The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (51 page)

…Rereading Wm. James; and Dickens; my mind casting about…. I am all but retired from reviewing at the
NY Times
and the
New Republic
; simply too busy; and it’s a pity…but I don’t have the time. […]

March 8, 1980.
…Balked and stymied re.
Angel of Light
. Which one part of me wants to make immense and ambitious…and another (saner) part wants to make quick, clean, short, ceremonial. The appeal of each…. The dread of each….

…To embrace one’s fate—as if it were “destiny.”

…A rainy Saturday. Temperature already in the sixties (at 10:30 a.m). For once, a free weekend; except for tomorrow (when we’ll see
Our Hitler
, possibly with the Bromberts) when seven and a half hours will be taken up in the art-work Susan S. has called great…though I suspect it might be something less than that…but it
will
be 7½ hours…unless of course we edit it ourselves.

…Indecision re.
Angel of Light
, dragging on and on and…. Sometimes I “see” Kristin one way; and sometimes another. And the voice of the novel could easily be voices. So, once again, it’s simply the anguish of
frustration: minor anguish of course but enervating nonetheless: the need to make a choice, and by making that choice exclude all other possibilities…. Writing a novel is like marrying. You are terrified of making a mistake (or should be)…because then you must live with the mistake. Some novels demand more spirit and time than some marriages…. To spend a year of one’s precious life with certain people…! […]

March 13, 1980.
…Writing & rewriting & discarding the initial pages of
Angel of Light
. An absurdly difficult exercise which fills me with a kind of amused despair and alarm. My problem is quite obviously that I have too much material; my instinct is to compress it too swiftly. What folly! Here I go again.

[…]

…
Angel of Light
doesn’t come lightly. It is hard work. The prose only flies along when I allow Kristin to talk…and I can’t allow her to talk…I don’t want to write a novel along the structural lines of
Childwold
. The absurdly sacramental nature of writing: it
seems
important whether it is or not…. The difficulty of beginning
Bellefleur
…
Son of the Morning
…the sense of premature fatigue and defeat, looking at the chart I had drawn for
Unholy Loves
. But I must admit that Constantine’s little book presented no problems at all!—it was sheer delight. And much of Marya’s book was fairly effortless. Not effortless but at least not painful. […]

March 17, 1980.
…Have completed a first draft of Chapter 1 of
Angel of Light
. With which I am not satisfied. Out of which—but
how
?—some order must emerge. The problem is simply that the first chapter or section seems to be the entire novel in embryo. Too much passion, too much information, each of Owen’s and Kirsten’s lives accumulating—gaining definition—while the “present action” of that Saturday morning in March must be the focal point. A knotty vexing frustrating problem which haunts me constantly…. I turn to glance over my shoulder: and there it is in the corner of the room, or partly obscuring the sun. It. The koan. The ceaseless ongoing koan of my life.

[…]

…I seem to be approaching
Angel of Light
with a genuine timidity. Apprehension. Anticipation. A “sacred” rite which, if it can’t be done perfectly, must not be done at all. (Yesterday I considered for a despairing minute throwing it all out—simply clearing my desk. But then what—! One must after all live beyond the dramatic moment. Life
isn’t
flamboyant art.)

March 21, 1980.
[…]
Angel of Light
creeping in a petty pace. Egregious weather too: suddenly snow, rain for twenty-four hours, nothing to do but work and not work and think and brood: though I did distract myself with an essay-review for the
Times
on Anna Kavan, who is less good than I had hoped; but whose fault is that?
*

…Vertiginous Princeton life. A minuet. A kind of ballet. When one comes to it fresh from having accomplished something, it is delightful: at other times it seems unearned, it tastes over-rich, faintly sickening…though surely I exaggerate.

…Twenty-three actual pages of
Angel of Light
. Written with so much idiotic labor, one would think they were committed in blood; or something equally outlandish. But when I am not writing I am thinking of writing, and of not writing. Why, I wonder, is this novel so “sacred” to me—that I hardly dare write a sentence? I suppose
Son of the Morning
began the same way…I can’t remember…there’s a blessed amnesia about this sort of enterprise…thank God for the sprightliness of the Constantine stories…though they too were composed out of a vertiginous sense of “perpetual motion” eroding away the soul.

…I
can’t
be mad, I am so sane.

…But who but a madwoman would choose such a life?—such a predicament?

…The nourishment of sleep and dreams. Even when the dreams do not seem to bear upon the actual novel.

…Astounded at my own laziness. And my own frequent indifference to it. As if I were lashing myself with strings…limp spaghetti…. I think of Kirsten’s little chapter “Pranks”: think & think & think about it: rehearse it: but can’t write a word. Except in longhand. (Which is my indirect way of writing—it isn’t
really
writing since it doesn’t mimic print.) A sense of an almost physical sinking-down…perplexity…in the area of the heart…but what nonsense!…I detest people who give themselves melodramatic airs. (Cf. poor “Anna Kavan,” trapped in her tedious self-referential life—in a house filled with mirrors.)

…Beginning a novel is always so difficult, I tell myself. But might it be getting worse? And will it be
worth
it this time?…But how?

…FROM THIS POINT ONWARD I MUST ABANDON THIS JOURNAL, which I need, and love, and have depended upon; but I will have to substitute letters for it…reluctantly enough…because on principle I don’t believe in saving letters. But I haven’t any choice: either I lose a record of my life this spring, or retain it, however obliquely, by way of letters to friends. So be it.

March 28, 1980.
…Immersion in
Angel of Light.
Hours and hours…. “Temptation,” “By the River.” Now the voices of Owen and Kirsten have begun to speak with their own authority. Now I halfway feel that I know them…at last…after so many weeks of difficulty.

[…]

…Nearing the end of Part I of
Angel of Light
. I had imagined it might be twenty pages long; but it will be closer to seventy. Which throws into doubt the organization of the rest of the novel…however…the John Brown material has already been used…there shouldn’t be any great problem…. The writing of a novel is simply the experience of the writing of a novel. It was impossible to catch the voices of Kirsten and Owen before writing…groping…plunging…stumbling about…there’s
simply no short-cut…however impatient and despairing one might become.

[…]

…Now Washington fascinates me! Washington, and the idea of Washington. A state of mind. The voracious hunger for power. (Raw ambition, as Stephen said, quoting Lincoln.) It’s an instinct I can’t sympathize with though I find it distinctly convincing in others. (For me the highest values are privacy, freedom, and anonymity, which would have to be surrendered if one took up “power.”)

[…]

April 3, 1980.
…Immersed in
Angel of Light
. Each page goes slowly but somehow the pages accumulate. Today I finished the little section “Wild Loughrea” of Part II, approximately. And feel very close to both Maurie and Nick. (Closer than I do to Kirsten and Owen.)

…Lovely complex days. Sunday we drove to Livingston, about an hour away, to visit with Gail (Gleasner) Zeiler and her husband Matt.
*
And their altogether charming, bright, pretty little girl Michelle. An evening Ray and I had thought might be something of a strain, since I haven’t seen Gail for many years, and had never met her husband at all; and of course Ray doesn’t know either of them. But it did turn out well. (Matt, an optometrist, is in fact the only person I’ve ever encountered who helped—somewhat whimsically—in the Norman Mailer–Jimmy Breslin campaign of some years ago.)

…Do you remember, Gail said, you tried to take out
Studs Lonigan
from the Williamsville public library, and the librarian wouldn’t let you? But I didn’t remember. And don’t. Do you remember…? Gail would say, referring to something we’d done in high school; but I didn’t remember. How odd, how disquieting, to realize that great blank patches obscure my memory…a map with enormous white masses. I seem to have lost the thread of my own life, my own past. And then a chunk of something is dislodged and floats to the surface….

[…]

April 6, 1980.
Easter Sunday…. And a lush lovely sun-filled day it was. What a paradise!…Our first bicycle ride, in the neighborhood. And a long brisk walk in Cranbury. (Forsythia just starting to bloom. Daffodils, crocuses, bluebells, etc.) Discussing plans for the imminent European trip.
*
And the just-published magazine. Which is as beautiful an issue as we’ve had yet, with Brad Iverson’s photographs and Maxine’s feature.

…“I plan to be around a long time, so I have to have something to do,” John Gardner said on Friday evening, in response to a query about why he has started up with his old magazine
MSS
. again. John looking solid as a tank, with a frank weathered mild unalarmed face, silver-blond hair cut shorter than I recall, bemused eyes. It seemed clear to me that he is mellower now, trying (consciously?) to atone for the ignoble hectoring and bullying of the past several years. He appears somewhat ashamed of the entire “moral fiction” business…as he probably should be. (Only John’s friends know how bitter and envious he is, or was, of the writers he attacks in
On Moral Fiction
. His polemics have the outraged air of being objective when in fact the entire concoction was an outgrowth of personal animosity toward Coover, Barthelme, Barth, Updike, and a few others. Spiteful John masquerading as a preacher: but did he ever succeed in fooling himself?)

[…]

…Immersed in
Angel of Light
. Hour upon hour upon hour. Finished the Schweppenheiser chapter today. Am now on. Which worries me a little—the novel is going to be very long—but—it must unfold at its own pace—I have to honor its curious interior complexities. Coiling back upon itself again and again, delicate as a fiddlehead fern. Will it ever be published? Will anyone ever read it? I write the pages line by line, tearing sheets of paper out of the typewriter and rewriting, rewriting, until each line strikes me as solid. At the same time I know that I will probably re
write most of the novel after I finish it…. This method is a kind of safety net. I can’t explain. It moves slowly (it
feels
as if it moves slowly) but steadily; there is something consoling about it. A deep dark mesmerizing haunting novel which, at this point, is still about adolescents…adolescence. Two generations experienced simultaneously. And how quickly I fell in love with the formidable Schweppenheiser! Who will make a reappearance in the novel, much later, in 1978.

[…]

April 14, 1980.
…A November of the soul. Rain, exhaustion. My mind darts about these days plotting and fantasizing not scenes in my novel but ways of getting out of social engagements.

…(Princeton fantasies! Not sexual exploits or romantic encounters; not even literary, academic, or scholarly esteem; but quiet…peace…tranquility…anonymity…invisibility…
no dinner parties for a week! two weeks!
Could anything be more shameless, more gloriously and deliciously self-indulgent, than to fantasize
no dinner parties for two weeks
!!!!)

…The consolation of philosophy, which is to say art; which is a way of saying too secrecy and silence.

…Silence, exile, cunning. To which I must add my favorite: invisibility.

[…]

April 18, 1980.
…Things we desire to share, and to share immediately: ecstasy, sorrow, renown.

…To be “famous”: to wish that everyone were “famous”! (In order to share the peculiar joke of it. The sham, the wistfulness. But above all the fun.)

…(All these thoughts, as a consequence of yesterday’s adventure. At the conference on “Literature and the Urban Experience” at Newark/Rutgers.)

…James Baldwin, Bruno Bettelheim, and I, giving the “keynote” addresses. Baldwin’s was mainly on being black in America, wasn’t particularly in line with the conference as a whole (hadn’t been written for it, of course); Bettelheim’s on the child’s experience of the city was very moving and illuminating, and partly autobiographical. I gave an abbreviated version of my “Imaginary Cities” essay, and though I had anticipated some difficulty in reading it and editing it as I went along (I’m not accustomed to reading anything before a group), it went smoothly enough, and I spoke for exactly thirty minutes, and that was that. All three of us were greeted with a great deal of enthusiastic applause from a very large crowd—in the Robeson Center, at the Rutgers Campus—and there were even crowds in adjoining rooms, watching on closed-circuit television. Ray watched in one of these rooms; he said everything went well; but he couldn’t answer my question—why were people crowded into rooms in the Robeson Center on such a lovely April day, merely to listen to three speeches?…Puzzling but also, I suppose, gratifying.