Steinbeck (15 page)

Pacific Grove
February 4, 1935

Dear Miss McIntosh:

Herewith the signed contracts [for
Tortilla Flat
]
.
They seem fine to me. Thank you. You have been very good to me.

We'll get the new book off to you about the fifteenth. Title has been slightly changed to include one more word, In Dubious Battle. Much better sound and also gives a kind of an active mood to the thing. I guess it is a brutal book, more brutal because there is no author's moral point of view. The speech of working men may seem a little bit racy to ladies' clubs, but, since ladies' clubs won't believe that such things go on anyway, it doesn't matter. I know this speech and I'm sick of working men being gelded of their natural expression until they talk with a fine Oxonian flavor.

There are curious things about the language of working men. I do not mean the local idioms, but the speech which is universal in this country among traveling workers. Nearly every man uses it individually, but it has universal rules. It is not grammatical error but a highly developed speech form. The use of the final g in ing is tricky, too. The g is put on for emphasis and often to finish a short hard sentence. It is sometimes used for purpose of elision but not always. Certain words like “something” rarely lose the final g or if they do, the word becomes “somepin” or “somepm.” A man who says thinkin' will say morning if it comes on the end of a sentence. I tell you these things so you will understand why, in one sentence having two present participles, one g will be there and the other left off. This is a pretty carefully done ms. If you will read such a sentence over, aloud, you will see that it naturally falls that way.

I hardly expect you to like the book. I don't like it. It is terrible. But I hope when you finish it, in the disorder you will feel a terrible kind of order. Stories begin and wander out of the picture; faces look in and disappear and the book ends with no finish. A story of the life of a man ends with his death, but where can you end a story of man-movement that has no end? No matter where you stop there is always more to come. I have tried to indicate this by stopping on a high point but it is by no means an ending.

I hope Mr. Covici will be interested in this book. I am very tired. This has been completed quickly.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

Pacific Grove
[Early 1935]

Dear Mr. Needham:

I am grateful to you for your active interest. It is only a few weeks ago that we heard that Covici-Friede had conceived a rather frantic regard for my work to the extent that he [Covici] has contracted for all of it and is going to reissue some of the old ones. He is bringing out one in May called Tortilla Flat and possibly this one we are now on earlier. It is called In Dubious Battle.

I am very much pleased of course. We have been very close to the end these last couple of years. Thank you for your trouble. You see, it is not needed now, I mean of course, the finding of a publisher. Ballou is a fine man and a sensitive man but I do not think he is fitted to fight the battle of New York. He is a gentleman. He can't bring himself to do the things required for success.

 

I should like to discuss with you a plan of work so difficult that it will take several years to do and so uncharted that I will have to remake the novel as it is now understood to make it a vehicle. I want to go to Mexico to do it and it may be that we shall be able to go this summer. I hope so, for I am anxious to get at it before very long.

I hope you will come up to see us when you can.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

Pacific Grove
[April] 1935

Dear Miss McIntosh:

I confess that I am deeply shocked at the attitude of Covici, not from pique but because it is a perfect example of the attitude which makes the situation in I. D. B. what it is. Does no one in the world want to see and judge this thing coldly? Answering the complaint that the ideology is incorrect, this is the silliest of criticism. There are as many communist systems as there are communists. It should be obvious from the book that not only is this true, but that the ideologies change to fit a situation. In this book I was making nothing up. In any statement by one of the protagonists I have simply used statements I have heard used. Answering the second criticism that the book would be attacked by both sides, I thoroughly anticipated such attack in trying to do an unbiased book. And if attack has ever hurt the sale of a book I have yet to hear of it.

That is the trouble with the damned people of both sides. They postulate either an ideal communist or a thoroughly damnable communist and neither side is willing to suspect that the communist is a human, subject to the weaknesses of humans and to the greatnesses of humans. I am not angry in the least. But the blank wall of stupid refusal even to look at the thing without colored glasses of some kind gives me a feeling of overwhelming weariness and a desire to run away and let them tear their stupid selves to pieces. If the fools would only change the name from Communist to, say, American Liberty Party, their principles would probably be embraced overnight.

I guess this is slopping over enough. I am sorry that the book cannot go through. I would do it just the same again. I suppose in the event of an English sale, the censor would clean up my carefully built American language.

As for submitting another book to Covici—you will do as you think best about that. I am so tired. I have worked for so long against opposition, first of my parents who wanted me to be a lawyer and then of publishers who want me to be anything but a writer, that I work well under opposition. If ever I had things my own way I would probably go dry. This will knock out all plans of going to Mexico I guess. I had hoped to be able to start off the big book which would take a long time and would be a very grave attempt to do a first-rate piece of work. However, Covici should know saleability, and obviously I don't. Oh, the devil. We've managed to live thus far and write what we want to write. We can probably go on doing it.

Right today I am discouraged. I won't be tomorrow.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

Pacific Grove
May 13, 1935

Dear Miss Otis:

I have your letter this morning, also two from C-F [Covici-Friede].

Mr. Latham of Macmillan's came to see me. Asked if I were tied to C-F. I said they had just rejected a book. He said he wanted to see it and I told him to apply to you.

Let me say at the beginning of this paragraph that I would rather stay with Covici-Friede than anyone I know. I like the way they have worked on Tortilla and I like their makeup and everything about them. This letter this morning from them offers to publish I. D. B. if I wish it. Of course I wish it. It is a good book. I believe in it, and damn it, we're living on relief. Why wouldn't I want to publish it?

 

 

Let's get to this rejection now. I had a letter, unfortunately destroyed, in which they said they didn't want to print the book and they gave three pages of reasons for not wanting to print it. Between you and me I suspect a strong communist bias in that office, since the reasons given against the book are all those I have heard from communists of the intellectual bent and of the Jewish race. Do you think I am right? My information for this book came mostly from Irish and Italian communists whose training was in the field, not in the drawing room. They don't believe in ideologies and ideal tactics. They do what they can under the circumstances.

I'm a bit twisted. My father went into his fatal illness two days ago. We don't know whether it will be a week, or as it was with my mother, ten or eleven months. It is the same thing. Cerebral leakage. I have been running back and forth to Watsonville [where Esther Steinbeck Rodgers, Steinbeck's sister, lived] so often that I am bewildered and possibly not coherent. Anyway, I hope this is a satisfactory letter in some respects.

Sincerely,
John Steinbeck

[Pacific Grove]
May [1935]

Dear Miss Bailey:

It was a lovely letter.

At first I thought I should send the ten dollars back to you but I won't. I have no place to work. When I do work which is most of the time—Carol has to creep around. For a long time I've wanted to build a little work room in the back yard, using second hand lumber. Ten dollars will do it. Thank you.

I should have preferred no service at all for Dad. I can think of nothing for him so eloquent as silence. Poor silent man all his life. I feel very badly, not about his death, but about his life, for he told me only a few months ago that he had never done anything he wanted to do. Worst of all he hadn't done the work he wanted to do.

Come some time and see the new work room.

 

love
John

Pacific Grove
June 13, 1935

Dear Miss Otis:

If you have anything of mine the New Yorker could use, fine. The only things I can think of are the short things like the Vigilante or possibly St. Katy which I would like to make someone print. I'm not being cocky but I have never written “for” a magazine and shan't start now.

One very funny thing. Hotel clerks here are being instructed to tell guests that there is no Tortilla Flat. The Chamber of Commerce does not like my poor efforts, I guess. But there is one all right, they know it.

My father's death doesn't change any plans but does give us freedom of movement for the first time in three years. I can't get used to having no illness in the family.

While I think of it—I am very much opposed to drawing money from any publisher for work that has not been done. I'd much rather have less and have it without any obligation. The idea of a salary doesn't appeal to me at all. I intend to write what I want to.

The publicity on TF [
Tortilla Flat
] is rather terrible out here and we may have to run ahead of it. Please ask CF [Covici-Friede] not to give my address to anyone. Curious that this second-rate book, written for relaxation, should cause this fuss. People are actually taking it seriously.

I had an awfully nice letter from Bob Ballou. Wish I could have stayed with him but I'm so awfully sick of not being able to have shoes half-soled.

In your dealings you need make no compromise at all for financial considerations as far as we are concerned. Too many people are trapped into promises by gaudy offers. And my father's estate, while small, will keep us for a number of years if necessary. And we've gone through too damned much trying to keep the work honest and in a state of improvement to let it slip now in consideration of a little miserable popularity. I'm scared to death of popularity. It has ruined everyone I know. That's one of the reasons I would like In Dubious Battle printed next. Myths form quickly and I want no tag of humorist on me, nor any other kind. Besides, IDB would reduce popularity to nothing but I do think it would sell.

I suppose it is bad tactics but I am refusing the usual things —the radio talks, the autograph racket, the author's afternoons and the rest of the clutter—politely, I hope, but firmly.

Will Heinemann buy TF? [This is the British publishing house which would publish all Steinbeck's work.] I suppose To A God Unknown failed miserably in England as it did here.

By the way, the rainy season is on in Mexico now. We can't go until August I guess, if then. I'll leave this open in case anything else occurs to me.

That's all,
John Steinbeck

Pacific Grove
[Late summer 1935]

Dear Louis Paul:

It was good of you to write. I like that. The odd thing is that since I read Jedworth I've had a strong impulse to write to you. That was one of the finest stories I ever read. Publishers are all right. They are the natural enemies, though. The wildcats to us quail.

I'm a couple of books ahead—not because I write so quickly but because I'm published so slowly. We're planning to drive to Mexico soon.

I wish you lived closer. I'd like to talk to you. God willing I'll never go east again. Don't worry about my making money. I haven't the gift.