Steinbeck (99 page)

That was a Friday and the memorial as well as the funeral were for Monday. Friday night the President called and asked me to go to Camp David for the weekend. I explained that I couldn't because I had to go to the service at the UN. He said, “Don't jump the gun so, I want you and Elaine to go to Bloomington on Monday with me.”

He knew exactly what he was doing, and I think he does me the honor of realizing that I would also know. He knew he had mistreated Guv for the last few years and he was trying to make it up. But he also knew that he would be more acceptable to the Stevenson family if Elaine and I went with him, because there had never been any question about where I stood in the Stevenson matter. Anyway I made another attempt to get out of it and he said, “I want to talk to you.”

I think you can feel that a Presidential request has somehow the quality of an order.

Anyway we drove to New York at midnight arriving at three. Got up at six and went out to La Guardia to get the ten o'clock plane for Washington. A White House car met us and we whisked in at a quarter to twelve. We left for Camp David at five in the chopper from the lawn.

I had never been to Camp David. It is only twenty minutes from the White House lawn by helicopter. It is very beautiful, a kind of large camp in a deep oak forest on top of a mountain, cool and sunny and wonderful. You can see out over the mountains to Gettysburg. There are individual cabins among the trees so that there is complete privacy. The main lodge is very simple and very comfortable and most meals are taken on a huge veranda overlooking the valley. There is a trout stream and about a hundred yards away a big swimming pool. There is also a bowling alley and a small putting green put in by Eisenhower.

 

At that point an interruption occurred. Do you remember “a person from Porlock” who interrupted the poem “In Xanadu did Kubla etc.”? The poem never got finished.

Mr. Stevenson's funeral was a matter for wordless memory. Tens of thousands of people lining the roads and his casket was the loneliest thing—set off and cut off from everything. The Unitarian service was bleak and grudging. I wanted for him something like the William Byrd mass. Right there I found myself almost saying “I am not a sentimental person—” Haw! My criticism is that this was not sentimental enough. An Irish wake was indicated. Strange how selfish one becomes about one's friends. Elaine is smarter than I am about such things. Once I said to her, “I don't want the barbarity of a funeral for myself.” And she said, “Don't be silly. A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.” Now this makes so much sense to me that I have never mentioned it again. There's a realist talking. Anyway, we got home Monday night. We had been on 8 different air craft since that morning.

My work goes very slowly. I seem to have many “persons from Porlock.” Maybe it's that I don't want to do it. We do fool ourselves.

 

Today is August 12. Elaine's birthday is the 14th, Saturday. I gave her a little swimming pool. Just completed and very pretty. I also made a stepping stone and incised it with Launcelot's last words to Gwinevere—“Ladye, I take reccorde of God, in thee I have myn erthly joye.” The pool couldn't be a surprise. You can't sneak a bulldozer on the lawn.

There are times when I wish desperately that you were here to talk to. There are things I can't discuss with anyone else. Something is coming up soon. And I can't discuss it with anyone and I don't quite know what to do about it. [At Camp David the President had asked Steinbeck to go to Vietnam and report to him.] You know how there are things you don't want to do, but you know that failure to do them will make you miserable. Well, I've got a bad one of those. It isn't one of those things you can avoid by doing nothing either. Everything I can think of is against doing it and yet I am afraid I'm going to have to. Damn! I wish I could be decisionless. I won't write it so I don't know why I brought it up. But I do wish I could talk to you. You wouldn't know the answer. The answer is—don't do anything you don't have to do. But it's that have which is so tricky. It always has the concealed card.

 

Now—so many sentences start with now—it is the next day and a beautiful one full of gold and sun and another day. I've beat around bushes and at last must face the last chapter about The Americans—a most difficult one.

This morning I awakened early, full of continued thinking out of sleep. You know that slow and sometimes excellent thinking. You will understand my reluctance to start when I tell you, this section is to deal with morals—not goody-goody morals—but pragmatic morals. I have floundered about with it because it has been such a fragmented subject and I want to put the pieces together. But who am I talking to—Americans? Europeans? or myself. My shadow-of-a-dream thinking said—“Why don't you write it to Dook and keep a copy? His skepticism will put a bridle on you and the direction will force you to be clear.” Most dream thinking will not stand daylight scrutiny, but this one does. So I will shift pencils so I can keep a carbon and fling my chapter at you. And maybe you will help me with it if I should get out of line. So I will close and send this letter to you and instantly start another to you, comprising this essay—and I would love to have your comments.

Meanwhile love to you.

John

[Sag Harbor]
[May 18, 1966]

Dear Max:

Johnny [Catbird] is with us for part of his terminal leave and he has told us about Jack's death. We didn't know. I am shocked and sad. And I am concerned that I was not able to say good-bye to him. He would have hated that but there it is.

You know how it is, Max—there are some people who are permanent whether they are here or not and Jack is one of them. His small and humorous complaints, his bristling temper, and always funny.

It seems to me that not only do we die little by little in our friends, but that a time and a place also dies slowly like the closing iris of a camera.

Love to you both,
John

Sag Harbor
May 28, 1966

Dear Mr. President:

I am grateful to you for receiving my son and me. It meant a great deal to both of us and I am sure that seeing you reassured him that responsibility is behind him and backing him. He had never been to Washington before. From the plane I took him first to the Lincoln Memorial. He stood for a long time looking up at that huge and quiet figure and then he said, “Oh! Lord! We had better be great.”

You will understand that I am pleased with this boy and proud. He knows what he wants and must do. He is thoroughly trained to do it. He is proud of his uniform and proud of his country. He goes very soon now, and as you must know, my heart goes with him. And I will ask you, Sir, to remember your promise to pray for him.

I know that you must be disturbed by the demonstrations against policy in Vietnam. But please remember that there have always been people who insisted on their right to choose the war in which they would fight to defend their country. There were many who would have no part of Mr. Adams' and George Washington's war. We call them Tories. There were many also who called General Jackson a butcher. Some of these showed their disapproval by selling beef to the British. Then there were the very many who denounced and even impeded Mr. Lincoln's war. We call them Copperheads. I remind you of these things, Mr. President, because sometimes, the shrill squeaking of people who simply do not wish to be disturbed must be saddening to you. I assure you that only mediocrity escapes criticism.

Again my thanks to you, Sir. You gave my boy a pediment of pride, and that a good soldier must have.

As always, faithfully,
John Steinbeck

Sag Harbor
June 9, 1966

Dear Elizabeth:

As usual, I sit down to write up a novel—and utter panic sets in. All the lovely plans and techniques run away and hide. I haven't the slightest idea what a novel is. A piece of fiction longer than a bread box is as close as I can come.

Then—what is fiction? Is it a true thing that didn't happen as opposed to a false thing that did?

Ninety percent of the items in the morning paper could not be used in a novel because they are false. Can it be that the present popularity of non-fiction lies in the fact that it can recount things not acceptable to fiction readers? Or could it be that fact interpreted becomes fiction. I don't know. The story I want to write is not a new one. I came across it first in the second grade and so did you. I've even taken my title from the first line—“And a piece of it fell on my tail.”

This may well be the most widely read story in the English language.

As I remember it—a character named Henny-Penny comes kayoodling and howling out of a cabbage patch. H-P is in a state of shock. The story has the best opening in all literature —“The sky is falling,” cried Henny-Penny, “and a piece of it fell on my tail.”

Now there is no question that H-P truly believes that the sky is falling. On the other hand, we in the second grade knew it was not falling because it never had fallen—a conclusion in logic far from tenable. By H-P's very statement it is established that H-P is a fool, and more, an hysterical fool. This is the quickest establishment of character I know.

Our instant perception is verified almost immediately by a person named Chicken Little—an adolescent endowed with the clear vision, the iron nerves and the logical precision of youth. “‘Twas not the sky,” said Chicken Little. “It was a piece of cabbage leaf.”

In the second grade we, who identified ourselves with clear-eyed Chicken Little, chuckled with pleased recognition. H-P was obviously that nervous and wrong-headed adult we knew so well who screamed at us that if we got our feet wet we'd catch our death. H-P was obviously a feather-brained crier of havoc, an alarmist. In the whole second grade there wasn't one kid who felt anything but contempt for H-P. We were all Chicken Littlers. No, that's wrong. Dorothy Donahue, come to think of it, was an H-P'er. It was Dorothy who always said, “If four of you get on that raft it will sink.” Well, so it did. So what? That's what she was—a Henny-Penny, and probably still is.

In the second grade and in the whole world, I guess, no one has ever come to the defense of Henny-Penny. And that should give us some idea of the nature of human observation. “What is” cannot compete with what we want it to be. We wanted H-P to be wrong and as we read, so did the writer of the story.

But let us consider for the sake of contention that she said, “The sky is falling,” in a quiet philosophic tone, as though to impart a piece of interesting information and then to cinch her statement, and referring to the scrap of cabbage leaf, she continued, “and a piece of it fell on my tail.” This would change the whole direction of the story. Far from establishing Henny-Penny as a fool, it would make her an exact and penetrating observer of external reality.

It is hard to give up a position one established in the second grade. For generations Henny-Penny has been held up to ridicule on the advocacy of Chicken Little. And actually what do we know about Chicken Little except that he jumped to a conclusion without proper preparation?

No, the more one thinks of it, the more the judgment of the second grade becomes suspect as thoughtless, headlong and perhaps premature. Even in the second grade we should have remembered that it was Dr. C. S. Little who said the Wright Brothers would not get off the ground.

Actually—this so-called child's story turns out on inspection to be one of the most profound explorations of external reality in relation to the cabbage patch of human frailty and emotion. And it does seem to me that before one writes a novel it might be well to consider what a novel is. We will be seeing you on Sunday, and perhaps you can tell me—in case you have found out since I last saw you.

Love,
John

Sag Harbor
June 22, 1966

Dear Eliz:

I don't even tell Kazan any more that East of Eden is still paying off. He'd kill himself trying to kick himself in the behind for selling his share.

I'll try to get this Sag piece done for the Post before going on with—My Tail. Going on is an ambitious word. I haven't yet anything to go on from. But I know I'll go on twirling the pencil anyway.

No word from John. He said he would let us know as soon as he had an A.P.O. address. But I know how one gets taken over. On the other hand, he'll be wanting mail. One always does, that far from home.

We have been plagued with wild ducks getting in the swimming pool and getting it filthy. A couple of days ago, though, I mounted a 10-gauge cannon over the pool with a trigger-string going into the house. When six ducks got in the pool I pulled the string and the great explosion went over their heads. Well, you never saw such a reaction. A kind of heart failure set in. They got up in the air and flew in flip-flops, beating the air and getting nowhere. It was glorious. I think we may win this one. Two or three more shots and they may take the hint. Word may be passed in the duck kingdom that they are not popular in our pool.