The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (28 page)

Reading Mishima’s
Spring Snow
. Slow-paced, eerily “poisonous” (as its protagonist thinks of himself), very skillfully done. In Mishima’s hands one is in the spell of an evil genius, no doubt about it; yet one can too readily
forget
Mishima (as I am forgetting the uncanny atmosphere of
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
, which I will probably never reread). The drift toward death, wistful rather than energetic, seems marked in these works. One wonders if Kawabata and Mishima represent the inevitable development of a certain sort of consciousness
*
(
the
Japanese in contrast to
the
Western) or whether they are, rather like all novelists of genius,
sui generis
.

Sunburn on arms and legs.

Does every writer secretly feel himself to be a “genius”…or do we all secretly feel as if we know nothing whatsoever….

Nasty letter today from a former flatterer, a young (presumably) California writer who had wished criticism and praise from me, and sent a photo-stated story some months ago without return postage. Unapologetically I threw the story away and never replied to his Heepish letter. Today comes a sly insulting missile that argues, between the lines, for the potential ge
nius of the writer. Where earlier he claimed to admire my work beyond all other contemporary work today he reveals that he thinks little of it, and in any case is too busy with his own career to give any time to mine…. Dismaying, though, isn’t it, to realize that the emotions people feel for one are so fluid, so whimsically driven by one’s own response. Only in so far as we substantiate the desired image do strangers (and acquaintances?) approve of us. When we baffle or contradict their expectations they can become quite irrational.

[…]

May 24, 1977.
…Struggling with “Sentimental Education.” Perhaps it’s simply too difficult to do: dealing w/adolescence, the “awakening of love” etc., etc. How to write of adolescents without lapsing into an adolescent spirit or style. A challenge indeed, but one that might overcome me. Fifty pages accomplished; but the prospect of fifty more is sobering. Do I
really
want to continue….

Nice letters from Jack Barth and Anne Tyler this morning.

[…]

Yesterday in the courtyard, a baby rabbit. About the size of Ray’s fist. Tiny ears, large eyes, a visibly palpitating little body. We saved it from the cats. But though the cats were inside for hours and the rabbit was set in our neighbor’s yard, some distance from our house, he turned up around eleven
P.M.
in our courtyard again and the cats were clawing at the window screens. This morning, however, he seems to have disappeared…. And the other day, Sunday, a red-winged blackbird with a broken wing. Piteous cries. Flapping about. Panic. Incredulity. We caged him for a day, fed him, but the break was irreparable, so Ray was forced to kill him. Buried now on the beach. There’s so much animal & fowl & even reptile commotion around here…perhaps it has to do w/the lush sub-tropical spring…. It isn’t the most encouraging weather for work, however.

Are there nerve-endings touched in “Sentimental Education” as well as in “Déjà Vu” or does the novella give me trouble for some other reason…. Or am I simply lazy. Will I become chronically lazy. Writing should be a pleasure but even if it’s painful it should be a sort of pleasurable pain.
Why
do people write, I wonder; why do they labor at other forms of art, especially
forms that aren’t much appreciated? The ego isn’t able to say, but guesses are tempting. “Exploring one’s psyche,” “enlarging one’s vision,” “communicating w/others,” “working out certain problems,” “hauling the unconscious partly into consciousness.”…One’s destiny is one’s destiny, incontestable. But is a destiny a single, singular event, or is it possibly a multi-faceted phenomenon that cannot be circumscribed…?

My identification w/and subsequent impatience w/both Duncan and Antoinette. Yet my reluctance to speed them on their way…to rid myself of them forever….

May 26, 1977.
…Gave an impromptu dinner party for John Gardner, who breezed into town unannounced. He was sweet, outrageous, charming, in a strange way subdued, possibly a little tired; drank mainly wine all evening and consequently wasn’t as difficult to deal with as the last time we met; seemed genuinely affectionate to Ray and me. His marriage is ended. He is living with a young woman, a girl really, twenty-one or twenty-two, in Cambridge, NY, in what he describes as a hunter’s cabin. He appears to be in need of money, which is ironic, since he has had several best-sellers and has sold paperback rights for large sums. […] It was good to see him. I like him very much: far better than I recall. (Our last meeting was some sort of disaster. He was stupefied with drink.) His hands were filthy, amazingly dirty!…as Betsey said, the only people she knows who have such dirty hands are print-makers. But garage mechanics are as bad, and John evidently has a motorcycle back home. (Joan has kept the Mercedes.) He spoke also of carrying a gun everywhere with him. Charming, brilliant man, a delight to know. I’m really pleased with the success he’s had in recent years. He deserves it.

[…]

Did the review-essay on Simone Weil for
New Republic
.
*
But it’s quite long: eleven pages…. Working on “Sentimental Education” still. And
reading Mishima. Long, long walks. Up and down the river. Down to the rose gardens. Reading in the courtyard, working on the lawn. Lovely indescribable summer days. Idyllic. Ray doing copy for the next issue & quite pleased. We get along so well, it’s like a honeymoon, one almost wonders if such good fortune can last….

Luncheon today (May 27) at The Summit, on the 72nd floor of the Renaissance Center. Liz, Kay, Pat Burnett. Sunny; elegant; leisurely; lovely view of the countryside beyond Windsor, and miles and miles of sprawling Detroit, rather improved by height. It’s an amazing life…I almost regret having to leave in another ten days for NYU & NYC….

[…]

June 13, 1977.
…Writing in my room on the twelfth floor of Washington Square Village, building #3, apartment 12 H. A few minutes ago something resembling a bomb was set off down on La Guardia Place. There was absolute silence; then a dog barked. Ray came into the room to ask if I’d heard that noise—and what was it?—but I indicated that it can’t be anything important, traffic is continuing as usual, no one seems distressed.

A lovely mild June night. Having walked for nearly six hours today we find ourselves in that odd exhausted state in which everything is halfway pleasant. Dinner at the Russian Tea Room. Food not terribly good, as usual; prices rather high, as usual. Went to a reception at La Maison Française in Washington Mews

[…]

…Pleasurably overwhelmed by New York. By the Village. So many fascinating people…so much marvelous life…. I suppose our lives in Windsor must appear by contrast diminished and even rather silly, but where else could I have accomplished so much in so relatively short a time…? Here there’s simply a universe of temptations. Galleries—movies—museums—people—shops—concerts—plays—walks—bookstores. We walked from La Guardia Place up to 60th Street, then back another ten blocks, finally took a Fifth Ave. bus home. One would think we’d never visited New York before, we’re so enchanted.

June 14, 1977.
…First day of classes at NYU. My class of twelve writing students met, I talked to them about various things from 10
A.M.
until 12, we seemed to get along fairly well, they appear to be eager and interested, who can tell…? I felt quite exhausted afterward. Ray and I had lunch at an outdoor café (the Cookery) nearby, then went to the first meeting of our art class, Exploring New York City, though we didn’t go along with most of the class to the Brooklyn Museum, since we had to meet Bob Phillips for drinks at five.

[…]

In the apartment, now, it’s quiet, placid, utterly marvelous. Ray is reading our Egyptian assignment for Thursday. I have Mishima (the second novel of the series) and Marquez (
Leaf Storm
) and Dreiser (
An American Tragedy
) to read though I feel rather lazy. No thoughts on
Bellefleur
for days. The Adirondacks (the Nautauga Mts.) seem so distant, somehow irrelevant. Surely New York City is the center of the world…?

[…]

June 17, 1977.
[…] Notes on
Bellefleur
. I hope for a large gorgeous sprawling work, like nothing else I’ve ever done. A commercial failure, I suppose;
*
though
Childwold
didn’t do badly. Innumerable little “tales” spinning off from the central story, the acquisition of lost lands, the restoration of lost mythic stature, by the Bellefleurs, encompassed within the childhood-lifetime of Germaine. Fantasy, but set as firmly as possible in the Nautauga region (Adirondacks). Possibly the NYU library has some books on Adirondack folktales and culture. (Its periodical holdings are a disappointment: no browsing. Quite impossible to get to them.)

…Vague unclear plans for a story about the Oakland County child-murderer.
^†
I conceive of a man who wishes primarily to combat boredom, a running-down of spirit. Vampire-like he “sucks” life from his victims. But the killings are less and less satisfying as he continues; and each murder,
while easier than the one preceding, has less meaning. Ah, perhaps the “fantasy” could pervade a number of suburban people. […] But it’s all unclear….

[…]

July 16, 1977.
…Read Philip Roth’s
The Professor of Desire
; it’s similar in tone, subject matter, and execution to
My Life As a Man
, but quite engaging, moving. The analytic style, the relentless sifting & resifting of a few experiences: not my sort of thing, at least not at this point in my life, but Philip does it beautifully.

[…]

…Wondering as I read Philip’s new novel whether the emphasis on passion, sexual love, lust, etc., isn’t simply a sort of literary convention. He must write about something: something “interesting.” Just as my imagination seems to turn instinctively toward the central, centralizing act of violence that seems to symbolize something beyond itself. Like a lightning flash illuminating part of a culture or an era…. I notice too how Anne Tyler’s imagination turns (instinctively?) toward her central theme of staying-in-one-place/running-away. Taking on responsibilities/ridding oneself of all responsibility. It seems to be her central theme, and though it doesn’t much interest me, personally, I admire her treatment of it. Philip’s central theme is the bafflement of a man of intelligence and sensitivity (and “innate elegance” as one of his characters puts it […]) who finds himself drawn to “outlaw” or self-destructive characters and to corresponding impulses in himself. My own central theme…? But I don’t know what it is, or don’t care to think about it. Better to remain unself-conscious, uncurious. Unanalytical if analysis would cripple.

[…]

July 22, 1977.
…Our last day in New York, our last day in this apartment. The weather has broken: it’s a civilized 76 degrees after a succession of days in the upper 90’s and 100’s. (The high was a paralyzing 104.) No commitments for today. Nothing we must do, no one we must see….

The luncheon yesterday with Lynne Sharon Schwartz and George Bixby began awkwardly, the fault of the weather perhaps, but gradually improved
so that at the end we were all talking away cheerfully enough. Lynne is an attractive, slight woman with graying hair, about my age I think; George, who is evidently older, nevertheless looks very youthful, with a red-blond beard and (I saw afterward when we were walking along Fifth Ave.) a pierced ear. We went to Feathers, less impressive than the first time we were there, but adequate.

Earlier, spent 2½ hours w/students. They have been so real to me, and I suspect I to them, for the past six weeks, and now—I know from prior experience—they will fade from my memory. How eternally mystifying it is that time and its most vivid events simply pass away, fade, have no grip on us once we pass a certain age…. I’ve been very much caught up with these students, and with a few I’ve even felt a curious sort of identification […]; yet I know that in a few months their names won’t mean much to me. I think. Two or three of them will probably go on to publish; or at any rate should.

…Quite drained from the conferences & the luncheon yesterday. Lay about the apartment reading, taking desultory notes for the Graywolf novella, uncertain, idle, simply rather tired. The exhaustion of the spirit. Did not get up this morning until 9:30, a sort of record this summer…. Life is enchanting, certainly; people are enchanting. Yet when one thinks back over a period of time what is essentially real…? I find that my mind moves on to the work I’ve done, the writing I’ve done, and that everything else is peripheral. The phenomenal world and its great temptations, its beauties, its privileges, the endless drama of human relationships […] appear to fade, or at any rate to lose their authority, set beside art. Art of a substantial nature, at least. This isn’t the summer I have known certain people, walked hundreds of miles, visited innumerable galleries and museums, it’s the summer I wrote three or four stories—and felt a dim tug of guilt that I hadn’t done more.[…]

Graywolf & the others, possible versions of himself. Fluctuations. Chimeras. The city necessitates a fragmentary sort of structure…one cannot
see horizons, everything is chopped up, brought up close. Do I truly feel that life—my life—is a series of losses, of abductions? No. Not truly. What is lost is compensated by something new. & all can be transformed into art. As much as one would wish of Eternity…. Still, my marriage has made my life stable. Ray is a center; perhaps the center without which…. But it’s useless to speculate. Kindly, loving, sweet, at times critically intelligent, sensitive, funny, unambitious, w/a love for idleness that matches my own, Ray is an extraordinary person whose depths are not immediately obvious…. The thought of losing
him
doesn’t fill me with apprehension or terror, it’s too immense: an unthinkable thought, in fact. Like the end of the universe, the obliteration of time. Unthinkable. If I survived his loss it wouldn’t be Joyce who survived but another lesser, broken person…also unthinkable.