Steinbeck (18 page)

Read Steinbeck Online

Authors: John Steinbeck

BOOK: Steinbeck
3.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
John
 
 
The reaction of certain groups who found Steinbeck's literary activities controversial caused Albee, now in New York, to write in concern for his friend's physical safety.
To Mr. and Mrs. George Albee
Los Gatos
January II [1937]
Sunday
Dear George and Anne:
Your letter concerning my danger came this morning. The whole thing is changed now. I am not doing any more articles. And they do forget. So there is practically no danger until I commit another overt act. Right now I think my safety lies in the fact that I am not important enough to kill and I'm too able to get publicity to risk the usual beating. Our house is covered by insurance against riots and commotions.
I guess we'll have to pull in our horns financially. I don't expect the little book Of Mice and Men to make any money. It's such a simple little thing.
It is raining hard here now and very dark. I have an electric lantern in my little work room and the rain is pounding on the roof. Very pleasant. bye
John
 
 
And then word came that
Of Mice and Men
had been chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club.
To Elizabeth Otis
Los Gatos
January 27, 1937
Dear Miss Otis:
Of course this selection is gratifying but also it is frightening. I shall never learn to conceive of money in larger quantities than two dollars. More than that has no conceptual meaning to me. But a part of the money will be used for a long trip this spring. Both of us are such provincial rabbits and we want to move about a little before the rheumatism gets us. And so we plan quite an extended tripping. However, we've planned so many that didn't come off that our fingers are growing together crossed.
The new book has struck a bad snag. Heaven knows how long it will take to write. The subject is so huge that it scares me to death. And I'm not going to rush it. It must be worked out with great care. That's one fine thing this selection will do. It will let me work without a starvation scare going on all the time. This may or may not be a good thing.
It has been colder here than I've ever known it to be. Whole system of weather seems to be changing. In addition there is an epidemic of pneumonia and influenza out here so we go to town rarely and never to the theater. It is remarkable how cataclysmic human change and natural change work together. Wish I could find a corollary. The point of departure is somewhere and it isn't as simple as weather. Maybe the old gods are waking up or maybe a new litter of gods is hatching out.
About the Mice book—already, before publication, there has been a lot of nonsense written about it. I'm not sure that I like adulation. I could defend myself against attack. I wish I were as sure I could defend myself against flattery.
This is a rambling letter.
Sincerely,
John Steinbeck
To Pascal Covici
Los Gatos
February 28 [1937]
Dear Mr. Covici:
You do such nice things. The [Diego] Rivera book came and I am very grateful for it. It is a valuable thing and a beautiful job. Thank you.
You know, we've been married seven years or going on seven and one of the dreams of our marriage was that the moment we could, we would do some traveling. Well we're going to do it. My wife has never been on a ship. We're taking booking on a freighter sailing for New York about the first of April. We plan to go on to Europe from there. I'll give you the ship's name before we start. We haven't closed the booking yet. The boat is very slow, 31 days to N. Y.
Joe Jackson told me that you had sold 117,000 copies of Mice. That's a hell of a lot of books.
Anyway I'll hope to see you before very long. You couldn't arrange to sail with us, could you, train here and freighter back. That would be fine.
Anyway thank you again for everything.
John Steinbeck
 
 
A number of playwrights saw dramatic possibilities in Of
Mice and Men
, but Annie Laurie Williams, the play agent associated with the McIntosh and Otis office, showed the novel to Beatrice Kaufman, Eastern representative of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures and —more to the point—the wife of the well-known playwright and director, George S. Kaufman. He shared his wife's enthusiasm and enlisting Sam H. Harris as producer, arranged for a fall production of the work, which, as he wrote Steinbeck “drops almost naturally into play form and no one knows that better than you.”
 
“It is only the second act that seems to me to need fresh invention,” he continued. “You have the two natural scenes for it—bunkhouse and the negro's room, but I think the girl should come into both these scenes, and that the fight between Lennie and Curley, which will climax Act 2, must be over the girl. I think the girl should have a scene with Lennie
before
the scene in which he kills her. The girl, I think, should be drawn more fully: she is the motivating force of the whole thing and should loom larger.”
 
He made a couple of other specific, small suggestions and asked Steinbeck to send any further ideas he might have. Then Kaufman added:
“Preserve the marvelous tenderness of the book.
And
—if you could feel it in your heart to include a
little
more humor, it would be extremely valuable, both for its lightening effect and the heightening of the subsequent tragedy by comparison.”
In considering actors, he wrote that he was undecided as to whether to have “names” or not.
“I have just had a tough experience with Margaret Sullavan—we have had to close her play because of an impending baby. Not that Victor McLaglen could have a baby but he could do something else just as bad. Once you have delivered your play into the hands of a star you are helpless when that star misbehaves. On the other hand, without a decent name we will open to four people when we go out of town.”
To Elizabeth Otis and Annie Laurie Williams
Los Gatos
March 19, 1937
Dear Miss Otis and Annie Laurie Williams:
I have several letters from you this morning. This is the last letter you will get from me so I'd better make it complete. I'll go over all the questions.
Your check for $1,902 arrived and thank you very much. Please do not divulge the middle name on the check [Ernst]. I only use it at the bank as a safety measure.
I had George Kaufman's letter and have replied. I hope to have a draft incorporating his suggestions by the time we reach New York.
I hate literary parties and won't go to any if I can possibly get out of it.
Sailing on the Sagebrush, March 23, due in N.Y. about the 15th of April. Please do not tell
anyone
the name of the ship or its arrival. Covici knows and a few people out here. This ballyhoo is driving me nuts.
Regarding the College Humor matter—If a story of mine is as well done as I am able to do it, I wouldn't give a hoot if it were printed in Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. Make the price the limit they will pay and if it doesn't seem enough to you—don't let them. I really don't like the idea that my work can only be printed in certain magazines. I've broken every literary rule when I wanted to. I'm not conforming to some literary model now.
I'm down to Woollcott. [Alexander Woollcott whose “Town Crier” was a popular radio program.] I think you know my hatred of personal matters. On the other hand, I should like to have him talk about all work. I simply cannot write books if a consciousness of self is thrust on me. Must have some anonymity. I got Mr. Covici to start killing the pictures. I was recognized in S. F. the other day and it made me sick to my stomach. Unless I can stand in a crowd without any self-consciousness and watch things from an uneditorialized point of view, I'm going to have a hell of a hard time. I'm sure Mr. Woollcott will understand this.
Factual material is this. Born Salinas, California, 1902. Died—?
If I said Pasadena, I lied, but I lie easily. Educated Salinas and Stanford and not too pleased with the job of either. Reared in Salinas and Monterey and in and on ranches in vicinity. Live near Los Gatos and no mention of where near Los Gatos.
If Mr. Woollcott will soft-pedal the personal matter I'll love him to pieces as Mr. Geezil says. If he insists give him the structure I've told you of Mice. The experiment of making a play that can be read or a novel that can be played. Trying to make a new form that will take some of the techniques of both. Maybe he can build a story on that and will be able to leave me to my “pack of lumbering dogs.” Did you see that press release? Toby had become a
pack.
Toby by the way is going to stay with a friend until we get back. Maybe you would do well to show Mr. Woollcott this page. I'm sure that of his own experience he will know that the pressures exerted by publicity are unendurable.
In case of terrible need, you can radio me on the Sagebrush. By the way, if there's any mess please let me know. A letter would reach me c/o the ship in Philadelphia. If there is a fuss we could get off there and go in on a train. I want to get in and settled quietly.
See you all soon.
John S.
After a visit of several months in the Soviet Union and Scandinavia, John and Carol Steinbeck returned to New York, where preparations for the stage production of
Of Mice and Men
were going forward. Kaufman invited Steinbeck to his Bucks County home to make final changes in the script before rehearsals began.
 
Meanwhile, the “gift” edition of
The Red Pony—a
pet project of Pascal Covici's—had been published.
To Lawrence Clark Powell
Someplace in
Pennsylvania
[Bucks County]
August 23 [1937]
Dear Larry:
Just got in from Sweden a few days ago, hence the delay in answering your letter. Doing some play work down here and in a couple of weeks we'll start home. rm thoroughly tired of moving around. It's out of my system for some time, I hope. I was expecting a howl about the price of The Red Pony. I wouldn't pay ten dollars for a Gutenberg Bible. In this case, I look at it this way. Covici loves beautiful books. These are old stories reprinted and they don't amount to much anyway so if he wants to make a pretty book, why not? The funny thing is that they're over-subscribed, about five hundred. I didn't know there were that many damn fools in the world —with 10 bucks, I mean. I don't let Covici dictate one word about how I write and I try never to make a suggestion about publishing to him.
Your bibliography is very flattering. I can't think my work deserves it nor can I believe there would be enough general interest to justify any investment in it. However, I don't think there would be any objection on Covici's part. I couldn't very well do a preface. It would be too much like singing at my own funeral. I mean it would be such an egotistical thing to do and I'm not feeling egotistical.
As for the foreign reprints—maybe McIntosh and Otis could tell you. I don't know. And campus publications—I can't remember either. This material is bound to be lousy. There was very little anyway. I wasn't well liked in college and with reason as I remember it.
I hope I'll see you before too long. Let me hear from you.
John S.
 
 
While in Sweden, the Steinbecks had become friends of the painter Bo Beskow four years Steinbeck's junior. They had met in the corridor of the Covici-Friede offices in New York the previous winter: Beskow was there in connection with his mother Elsa Beskow's widely known children's books.
 
“Bumped into each other in the corridor,” Beskow recalls in a recent letter. “The publisher said, ‘Mr. Steinbeck has written a book, just out, would you like a copy?' John mumbled something and the publisher translated: ‘Mr. and Mrs. Steinbeck are going to Russia and will pass Stockholm.' I gave him my address and went home and read the book in bed to put me to sleep. But it kept me awake to the last word and long after that. I was excited, having
Of Mice and Men
thrown at me without ever having heard of John Steinbeck. They came to Stockholm that summer and we struck a friendship—what warmth and light and fun, those weeks.”
 
Beskow, at this time, had just won first prize in a nationwide mural competition. Later he was to achieve an international reputation for, among other works, his two murals and his portrait of Dag Hammarskjöld in the United Nations Building, New York, and his stained glass windows in Swedish cathedrals. In the summer of 1937 he did the first of three portraits of Steinbeck.
To Mr. and Mrs. Bo Beskow
Los Gatos
[1937]
Dear Muggins and Bo:
We have missed you very much. We wish you had come with us and were here. Before I left New York I sent three books. Will you let me know when you receive them? I mean with customs and all, I'd like to know they got there. We drove across the country. Our darling dog is well and happy and now we are settled. Muggins' letter came today and made us happy and sad too. Do write to us. People here marvel at Bo's portrait. Pat Covici wanted you to try to have it photographed in color at his expense. He said he would write you about it.
The little Wilhelmson boat was a joy. We played poker with the master and the steward all the way to New York. It is hot in N. Y. We went to Pennsylvania and finished up the play—back to N. Y. for casting and then we bought a Chevrolet and drove home. That's our history. Now I must get to work.
 
Donald Oenslager, who designed the sets and lighting for
Of Mice and Men,
remembered that
 
“Prior to rehearsals, there was a meeting of the director, George S. Kaufman, John Steinbeck, myself and the producer, Sam H. Harris in Harris' cubicle office on the second floor of the Music Box Theatre. There were both general and detailed discussions on the production. At the conclusion of the meeting, John Steinbeck rose and said that he felt all was in good hands and that his presence was no longer necessary; whereupon he departed for California.”
 
This departure, and the fact that he never returned were to have repercussions later. Steinbeck continues to Bo Beskow:

Other books

Cakes For Romantic Occasions by May Clee-Cadman
El mazo de Kharas by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
The Bourbon Kings of France by Desmond Seward
Legends of Japan by Hiroshi Naito