Steinbeck (44 page)

[Pacific Grove]
June 8, 1949

Dear John:

Your letter made me very happy. This is a time of most profound readjustments, emotional as well as in other directions and the reassurance of a letter like yours cannot be overestimated. Everything dried up as it is bound to, and got out of drawing and with three more mixed metaphors I will have a literary boulliabaise, or how do you spell it.

I am extremely anxious to read your new book. There are lots of reasons for this. I believe that your hatreds are distilling off and that your work is all ahead of you. Maybe the training in hatred in all of us is necessary. For hate is a completely self-conscious and personalized emotion and a deterrent to a clear view but it may be as necessary to developing ability as the adjectives we later learn to eliminate. But we must first use the adjectives before we can know how to leave them out.

I've had seven months of quiet out here to try to reduce the maelstrom to tea kettle size. For myself there are two things I cannot do without. Crudely stated they are work and women, and more gently—creative effort in all directions. Effort and love. Everything else I can do without but if those were effectively removed I would take a powder instantly.

Being alone here has allowed me to think out lots of things. There is so much yapping in the world. The coyotes are at us all the time telling us what we are, what we should do and believe. The stinking little parasitic minds that fasten screaming on us like pilot fish that fasten on a shark, they contribute only drag. I think I believe one thing powerfully —that the only creative thing our species has is the individual, lonely mind. Two people can create a child but I know of no other thing created by a group. The group ungoverned by individual thinking is a horrible destructive principle. The great change in the last 2,000 years was the Christian idea that the individual soul was very precious. Unless we can preserve and foster the principle of the preciousness of the individual mind, the world of men will either disintegrate into a screaming chaos or will go into a grey slavery. And that fostering and preservation seem to me our greatest job.

This will probably be a long and boring letter, but I need some one to talk to and good or bad for you, you are tagged.

You see I worked last year but it was all experiment and notes. I've been practicing for a book for 35 years and this is it. I don't see how it can be popular because I am inventing method and form and tone and context. And of course I am scared of it. It's a cold lonely profession and this is the coldest and loneliest because this is all I can do, and when it is done I've either done it or I never had it to do.

 

 

I've re-read your letter and this is another day. You know I was born without any sense of competition. Consequently I have never even wondered about the comparative standing of writers. I don't understand that. Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product is turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. It is like a woman trying to remember what child birth is like. She never can.

Again I have re-read your letter. And you are quite right. A man is always married. I wonder though whether he can be married to the idea—with different people carrying the ball (oh Jesus!). I will know sometime maybe. Being married to me is a very hard thing. I am kind and loving and generous but there is always the rival (work) and to most women that is worse than another woman. They can kill or eliminate another woman but that rival they cannot even get close to no matter how you try to make them a part of it. And there's the necessity for being alone—that must be dreadful to a wife.

This maundering will probably go on for some time.

 

Now it is even more days later. I thought, after I stopped writing the other day, regarding your words about a wife. And do you remember in the Mabinogion, the ancient Welsh story of the man who made a wife entirely of flowers?

My boys will be with me in another two weeks and I will be glad. I deeply resent their growing and me not there to see. That is the only thing I resent now. The rest is all gone. But imagine if you couldn't see your daughter for months at a time when every day is a change and growth and fascination. I saw my oldest boy turn over on his back and discover the sky and in his look of wonderment I remembered when it happened to me and exactly how it was.

That's all now. But I would like and need to keep in touch.

John

[Pacific Grove]
June 20-24, 1949]
Monday

Dear Belle:

This may seem very roundabout but sometimes that is the shortest way home. As you know, I have few if any complications. But you do have. And there is no reason to be foolish.

Maybe this method sounds silly to you but I assure you it is not. You will just have to be and become Belle Hamilton —a separate personality. When you go east you will find another hollow oak tree and tell me that. So we will keep contact. Now—this oak tree is all right. Max is my oldest friend and even then he thinks you are Belle Hamilton. He knows there is some reason for the use of his address but he is too good a friend and too much a gentleman even to inquire what it is. But I will explain that when you call. I would like to see you solito when I go down this weekend but I will discuss that with you also when you call. If you could get free sometime perhaps Friday afternoon—I would start very early and get there in the morning. Then I could meet you at the 1401 N. El Centro address [the Wagners'] if that is convenient. And you would be completely protected. The hotels are not good. Too many people are interested in tagging me. And other friends than Max would be “interested.” Anyway it's an idea.

I will leave this letter and perhaps bring it down with me.-Anyway you will be calling tomorrow.

 

 

Tuesday

The other parties on my line have been chattering so maybe you got a busy signal. I must go to the bank at two. I hope I don't miss your call.

Did I tell you I bought a cute little trailer house for the boys and their nurse to live in? I shall put it in the garden where the tent is and it will be their own. It is the cutest thing you ever saw. Looks like a house, not a trailer. It has two rooms, a little kitchen, a toilet, an ice box. It is completely furnished. And—as will have leaped to your agile mind—when the boys are not here, it could have other uses—couldn't it, dear?

It is ridiculous to sit here writing to you when I will be seeing you. But it won't be the first ridiculous thing I have done. And God willing, it won't be the last.

It is brightly cold here—the way I like it—good sleeping. Could be good other things.

 

 

Wednesday night

Somewhere the signals are crossed. I have only been out to buy groceries and you have not called. And I recognized the danger signals well enough not to try to call you. That I caught. It was in the air.

 

 

Thursday night

I've spent the afternoon pleasantly making you a little Celtic or Gaelic cross and it has been good to do. I will give it to you privately when I see you and it will be up to you to explain it. Maybe you saw it in a junk store and bought it. But the story of the wood is this and it is a long one. My grandmother's father went in the 40's from Massachusetts to Palestine to convert the Jews to Christianity. He took his family, among them a very young girl—my grandmother. I don't think he converted any but he did teach some of them principles of agriculture. That was his pitch for sneaking religion in on them. They were living in Jerusalem when one night a great storm of wind and lightning arose and one of the ancient olives on the Mount of Olives blew down. We were always-a family of looters. My great-grandfather cut a chunk out of the tree which was at least two thousand years old. Gradually it has been whittled away but there is still some of it left and we have always made little crosses for our children and for some others. Thus the Mother Superior in Salinas, who prayed me out of pneumonia, got one and she put it on her rosary, and because the wood is so old and dense and is always cool, she got to curing fever in children by putting the cool cross against their foreheads. I have made them for my children as my father made one for me. If there ever was a Gethsemane—the tree from which this wood was taken was there to witness it. I don't know why I made a Celtic cross and inscribed it in Gaelic. Just felt like it I guess. Anyway, rough and crude as it is, it is for you and was made for you. And maybe you will one day have someone to give it to. Stranger things have happened.

 

It is very odd. I will have to pass you this letter like a conspirator and you will probably have to burn it. But maybe that is good. I nearly signed the cross Bricrin—who was the great troublemaker of Ulster because I guess I am a troublemaker but then in a burst of egotism I signed it Ollam. An ollam was the very highest class of the filid of old Ireland. The writers and poets had many classes but the ollam was the top. He had to know 350 stories of all kinds. And I think perhaps I do.

Isn't it silly to go on writing this way? But it is only nine o'clock. I have hardly been out of the yard since I have been home. I have taken great gulps of sleep and now I have no more need for it. I think if I am not sleepy at 12 or 1 or 2 I will put my clothes in the car and drive south. It is pleasant to drive at night. And if I should get sleepy on the way I can sleep in the car or roll out the sleeping bag which I now carry always. It isn't a Hemingway double, damn it. But I think two could fit in it if they were reasonably companionable. And luxury on luxury—recently I bought a rubber air mattress. My hip used to get pretty sore sometimes. I'm just rattling on. Almost as though I couldn't stop. Like the crazy time of children it is. You know about dusk when they go mad and play harder and faster and in tighter circles until they cry or get the giggles and go to sleep.

The night is so quiet here. You remember how it gets—so quiet that there is a little hum in your ears when you listen because there is nothing to hear. How very deep this is—listening for a sign, looking for omens. Everyone does it. Actually I guess it is a matter of taking one's psychic pulse. For if one feels good the omens are invariably favorable. And I feel good tonight.

But I must make sure not to hurt Annie's feelings. There is only one thing—she has a very strong feeling about property and I am never again going to be property. I've had that twice. Once I was property to be saved and hoarded and the second time I was property to be spent. I don't want ever to be either kind again. Nor do I want to own anyone—nor anything to tell the truth. Now I have absolutely nothing but this little house. I like nice things but I don't have to own them. I used to go to the Metropolitan Museum to see that fantastic little Greek horse and the Cellini cup, but I never wanted to own them. I was always glad they were there for me to see and not to have to protect them, guard them, insure them, will them. No—I like it the way it is.

And I swear to God this is the last of this long and doleful screed. It will be a chore to read. My handwriting—never any bargain—changes at different hours of the day.

So this is the end of this. I will slip it into your hot little hand. And from then on—it's your ball—first down and ten yards to go—oops! penalty—15 yards to go.

love,
Sam

[Pacific Grove]
July 10-18 [1949]
Sunday

Bellita:

I will start this and only after tomorrow will I send it. For if you are coming I will hand it to you.