Steinbeck (72 page)

[Sag Harbor]
[October 14, 1958]

Dear Gadg:

Many thanks for your letter. It was a thoughtful thing to do. One of my main faults is that I take myself too seriously but I have other faults which will run it a close second and third and fourth.

Elaine was sad that you and Mollie saw and heard us blasting away destructively at each other. It doesn't happen very often and we get over it. It is as though imps got in and took over. They ride on alcohol. I always think I am braced to withstand it and then a school teacher tone comes into Elaine's voice and I go mad. She gets me every time. Maybe a memory of my Presbyterian grandmother who was always right. I just literally go insane when I hear that didactic tone of voice. But I have learned some things. Such a fight is a kind of purge to a woman. She comes out of it feeling fine. A man is likely to brood about it. And I have learned to brood as little as possible. It's just imps. And maybe we play into each other's hands. If I didn't get mad, Elaine would have to keep trying until I did. Maybe it's better just to blow up. But E. being more a social creature than I am, hates to have anyone hear it. I'm sorry if we made you unhappy. I just want to assure you that we like each other more than we ever have, if that is possible. And the fights get rarer and rarer. It might be really dangerous if they should stop.

Do you and Mollie ever come to open fighting? We wouldn't without drink. Maybe it's better than leaving things bottled. I don't know.

My work moves on slowly. I kind of like the way it is going down now. I threw out everything I read to you and started fresh before I got your letter. Reading it aloud to you made me aware of things I didn't like.

I don't know why I keep on. I have plenty of books for one lifetime. But perhaps because of long conditioning I go right on whether it is lousy or not. The great crime I have committed against literature is living too long and writing too much, and not good enough. But I like to write. I like it better than anything. That's why neither theatre nor movies really deeply interest me. It's the fresh clear sentence or thought going down on paper for the first time that makes me pleased and fulfilled. All the rest—rewrite and by-products are mechanical to me but there is nothing mechanical in the joy of the first time.

Did any of your pictures turn out well? I like the way you take them—so casually. If there is a good half humorous and half dignified one, I should like to send it to my boys.

That's all—thanks again for your nice and helpful letter. There's nothing wrong with us or our relationship, believe me. Just two brute humans.

love
John

Sag Harbor
October 17, 1958

Dear Pat:

Wyntre ben y commun in loud sing cookoo

Comes time pretty soon to move into town. I love this season but the city will be good too. How very fortunate I am that I can have both and each one as it is needed.

This is the time to put things away. It is strange. In spring and summer we work over the earth as though it belonged to us—plant lawns and cut them, flowers, trees, put in water pipes. We are proprietors. And then the fall comes and the frost and the ice and it is too much for us. We lose our ownership. We scurry to put things away out of danger, drain water, let the leaves be as they fall. The strong forces creep back and we burrow down like moles to wait it out until we can take control again. It's a fine lesson every year—a lesson in humility. I can sit in my little house on the point and watch the winter come and I guess I am a traitor to my species because I get a sharp sense of joy to see the older gods move back in. I am for them. The wind and the ice taking command again. We can't fight it. We must retreat as we always have. Almost my favorite season. For some reason it brings a kind of happy energy back to me. It is almost as though I go back to old loyalties. The birds are flocking and flying. The geese go over at night very high. And the air has muscles.

We will be coming in about the ist of Nov. This place though will be waiting. I can come out any time when I need a change from the city. I love the winter storms and the cold. They are much more my friends and relatives than the summer with its lawn mowers and the brown girls greasy with sun tan oil.

My life is coming back now. Strange isn't it how periodically my life force goes into hibernation very like death and then it stirs very drowsily to life and one day the words begin to rush out and every other consideration dissipates like mist. I am very fortunate in so many ways.

Well, this is nearly all. The words are beginning to flock and fly again like the night birds. I wonder where they will go this time.

See you soon
John

[Sag Harbor]
October 21, 1958

Dear Chase:

I realize that after all of our months of work together, for me to cut myself off as I have must seem on the prima donna side. And I haven't been able to explain it simply, not even to myself. Kind of like an engine that is missing fire in several cylinders and I don't know quite what is causing it. The only thing that will be applicable to you is that the engine doesn't run. The whole thing must be a little insulting to you and I don't want it to be. It grows out of my own uncertainties.

You will remember that, being dissatisfied with my own work because it had become glib, I stopped working for over a year in an attempt to allow the glibness to die out, hoping then to start fresh with what might feel to me like a new language. Well, when I started in again it wasn't a new language at all. It was a pale imitation of the old language only it wasn't as good because I had grown rusty and the writing muscles were atrophied. So I picked at it and worried at it because I wanted desperately for this work to be the best I had ever done. My own ineptness and sluggishness set me back on my heels. Finally I decided to back off and to try to get the muscles strong on something else—a short thing, perhaps even a slight thing although I know there are no slight things. And that didn't work either. I wrote seventy-five pages on the new thing, read them and threw them away. Then I wrote fifty pages and threw them away. And then it came to me in a quick flash what that language was. It had been lying around all the time ready at hand and nobody had ever used it as literature. My “slight thing” was about present day America. Why not write it in American? This is a highly complicated and hugely communicative language. It has been used in dialogues, in cuteness and perhaps by a few sports writers. It has also been used by a first person telling a story but I don't think it has been used as a legitimate literary language. As I thought about it I could hear it in my ears. And then I tried it and it seemed right to me and it started to flow along. It isn't easy but I think it is good. For me. And suddenly I felt as Chaucer must have felt when he found he could write the language he had all around him and nobody would put him in jail—or Dante when he raised to poetic dignity the dog Florentine that people spoke but wouldn't dare to write. I admit I am getting a little beyond my peers in those two samples but a cat may surely look at a Chaucer.

And that is what I am working with and that is why I have times of great happiness as well as times of struggle and despair. But it is a creative despair.

Love to you and
to Elizabeth,
John

New York
November 6, 1958

Dear Cat,

Of course I was terribly pleased to get your last letter and to hear that you had the second highest mark in “Bugby”. I didn't even know you were taking it. It sounds fascinating. That and your triumph in mathematics seem to have set your handwriting back a little bit, but we can't have everything. I have often told you that spelling was fairly unimportant, except that sometimes it can be a little confusing. You said, for instance, that the “wether” up there is cold. A wether is a castrated sheep and I'm sorry he's cold but there is nothing I can do about it from here. I am also sorry that I will not see your crew cut in full flower, but maybe it will be rather pretty when it leafs out.

The last line in your letter indicates that you want something and by an intuitive approach we believe it says hair tonic. I can't imagine letting you go without hair tonic, particularly now in these critical days of the crew cut, and Miss Astolat says that she will put some in the mail for you. It's a little surprising to me that Eaglebrook School dispensary hasn't any bear's grease to rub in your hair.

It won't be long now till we'll be up to see you, and we'll have a celebration. And believe me I am pleased that you're trying. That's all that's needed—is just to try and the marks will come. Don't necessarily try to beat the world in one week. But try pushing at it a little bit every day. That way everybody will be happy, you particularly. We love you and we'll see you very soon.

Fa

[New York]
November 10, 1958

Dear Thorn:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that's a good thing—that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistic thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness, and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know that better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I am glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love
Fa

New York
November 6, 1958

Dear Mr. Hannon:

Thank you for your very kind letter. You may use any part of the following statement you wish or all of it.

The Award of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak and the Soviet outcry against it makes me sad but not for Pasternak. He has fulfilled his obligation as a writer, has seen his world, described it and made his comment. That the product of his art has found response everywhere in the world where it has been permitted to be seen must be a satisfaction to him.

He is not to be pitied however, no matter how cruelly he may be treated. My sadness is for the poor official writers sitting in judgment on a book they are not allowed to read. They are the grounded vultures of art who having helped to clip their own wings are righteously outraged at Flight and contemptuous of Eagles. These are the sad ones at last, the crippled and distorted ones, and it is quite natural that they should be hostile toward one who under equal pressures did not succumb and did not fail. They are the pallbearers of Soviet Literature, and they must now be aware of the weight of the corpse.

No matter how they may quote Pasternak in his absence, no matter what groveling may be reported, his book is here to refute them now and always. The real traitors to literature are Pasternak's judges, and they will be punished as were the judges of Socrates—their names forgotten and only their stupidities remembered.