Steinbeck (35 page)

There is a thing I want to discuss with you. I was approached the other day by an outfit that calls itself Pan-American Films with the proposition that I do a film on the life of Emiliano Zapata. Now there is no other story I would rather do. But there are certain things in the way.

I have, as you know, work ahead for a long time to come. I would not even be ready to make a start until a year from this fall.

The difficulty of making it straight would be very great. There are still men living and in power who helped to trick and murder Zapata. I would only make it straight. I would require gov't assurance that it could be made straight historically. This will have to be an iron bound agreement because Zapata could be one of the great films of all time as by a twist or a concession it could be a complete double cross of the things Zapata lived and died for.

We're still plugging away at the shooting script. In the States I wouldn't do it but here I want to give them a tight story for the first time. It's a battle with energy because the dysentery still persists and that doesn't leave much strength.

We celebrated St. John's day with 10 dozen skyrockets and we named big ones for you and Maurice.

Love to you both,
John

Cuernavaca
July 12 [1945]

Dear Pat:

I am heartily sick of this picture now and there are stir-rings in me for new work. This is like beating a down dog. I've never liked rehashing—but I'll do it this time and it is once for all. There's too much new work to do—to go over one's old.

 

The people down here are very kind to us. And I hope out of this stay to write a book that may be something for them to have. For the Wayward Bus could be something like the Don Quixote of Mexico. The more I think of it the better I like it and the better I like it the longer its plan and the wider its scope until it seems to contain the whole world. From the funny little story it is growing to the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted. Not that it still won't be funny but funny as Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote are funny. And it isn't going to take a little time to write but a long time and I don't care, for my bus is something large in my mind. It is a cosmic bus holding sparks and back firing into the Milky Way and turning the corner of Betelgeuse without a hand signal. And Juan Chicoy the driver is all the god the fathers you ever saw driving a six cylinder broken down, battered world through time and space. If I can do it well The Wayward Bus will be a pleasant thing.

So long—we'll have fun.

John

Cuernavaca
[1945]

Dear Pat—

Last night a very strange thing happened. Anciently it would have had a very definite effect on a person. The moon came up red and sullen through a black haze. We sat on the porch watching it because of its very threatening color. These black clouds like mares' tails moved up from the horizon, big black streaks. Jack Wagner yelled suddenly—“Look!” It was a very strange thing. The clouds spelled in huge black letters JOHN right across the moon. It was very definite and lasted five minutes before it drifted away. We called Gwyn to look at it. I have seen letters in clouds before but never four definite letters. In an age of portents it would be effective. Such a thing might have caused the Magna Carta not to be signed.

so long,
John

156 East 37th Street
New York
December 15, 1945

Dear Jack:

Well we got here. Dreadful trip. Car broke down 100 kms out of Mexico City. My expensive overhaul was a snare. They charged me but didn't do any work. What cheap shits of thieves they are. I would like really to kick that garage to pieces. Just chicken shit thieves. We pushed the car 1,800 miles before we could get a repair job. The whole country is frozen and we nearly froze to death. No sleep for three days. They didn't like Victor to go in restaurants in Texas. Altogether a nightmare of a trip.

Gwyn had found this apartment. Not gaudy but warm and to have found one at all is quite a trick and I was so tired it looked like heaven to me.

Thom is fine and very charming.

The city is covered with snow and very lovely. I'm crazy about winter.

Merry Xmas and will see you soon.

John

175 East 78th Street
New York
March 17, 1946

Dear Toby:

Quite a long time without hearing from you.

Our house is nearly finished. I moved into the basement to work a couple of weeks ago and we should be in the house in about two weeks more. That is going to be such a relief. Just the process of spreading out is going to be a joy. Imagine being able to get away from the family and getting to the toilet without an elaborate plan and a time schedule.

The working cellar is fine—gray concrete walls and cement floor and pipes overhead. A comfortable chair and desk and filing cabinet in which I hope to file bills so I can find them. All fine—no window, no ability to look out and watch the postman and the garbage wagon. I'll go on with my book now [
The Wayward Bus
]
.
Gwyn only has a couple more months of this condition and she is very glad of that but says that it is longer than all the rest and I can see how that would be too.

Today is St. Patrick's Day and a beautiful day. Mostly it rains and gets all those Irish wet but that doesn't prevent them from wearing purple robes and dripping purple rain all over Fifth Avenue. Hearst has got himself in a hassle. He has been printing nothing but accounts of Cardinal Spellman. As Artie Deutsch said, Spellman got more publicity than any Cardinal since Dizzy Dean.

I have been feeling lousy in my mind but today there seems to be some break in the clouds and maybe the darkness will go away. It has been a period of blue despair such as I haven't had in quite a long time. I don't know what it was based on and maybe it isn't over but I do feel better today. Such things are very mysterious. I finally found my pipes in the stuff that was sent out and they taste unbelievably delicious. They taste like work.

I hear from Mexico that the picture looks very good. We are kind of pulling in our horns a little this year. When these two houses [on 78th Street] are all fixed up then we can let ourselves out a little. But the way Gwyn feels now she doesn't want to let out any more.

So long,
jn

New York
[Spring 1946]

Dear Carl:

I haven't heard from Dook Sheffield for a long time. He seemed so touchy that I gave up. He obviously didn't want any more to do with me and I don't even want to investigate why. I think a dislikeness of experience is largely responsible with all of these things.

I have been doing a great deal of work, most of it no good and most of it thrown away. It seems like a great waste of time but that seems to be my pattern. It gets harder to do all the time, I guess, as I learn more about the pure technical difficulties. I'm working on a thing now that is giving me hell —a long novel. I want to take a long time with it. It seems to me that I have been rushing for five or six years, rushing as though I were trying to beat something. But if I had a fatal idea that I am easy to kill I should have lost it. Everything missed me in Europe. Also I should be done with fear but I guess I'm not.

I hope you do get to work. The getting to work is a purely mechanical thing as you well know—a conscious and self-imposed schoolroom. After that, other things happen, but the beginning is straight pushing.

We have a young son nearly two years old and another baby coming in June. I like the one very much. He is gay and fine. There is nothing instructive in single parenthood but association is first interesting and then a kind of affection grows up the way it does with a puppy. Only a human puppy knows so much more that he is more interesting.

The pure difficulty of learning to talk fascinates me. Nearly every waking hour is spent trying to learn that complex process. I don't seem to have many of the traditional parent's reactions or maybe no one has. I suspect that many of the attitudes of parents are literary and picked up in the slick magazines and written by childless people. Or perhaps I am subnormal. I have, for instance, no sense of possession about this child. I am quite sure that any baby I associated with would have the same effect on me.

That's all. Write when you feel like it.

John

New York
May 2, 1946

Dear Jack:

During the last few months I have been worried about you because the stories that you were drinking again were persistent. If you were there was nothing to do about it but it seemed such a sadness that all the effort had gone for nothing. I knew in Cuernavaca that you were kidding yourself about the beer. Beer is just the same as anything else. And I suppose you shouldn't use it either for refreshment, which it isn't, or for sexual insecurity. All that was and is your business. But I have little patience with it as you well know—less and less in fact. We've been having the runaround from a very dear and famous person who is on it. Dear as she is—and clever—it isn't worth it as I told her recently. She is using other people's emotions too deeply. Fuck her and you too if you are back on it.

I know it must have got pretty hectic toward the end down there. Everyone hating everyone. It will really be amazing if a good thing comes out of it [
The Pearl
]
.
But everyone who has seen it, and that is nearly everyone in Mexico, says it is quite impressive.

For two months I've been fighting the Bus and only now have I got a start which seems good. I've thrown away thousands of words. But I think it is good now. And at least it is moving.

We still haven't a phone but the new house is very pleasant otherwise. Gwyn only has about a month yet to go and she is pretty uncomfortable and uncomplaining. But she feels lousy and this last month is longer than all the others put together. She and I will be very glad when it is over.

Let me hear how everything is. You probably won't. But try to anyway.

So long,
John

[New York]
June 14, 1946

Dear Toby:

Well, it got born the day before yesterday and it is a boy. Gwyn is pretty well considering and the baby is fine. I think it is our family. It is enough. I'm pretty tired. A couple of nights sleep will fix me up though. That and a drink or so.