Steinbeck (16 page)

Anyway, it was swell of you to write. I wish you would again.

John Steinbeck

Pacific Grove July 30, 1935

Dear Miss McIntosh:

Your letter and enclosed contracts came today. It is rather sad that now I am being deluged with offers of a lot of nice people who want to be my business representatives, who assure me that they can make more money for me than you are making. And finally who completely fail to understand that I am extremely happy where I am. I don't want to make much money and I like this contract. Please assure Mr. Covici that I am awfully pleased to stay under his imprint. I enclose both copies of the contract.

Rather an amusing episode. There is a little magazine here run in conjunction with a stable. I gave them a story which Miss Otis had sent back as “outrageous” in return for six months use of a beautiful big bay hunter anytime I want him, day or night. I send you the title page of the story and guarantee you ten percent of six months riding but you will have to come here to get it. I should like that very much indeed. I haven't had a horse in years and am utterly delighted at this trade.

 

I have no idea how Tortilla Flat is selling. It has made a lot of noise out here, but whether it was just noise or not I have no idea. I wonder whether you can give me an idea of its sale so I can see whether royalties on that book will cover the Mexican journey.

There were some shorts with you. I have had several letters from editors wanting them. I have referred them to you. I like some of those stories.

I'll be very glad to see Mr. Covici when he comes out here. If he is alone we shall be happy to have him stay here.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

[Pacific Grove]
[September 1935]

Dear Louis Paul:

Thanks awfully for the copy of Jedwick. Did I call him Jedworth?

You ask why I don't take Hollywood's filthy money. Nobody's asked me, sir. I like to think I wouldn't take it but I probably would. I've been around there quite a bit and I dislike it so much that I wouldn't want to. On the other hand we've been so filthy broke for so long that I would probably go nuts if anyone waved a ten dollar bill. Aren't these nice straight lines? There's a lined sheet underneath.

All is fuss in this house. We're starting for Mexico next week and there's the packing of thousands of doll rags. Our Ford is a wreck but under the hood is an overhauled engine and the tires are new. Yesterday by the use of oratory I didn't know I could use, I persuaded a bank to declare me solvent. And I had the local federal judge swear that I had no Syrian, Armenian, Asiatic or negro blood. As our local Mexican consul says, “Sumteems dose pipples doon't kips the law.”

I heard the other day that Covici is reissuing my two earlier books that failed so miserably. They were better books than this last one too but no one would read them—wurra wurra.

We have a small sail boat here and hate to leave it but we must and it will keep for us.

I wish I could send you a copy of T. F. but I haven't any. Couldn't you steal one? If you buy one you will be the first genuine purchaser I know.

I don't know how long we'll be away. Maybe six months, maybe two years.

I'm very grateful for the copy of Jedworth.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

Manchester 8
Mexico D. F.
November 3 [1935]

Dear Miss Otis:

I really should have wired an appreciation of your wire but wires are expensive. Your letter came this morning. Maybe with this security I can write a better book. Maybe not. Certainly though I can take a little longer and write a more careful one. And it will be possible to contemplate an illness without panic. I do not see what even Hollywood can make of Tortilla with its episodic treatment, but let them try and I won't go to their picture so that is all right. On an average I go to about one picture a year.

Our plans are fairly jelled by now. I think we will start for home about the seventh of January. I don't get any work done here. It would be possible to place a blame but it would be more an excuse, I guess. Anyway I can work at home and that's where we will go. Bad news the other day. Our boat broke its moorings and drifted and was salvaged and the salvage award was so much that we will have to sell the boat to pay it and come out clear. I don't care much. It was our first experience in owning anything and a lesson. We will not own anything except the cottage and the necessary and small automobile again. We knew we shouldn't anyway. Maybe a dog.

It is funny that the Irish Free State has me on the censored list. If they knew that my parentage was pure Ulster, they would all the more. The dirty rednecks. Let them be reading their beads and their stomachs full of whiskey, and let them parade under the sun with the chests of them stuck out and their knives between the two shoulders of good men and the dark come. What did they but run off the stern tip of Ireland like the rats they are and Orange after them. Free State indeed, and ask any one of the itching devils are they free of the gray crawlers under their shirts?

I don't know what it means to be on the bottom of a best seller list. Is it two thousand copies or five or ten? In writing to Mr. Covici I asked him, but have had no answer. Thank you again for your letter and its news.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

[Mexico]
[1935]

Dear George:

I am not proud of this sale of Tortilla to pictures but we'll slap it into government bonds which are cashable and forget about it. It won't be much when we get it what with splits with Covici and agents' fees but it will be a nest egg. The old standard of living stays right where it has always been.

The air down here has a feel, you can feel its texture on your finger tips and on your lips. It is like water.

Carol is having a marvelous time. The people like her and she them. Wherever she goes, howls of laughter follow. Yesterday in Tolucca market, she wanted to fill out her collection of pottery animals. She went to a puesta and said I want a bull (quiero un toro). That means I want a stud, colloquially. The whole market roared. Most of her pottery animals have flowers painted on them. The rat, instead of being embarrassed pointed to me and said, Segura, tengo un toro pero el no tiene flores en el estomago (sure I have a bull but he has no flowers on his stomach). Then the market just fell to pieces. You could hear the roars of laughter go down the street as each person was told the story. Half an hour later they were still laughing. And when Carol bargains, a crowd collects. Indians from the country stand with their mouths open. The thing goes from gentle to fury to sorrow to despair. And everyone loves it. The seller as much as any one.

My own bargaining yesterday was triumphant. The ordinary method is to run the product down, to be horrified at the badness of the work or the coarseness of the weave or the muddiness of the colors. But I reversed it. One serape priced at fifteen pesos I said was too beautiful. That it was impossible to give it a value in money because it was beyond any offer at all—by that time the duenno was nearly in tears. However I was a poor man and if ten pesos might be accepted, not as payment for the beautiful thing but as a token of esteem, I would take the thing and love it all my life. The method aroused so much enthusiasm not only with the duenno but with the collected market crowd, that I got it for ten without even a squeak. That will be a story in the market too. I like what one market woman said to Carol. Carol said, I would like to buy this but I am not rich. And the market woman—you have shoes and a hat, of course you are rich.

Oh this is enough of a letter and I want to go to the roof.

love to annie
john

Pacific Grove
[1935]

Dear Joe:

I feel very bad about this Commonwealth Club award [for
Tortilla Flat
]
.
I don't know who offered the book in competition. I assure you that the refusal to go isn't the small mean thing it seems. I would like you to know exactly why I can't go.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. The most I have had to dodge has been a literary tea or an invitation from a book shop to lecture and autograph. This is the first and God willing the last prize I shall ever win.

The whole early part of my life was poisoned with egotism, a reverse egotism, of course, beginning with self-consciousness. And then gradually I began to lose it.

In the last few books I have felt a curious richness as though my life had been multiplied through having become identified in a most real way with people who were not me. I have loved that. And I am afraid, terribly afraid, that if the bars ever go down, if I become a trade mark, I shall lose the ability to do that. When I do I shall stop working because it won't be fun any more. The work has been the means of making me feel that I am living richly, diversely, and, in a few cases and for a few moments, even heroically. All of these things are not me, for I am none of these things. But sometimes in my own mind at least I can create something which is larger and richer than I am. In this aspect I suppose my satisfaction is much like that of a father who sees his son succeed where he has failed. Not being brave I am glad when I can make a brave person whom I believe in.

I am very glad that the book got the prize, but I want it to be the book, not me. Those people in that book were very dear to me, but I feel that if I should accept a reward which in this case belongs to Danny and Pilon and the rest, I should not only be cheating them, but cheating them should cut myself off from their society forever.

This is not clear, concise, objective thinking, but I have never been noted for any of these things. If I were a larger person I would be able to do this and come out of it untouched. But I am not.

And will you help me out of it? Will you please present the committee as much or as little explanation as you think wise or necessary? I don't know. I have no social gifts and practically no social experience.

Mean while, don't think too harshly of me for this bolt. I hate to run away but I feel that the whole future working life is tied up in this distinction between work and person. And while this whole argument may seem specious, I assure you it is heartfelt.

Regards
John

[Pacific Grove]
[February 1936]

Dear Louis Paul:

I don't like communists either, I mean I dislike them as people. I rather imagine the apostles had the same waspish qualities and the New Testament is proof that they had equally bad manners. But this dislike is personal. I never knew D. H. Lawrence either. The whole idea of the man turns my stomach. But he was a good writer, and some of these communist field workers are strong, pure, inhumanly virtuous men. Maybe that's another reason I personally dislike them and that does not redound to my credit. However, that's not important.

I haven't an idea what the press will do, nor do I much care. I have enough money now to live and write for three years if we are careful and I can get a hell of a lot of words down in three years.

You ask why you never see my stuff in Esquire. I guess they were never interested. I have a good many stories in New York but no one wants them. I wrote 9 short stories at one sitting recently. I thought some of them were pretty good, too, but that's as far as it got. The North American Review used to print some at 30 dollars a crack.

I have to start [writing] and am scared to death as usual—miserable sick feeling of inadequacy. I'll love it once I get down to work. Hope you'll be out before too long.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

[Pacific Grove]
[March 1936]

Dear Louis Paul:

I've started to answer a letter from you for quite a long time. This morning your enclosures came. I had not seen Mary Ann McCarthy's review in the Nation [of
In Dubious Battle
]. I'm sorry to see that, like her famous namesake, she didn't get a goddam clam. The pain occasioned by this review is to some extent mitigated by the obvious fact that she understood Caesar's Commentaries as little as my poor screed, that she doesn't know her Plato very well, and that she hasn't the least idea of what a Greek drama is. Seriously what happened is this—Mary Ann reviewed Tortilla Flat, saying that I had overlooked the fact that these paisanos were proletariats. Joseph Henry Jackson, critic on the S. F. Chronicle took her review and played horse with it. So Mary Ann lay in ambush for me to give me my come-uppance. And boy, did she give it to me. Wurra! Wurra!

I'm looking forward to seeing you this spring. And since I'm stuck here until I finish this job that really isn't begun, I hope you'll be able to come through our way. It's desperately beautiful now and will be more so in another month.