Steinbeck (53 page)

“Henny Penny was scratching under a pea-vine when a pea fell on her tail. ‘Oh!' screamed Henny Penny—‘the sky is falling.' Anyway she managed to get all the chickens so upset that they formed an army and bombed the hell out of a duck-yard next door and the ducks opened up with high explosives and nearly everybody got killed and lived happily ever after. And when it was all over Henny Penny had the only pea left in the world so she started a pea cartel and right now her descendants own Manhattan Island and spend their winters in Cannes.”

Seriously. I am so anxious to see you—and this time I will.

[New York]
[February 1952]

Dear John:

What a courteous memory you have. You did remember how I admired your hat. I shall wear the one you sent, and only it, on the jaunt through history we are about to make. Thank you. It should however have a plate on it and I think I will put one on, saying—

THE JOHN O'HARA MEMORIAL HAT

Thank you again. I'll wear a feather in the hat because you gave it to me.

Love and all wishes to you and to Belle and to Wiley, the serpent of the Rappahannock [their daughter].

New York
[1952]
Tuesday

Dear Pat:

I have been going over the years in my mind, remembering all the things pre-publication critics have asked me to take out, things they would now be horrified at if I had.

One of the most dangerous things of all is the suggestion that something or other is not in good taste. Now good taste is a codification of manners and attitudes of the past. The very fact of originality is per se bad taste. I might even go so far as to believe that any writer who produced a book of unquestioned good taste has written a tasteless book, a flavor-less book, a book of no excitement and surely of no originality. There is no taste in life nor in nature. It is simply the way it is. And in the rearrangement of life called literature, the writer is the less valuable and interesting in direct relation to his goodness of taste. There is shocking bad taste in the Old Testament, abominable taste in Homer, and execrable taste in Shakespeare.

Thinking about it, I believe that the following may be true. When a book is finished but not yet printed there is a well-intentioned urge, particularly in non-creative people, to help, to be part of it, and this urge takes itself out in suggestions for its improvement. It would not occur to me to make such suggestions to another writer because I know he must have a reason for everything in his book. But also I do not need the free creative ride. As I said, these impulses are kindly meant and they are almost invariably wrong.

And so you and I will do what we have done—listen with respect, correct the errors, weigh the criticism and then go about our business. I do not think that all the things in my books are good but all the things in my book are me. There is no quicker way to ruin any book than to permit collaborations. Then it becomes a nothing and a bad something has a way of being superior to a good nothing. The second-hand bookstalls are loaded with good taste. No. We know this story. We've been through it together so many times.

We'll do fine.

Yours,
John

 

That was damn good pie

[New York]
[1952]

Dear Pat:

I have decided for this, my book, East of Eden, to write dedication, prologue, argument, apology, epilogue and perhaps epitaph all in one.

The dedication is to you with all the admiration and affection that have been distilled from our singularly blessed association of many years. This book is inscribed to you because you have been part of its birth and growth.

As you know, a prologue is written last but placed first to explain the book's shortcomings and to ask the reader to be kind. But a prologue is also a note of farewell from the writer to his book. For years the writer and his book have been together—friends or bitter enemies but very close as only love and fighting can accomplish.

Then suddenly the book is done. It is a kind of death. This is the requiem.

Miguel Cervantes invented the modern novel and with his Don Quixote set a mark high and bright. In his prologue, he said best what writers feel—the gladness and the terror.

“Idling reader,” Cervantes wrote, “you may believe me when I tell you that I should have liked this book, which is the child of my brain, to be the fairest, the sprightliest and the cleverest that could be imagined, but I have not been able to contravene the law of nature which would have it that like begets like—”

And so it is with me, Pat. Although some times I have felt that I held fire in my hands and spread a page with shining —I have never lost the weight of clumsiness, of ignorance, of aching inability.

A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Well—then the book is done. It has no virtue any more. The writer wants to cry out—“Bring it back! Let me rewrite it or better—Let me burn it. Don't let it out in the unfriendly cold in that condition.”

As you know better than most, Pat, the book does not go from writer to reader. It goes first to the lions—editors, publishers, critics, copy readers, sales department. It is kicked and slashed and gouged. And its bloodied father stands attorney.

 

 

The book is out of balance. The reader expects one thing and you give him something else. You have written two books and stuck them together. The reader will not understand.

 

No, sir. It goes together. I have written about one family and used stories about another family as—well, as counterpoint, as rest, as contrast in pace and color.

The reader won't understand. What you call counterpoint only slows the book.

It has to be slowed—else how would you know when it goes fast?

 

You have stopped the book and gone into discussions of God knows what.

 

Yes, I have. I don't know why. Just wanted to. Perhaps I was wrong.

 

The book's too long. Costs are up. We'll have to charge five dollars for it. People won't pay $
₅
. They won't buy it.

 

My last book was short. You said then that people won't buy a short book.

 

The chronology is full of holes. The grammar has no relation to English. On page so-and-so you have a man look in the World Almanac for steamship rates. They aren't there. I checked. You've got Chinese New Year wrong. The characters aren't consistent. You describe Liza Hamilton one way and then have her act a different way.

 

You make Cathy too black. The reader won't believe her. You make Sam Hamilton too white. The reader won't believe him. No Irishman ever talked like that.

 

My grandfather did.

Who'll believe it?

No children ever talked like that.

(Losing temper as a refuge from despair)

God damn it. This is my book. I'll make the children talk any way I want. My book is about good and evil. Maybe the theme got into the execution. Do you want to publish it or not?

Let's see if we can't fix it up. It won't be much work. You want it to be good, don't you? For instance, the ending. The reader won't understand it.

Do you?

Yes, but the reader won't.

PROOFREADER

My God, how you do dangle a participle. Turn to page so-and-so.

 

 

There you are, Pat. You came in with a box of glory and there you stand with an arm full of damp garbage.

And from this meeting a new character has emerged. He is called The Reader.

 

He is so stupid you can't trust him with an idea.

He is so clever he will catch you in the least error.

He will not buy short books.

He will not buy long books.

He is part moron, part genius and part ogre.

There is some doubt as to whether he can read.

 

 

Well, by God, Pat he's just like me, no stranger at all. He'll take from the book what he can bring to it. The dull-witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn't know were there.

And just as he is like me, I hope my book is enough like him so that he may find in it interest and recognition and some beauty as one finds in a friend.

Cervantes ends his prologue with a lovely line. I want to use it, Pat, and then I will have done.

He said to the reader,

“May God give you health. And may He be not unmindful of me, as well.”

John Steinbeck

1952
Correspondent abroad for
Collier's. East of Eden
published.
Viva Zapata!
(film) released.

 

1954
Sweet Thursday
published. Lived abroad for nine months. Correspondent for
Le Figaro,
Paris.

[Palace Hotel]
[Madrid]
April 18 [1952]

Dear Pat:

We've been nearly a week in Madrid now and go back to Seville for the great fiesta on Monday.

We have been seeing many pictures—at The Prado and today at Toledo to see the many fine Grecos. So many impressions. Maybe too many. Hard to take in in a short time, a little stunning in fact. Come in dog tired.

We did not have mail forwarded so haven't heard much of anything. Letter from Kazan saying he had testified [before the House Committee on Un-American Activities]. He had told me he was going to a long time ago. I wonder whether it made a sensation. He sent us a copy of his statement which I thought good. It must be a very hard decision to make. He is a good and honest man. I hope the Communists and the second raters don't cut him to pieces now. But they can't hurt him very much.

I haven't written anything. Going through a fallow time, which, as usual, bothers me. Actually so much coming in there hasn't been time for much to go out. And my pen has gone rusty.

I'll try to write more often.

love to all
John

Hotel Lancaster
Paris
May 12, 1952

 

Arrived in Paris yesterday but late at night after 28 hours on the train from Madrid. Now we are in this comfortable hotel. I have slept myself out and tomorrow morning I am going to start on my first piece about Spain. It will be a pleasure to begin putting some of it down. This is the longest stretch without writing within my recent memory. Have seen some strange and reversing things. I hope I can make some sense of it when I start writing it down. Spain wasn't what we expected. I wonder what it was! It is a completely contradictory country. Everything you say or see or think is cancelled out by something else you see. It is a country about which it is impossible to make generalities. And yet how can you write a piece about it if you don't think one way or another. Paradoxes as verities? I think the best way is to set it down just as it happened and to let the sense of paradox grow out of the material just as it has out of my seeing.

Paris is always wonderful—both recognized and new every time. This time the chestnuts are blooming and the trees are in full leaf and it is the core of spring.

Here I plan to buy a little French car (to be sold when we leave Europe) to drive to Italy and all over.

One thing will interest you. I had been told that my works were not permitted in Spain. This is not true. And it seems that they are very popular. Maybe I got a sense of self-importance by thinking my books were banned in Spain. Maybe a kind of martyr complex. Well, they aren't, so there's a good hair shirt ruined.