its proper place. And so do I. It is important but other things are more so. Such as that Thorn is finally on his way and doing wonders and so is John. I'm more pleased about that. Please send me Carol's address and her present name. She sent me the nicest wire and I'd like to answer it. All love from here. We've survived poverty and pain and loss. Now lets see if we can survive this.

John

Sag Harbor
[October 1962]

Dear John:

Well, I'll tell you this. It wouldn't have been nearly as good without your greeting. Not nearly.

Thanks, John. The thing is meaningless alone. But if my friends like it—suddenly it has some dignity and desirability.

Yours
John

Sag Harbor
October 31, 1962

Dear Howard and Edna:

I don't know what I've answered by now. There has been a mountain of mail. Friends write to me—“What are you going to say?” To Elaine, “What are you going to wear?” The boys reacted wonderfully. Young John made the best crack. He said—“In the words of Mr. Nobel—Bang!”

Love,
John

New York
January 8, 1963

Dear Ed Sheehan:

Thanks for your kind note.

You say you felt you had got the prize. That's exactly the way I felt when Ernest Hemingway got it. It was completely unreal when I got it—a kind of fantasy.

As for the outraged, forget it. I wonder whether they realize how completely they describe not me but themselves. I have known for years that criticism describes the critic much more than the thing criticized. That's as it should be. But I don't think they know it. I met ___ recently—a stooped, coyote-eyed man with small hands, fingers like little sausages and soft as those of an old, old lady. He caresses his fingers in his lap as though they were precious and in danger. To shake hands with him is like touching the teats of an old cow. I have only seen and felt hands like that on one other man—Gen. D. MacArthur. And he mostly wore gloves even in the tropics.

Yours
John Steinbeck

Sag Harbor
November i [1962]

Dear Bo:

I wrote you yesterday, and because my address book was in New York, I addressed it simply to Stockholm. I am sure you will get it though. Short of the King you are probably the best known man in Stockholm.

I am sending our schedule now. Elaine and I are arriving Stockholm airport SAS (Remember those pretty girls?) at 11:00 A.M. Dec. 8. There are four things I want or must do and I shall number them. And one thing I will not do and I shall number it.

And I guess that is all. I'm told that the Academy will arrange our hotel, probably the Grand.

Please write to me. We will have to make our private arrangements in advance because I am afraid the Stockholm business will be very public. How I wish you could paint a fourth and perhaps last portrait. But that takes time.

I am trying to think of everything in advance knowing my tendency to go haywire in crowds. It will be your job to help me lay off the schnapps. Remember the time I made passes at a Lesbian at a dinner party?

I'm putting a lot on you, but I would do the same for you.

You were my first sponsor in Sweden. Isn't it good that you still are.

Love to you both. And don't let me ask you to do anything you don't want to do.

John.

 

The Dag thing is important not for him but for me.