Authors: John Steinbeck

Steinbeck (9 page)

BOOK: Steinbeck

13.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

I was going rapidly and well on the new book, but this little encouragement is bound to have a stimulating effect. In addition Carol has a jobâ$50.00 a month. She is deliriously happy. She's wanted a job so badly.

Sincerely,
John

1932
to
1936

St
“...scared and baastful and humble...”

1932
The Pastures of Heaven
published.

1933
To
a
God Unknown
and the first two parts of
The Red Pony
published.

1934 His mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, died. A short story. “The Murder,” won O. Henry
prize.

1935 His father, John Ernst Steinbeck, died.
Tortilla Flat
published, his first success.

1936
In Dubious Battle
published.

Carol Steinbeck's job was in the laboratory of a friend who was already exerting a vital influence on Steinbeck's life and thinking: the marine biologist, philosopher, and ecologist, Edward F. Ricketts. Steinbeck had met him in 1930 and had passed many hours on Cannery Row in Monterey at his Pacific Biological Laboratory which collected and distributed West Coast biological specimens to institutions and individuals throughout the country. This laboratory was to become the background for several of Steinbeck's stories and novels, and Ricketts himself, under varying aliases, would appear as a character in them. He and Steinbeck collaborated on
Sea of Cortez
and maintained a close friendship till Ricketts's death in 1948.

To George Albee

Pacific Grove
[March] 1932

Dear George:

Thank you for sending the letter, you see I have nothing but the telegram and I have been afraid the thing had fallen through. The letter reassured me of its acceptance but was also slightly redolent of horse shit. If you believe all the nice things then you ought to believe all the nasty things that will be said later, and then they cancel each other out.

Carol is working now and loves it. She has two rattlesnakes and about 200 white rats to love. She introduced Tillie to the rats and they ignored each other.

I don't know why the publication of a book should impress you. I've met a number of people who publish books and judging from most of them, the fact of publication seems to make a horse's ass of a man. So forget about it. I've never heard of a book that made any money and I have no desire to speak before women's clubs. Waiting for these contracts has stopped my work a little, that's all. And you must remember that the moment Mr. Ballou buys a book it's his property and he has to think it wonderful or he can't sell it. That's the first principle of salesmanship: believe in your product no matter how rotten it is.

That's all

Affectionately
John

Robert O. Ballou, former literary editor of the Chicago
Daily News,
had joined the publishing firm of Cape and Smith a few years before. It had a distinguished roster of writers who were also published by the parent firm of Jonathan Cape in England. In 1932 company reorganization caused the firm to be rebaptized Jonathan Cape and Robert Ballou, Inc. It was at this point that contracts with Steinbeck for
The Pastures of Heaven
and two subsequent novels were signed.

To Amasa Miller

[Pacific Grove]
March 14, 1932

Dear Ted:

Your letter came this morning for which I thank you. I have read and signed these new contracts. Naturally they seem good to me. A crust would have seemed good. Ballou's letter was friendly. He seemed over-impressed with the book but that is probably his method of dealing with clients. From all I can learn (which is little) the house is a good, conservative old one. I should have gone on working for twenty years, but I must admit a little encouragement is a lifting thing for the spirit. I am about a third finished with the first draft of the new version of the Unknown God. I think I like it pretty well this time.

Darn it, I thought I had finished and mailed this. I just found it in a book. I'm sorry. My sister is up from Los Angeles and yesterday she presented me with a nice pair of riding breeches so I can ride with her. We are going out tomorrow. I'll probably be awfully sore but it will be good to cinch a beastie again. It must be over two years since I have had my feet in stirrups. A few months ago, after slight indulgence, I rode a colt bareback and unbridled, me in tweeds. If I'd been sober I'd have been tossed on my can but being pickled, I did a first rate rodeo and only came off when we went under a bush. The colt was trying to crawl into a gopher hole.

Affectionately,
John

To George Albee

Pacific Grove
[March] 1932

Dear George:

You'll be anxious to hear about these contracts. They seem to me a little crazy. There are three contracts, one for The Pastures of Heaven and one each for two later mss which are simply named by their succession. The publisher binds himself to publish the things sight unseen. If McIntosh hadn't assured me that he was a good business man I should think he was an angel trying to put some money on art. McIntosh says I will be allowed a drawing account against even the unwritten books. I don't imagine I shall take advantage of it. She also says that, since Jonathan Cape is an English firm, I am practically guaranteed English publication. Now doesn't the thing seem a little bit crazy?

All of this sounds impossible to me of course. Nothing so nice has ever happened to me. I still think the man is insane to buy books without seeing them. That's about all I can think of, I knew you'd want to know.

Affectionately,
John

Soon afterwards, Ted Miller sent the assignment of McBride's copyright.

“For myself I would hate to see the Cup reissued,” Steinbeck wrote him. “I've outgrown it and it embarrasses me. But my father talked continually about the copyright, which he thinks is valuable. Now that he has it in the safe, he is happier.”

In June Steinbeck replied to his publisher's request for publicity and biographical material.

To Robert O. Ballou

Pacific Grove
June
₁0, 1932

Dear Mr. Ballou:

Your telegram puts a burden of embarrassment on me. I have no reluctance toward writing an “unreticent story of my life.” Immediately there arises a problem of emphasis. Things of the greatest emphasis to me would be more or less meaningless to anyone else. Such a biography would consist of such things asâthe way the sparrows hopped about on the mud street early in the morning when I was littleâhow the noon bell sounded when we were writing dirty words on the sidewalk with red fuchsia berriesâhow Teddy got run over by a fire engine, and the desolation of lossâthe most tremendous morning in the world when my pony had a cold.

What you undoubtedly want is about two paragraphs of facts. I've forgotten so many of the facts. I don't remember what is true and what might have been true. It hasn't been a story to write about, you see. Nothing much has ever happened.

As for the pictureâI hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. I am sending you a photograph of a large drawing which I like. I hope it will do.

I can't say how much I wish this kind of thing weren't necessary. I feel like a man who has been to a horse race, and who is asked, “What were you doing while the race was on? What were you doing with your hands? How did your face look?” He wouldn't know, and I don't know.

There are some things I can prove. If I put them down, will you write this thing? And if you don't like any of it, you can make one up that you do like. It doesn't matter to me.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

Through this period Steinbeck had been working on another and final rewrite of
The Unknown God.
He customarily used a ledger for his writing. Sometimes this contained the manuscript itself and other times notes which preceded the day's work, and which he called his “daybook” or his “workbook.” At one time he wrote in used ledgers from his father's office, on the backs of pages already covered on one side with accounts. He actually bought the ledger in which
The Unknown God
was written, and it is more than likely that poverty at least partly dictated his choice of a bound book of pages instead of separate sheets of manuscript paper. Certainly it was poverty that caused his choice of ink. As he wrote Duke Sheffield:

“A year ago Holman's department store had an ink saleâink that had been so long in stock that it was as ripe and rich as Napoleon brandy, cobwebs on the bottles. Two bottles for five cents. I bought two and used them. On page 167 the green was exhausted and I went back, but the sale was over and I bought one bottle of blue for ten cents.”

This ledger of
The Unknown God
also marks the first time he directed the entire concept and approach of his work, not to a faceless and generalized audience, but to a single person. It would be his practice for the rest of his life.

To Carlton A. Sheffield

[Pacific Grove]
[1932

To Dockâ[fragments from a ledger]

When I bought this book, and began to fill it with words, it occurred to me that you might like to have it when it was full. You have that instinct so highly developed in magpies, pack-rats and collectors. I should like you to have this book and my reasons are all sentimental and therefore, of course, unmentionable. I love you very much. I have never been able to give you a present that cost any money. It occurs to me that you might accept a present that cost me a hell of a lot of work. For I do not write easily. Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.

Now as alwaysâhumility and terror. Fear that the working of my pen cannot capture the grinding of my brain. It is so easy to understand why the ancients prayed for the help of a Muse. And the Muse came and stood beside them, and we, heaven help us, do not believe in Muses. We have nothing to fall back on but our craftsmanship and it, as modern literature attests, is inadequate.

May I be honest; may I be decent; may I be unaffected by the technique of hucksters. If invocation is required, let this be my invocationâmay I be strong and yet gentle, tender and yet wise, wise and yet tolerant. May I for a little while, only for a little while, see with the inflamed eyes of a God.

I wonder if you know why I address this manuscript to you. You are the only person in the world who believes I can do what I set out to do. Not even I believe that all the time. And so, in a kind of gratitude, I address all my writing to you, whether or not you know it.

Now this book is finished, Dook. You will have to work on it; to help straighten out the roughness, to say where it falls short. I wish I valued it more so that it would be a better gift. It isn't nearly all I hoped it would be. I remember when I finished the earlier book of the same title. I took it to you and you said, “It is very good.” And I knew you knew it was terrible, and you knew I knew you knew it. And if this one is as bad I hope you will tell me. I've worked too hard on it. I can't tell much about it.

Anywayâthis is your book now. I hope you'll like to have it.

love,
John

To George Albee

Pacific Grove
September 27, 1932

On the 27 of September 1932 I borrowed from George Albee one hundred dollars on the slightly questionable collateral of a contract held by me from Brewer, Warren and Putnam. I promise to repay this one hundred dollars when contractual obligations are satisfied which is within two weeks of the twerlty-first of October, 1932.

Signed.
John Steinbeck

Brewer, Warren, and Putnam was the publishing house to which Robert Ballou had moved after the bankruptcy of his former firm. He took Steinbeck's contracts with him, but the only novel of Steinbeck's that the new firm would remain solvent long enough to publish in this Depression year would be
The Pastures of Heaven.

During a stay of several months in Southern California, Steinbeck continued to work on the final rewrite of
To
An
Unknown God.

To Robert O. Ballou

2527 Hermosa Avenue
Montrose, California
January 3, 1933

Dear Ballou,

Your letter came this morning together with one from Mc & O containing the belated check. It was a relief. Tillie, properly Tylie Eulenspiegel [who had recently died], was an Airedale terrier and a very beautiful one. She was beautifully trainedâcould point quail, retrieve ducks, bring in hares or clear a road of sheep. More important than these though, she had the most poignant capacity for interest and enjoyment in the world. It was much more important to us that she be alive than that people like Hearst and Cornelius Vanderbilt foul up the planet.
She
was house broken.

This book draws to a close. It will (if nothing happens) be ready to send before the end of February. I shall be very glad to have it done. I hope to God you'll like it. I have grave doubts. The title will be To A God Unknown. The transposition in words is necessary to a change in meaning. The unknown in this case meaning “Unexplored.”

This is taken from the Vedic hymns. I want no confusion with the unknown God of St. Paul.

That's all. Thanks again for routing out the check.

John Steinbeck

To Mavis McIntosh

Montrose
January 1933

BOOK: Steinbeck

13.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads