Steinbeck (54 page)

I do hope I'll hear from you soon and I hope you'll send me a galley. Galley hell! you'll have books in a short time.

love to all,
John

Paris
May 26, 1952

Dear Elizabeth:

Your letter this morning with Colliers' reaction to the first piece. This first piece was written to order. I won't make that mistake again. I enclose the wire specifying the kind of piece required. If you can see how I could have covered all of these fields in a whole nation in 5,000 words by any other method I'll eat it. Maybe I could have done better but not much different. It may turn out that they don't want my stuff at all but Colliers stuff with my name on it. As for its not being my kind of stuff, that's balderdash. One wants Tortilla Flat and another Grapes of Wrath. I write all kinds of stuff. I will not again follow their rules. They can accept or reject, but I will not work it over and over until it sounds like Quent Reynolds. I will send many pieces. No two will be alike. They understood this or said they did. I'm not a bit upset by this. In fact I anticipated it. They will have plenty to choose from but they will have to choose, not create. If they reject, we'll try to sell it elsewhere and if no one wants it we'll throw it away.

It is certain that we have changed our plans. We changed them to match conditions we didn't know about in advance. Pat writes saying I should go to Israel, Manning [Gordon Manning, a
Collier's
editor] thinks I should go to the Slovak border. I am going to the Jura. If they think I am hanging around Paris too long—let them. I have been gathering a sense of Europe here. I know where to go now and what for. I could not have known without coming here. This is not a city desk assignment. This is no quarrel—only a restatement of an understanding.

I don't know whether the second piece I just sent off will be acceptable to Colliers either, nor the piece on the Jura but I'll do them anyway. Elaine is working hard with the camera but there is no way for her to learn. They want her to send in the undeveloped film and she never hears how it comes out. There is no way to correct a mistake if you don't know what it is. This sounds like a beefing letter and in a way it is, but now it is over.

We took a trial run in the little car yesterday (named
“Aux Armes O Citroën
”) and it is very good.

We feel pretty good. There is a kind of weariness from seeing too much and trying to take in too much. But there's not any help for that.

I hope you had fun in Maine.

I'm sending a box of things for Catbird on his birthday but I'll try to send them by hand so he will surely get them.

Love and kisses to everyone,

John

Paris
May 27, 1952

Dear Elizabeth:

Time and space are rather terrible things. Yesterday I wrote and sent to you a very ill-natured letter. Last night we went out with the Loessers. They were fighting and for a time we caught it but saved ourselves. It was as though a kind of evil gas had spread.

This morning an angry letter from Way answering an angry letter from Elaine. By now Way has forgotten there ever was any trouble. By the time you get my bad-tempered letter, I shall have forgotten all about it and you will be irritated. New rule—“People who are more than one hour apart should never write letters.”

We are not leaving until Wednesday. We are going to stay with the Frenchman in his house which he says has a toilet but no water [a school teacher and vintner in the Jura who had invited the Steinbecks to visit him]. He says we can stay at an hotel—but I would rather stay with him. He has three daughters and he says—“They have many friends who I hope will not bother you.” This is a great thing for me. I will be able to see French lower middle class farmer life as I could not in any other way. I don't know how long I will stay but I will surely stay until I get a true sense of people, thinking and way of life. It is a wonderful chance.

Ridgway gets in today and every preparation is being made for riots and counter riots. I will go out and see.

I am being interviewed by Combat which is a left wing Communist paper but unofficial. I have been interviewed by the Monde—conservative—so must be by the other. By the way, being interviewed is the best way of getting information. The very nature of a question can tell you a great deal.

Last night I read from the galleys of E of E and it is better than I thought. Doesn't print make a great difference though?

Have you heard about the signs in Paris? The Communists have written all over the walls AMERICANS GO HOME and crews have followed, painted “Via Pan American” and after them “Revenez Via Air France.” It has completely destroyed the effect of the Communists' work.

I guess one of the reasons for my ill nature is that I am worried about money. We are not spending too much here but I can't seem to get ahead at all and it is a constant nagging worry. I think I am working as hard as I can and I can just barely keep my head above water.

Love to all,
John

Geneva
June 2, 1952

Dear Elizabeth:

Now how did it get to be that date? I have the old duality —time has flown and at the same time we have been away forever.

We drove out of Paris in the little car Aux Armes. It behaves beautifully. Stayed the first night in Dijon where the streets are
not
paved with mustard. The second day we drove to Poligny in the Jura. Do you remember Louis Gibry to whom you once sent fruit trees? Well they are all growing and their branches are being used to graft other trees so that the original trees you sent are spreading all over. He lives in a little old house in a peasant street, no plumbing, no inside toilet, three little girls, two hunting dogs, flies, crumbs, bees from the hives in the yard, shouting of neighbors and birds, street full of cows, a fine dust of manure over everything. He would not hear of our going to a hotel. We had his guest room. We went into the wine caves, visited every one and were visited by everyone. If you didn't watch carefully the dogs got your dinner —the whole place crawling with children. Wines were brought in from the bottoms of cellars. We went to tiny towns famous for wines and drank the best and ate cheese and loaves of bread as long as ourselves. We heard much talk. Elaine took many pictures.

Yesterday we pried ourselves loose against protest and proceeded to Geneva. We were filthy—we do not know how to keep clean with bowl and pitcher and cold water. We and the car were deep in cow manure. And we landed in this sweet and immaculate country. In Paris we met Faye Emerson and she had just come from here. She said, “Remember how you always heard of a place where you could eat off the floor? Well, I've just seen it.” As for us, we had just come from the Jura where you can barely eat off the table. We got in and began taking baths, one after another. I finally have the odor of cheese, cows, people, dogs and wine caves off me and all my clothes are being cleaned.

We both suddenly became homesick last week. It is the proper time for it. It usually happens at three months. I think it was all the children in Louis Gibry's house that did it. It surely was not the backyard toilet. However, we will get over that.

 

Later: We have been walking all over Geneva all day and our feet are tired and hot and now we are about to dip into a martini which is a specific for tired feet. There is one very nice thing about this city—absolutely nothing of a lively nature to do at night. The result is that we are getting some sleep. I ordered a double martini of course—half for each foot.

My French gets worse every day as it gets more fluent. A man in a shop today after listening to me a while said in well-modulated English, “What in hell are you trying to say?” I guess I was being too subtle.

In Paris we knew every second person we saw. Here we have not seen a soul of our acquaintance. What a joy it is, at least for a change.

I know there is no great need to keep in touch. But it does bother me. I guess it is largely the constant and never-changing sense of impending tragedy concerning the boys. I wish I could lose that. But I never have.

Last night we had a lovely dinner on the terrace of this hotel which practically hangs over the lake. It was incredibly beautiful and the evening went on for hours.

John

Hassler Hotel
Rome
June 17 [1952]

Dear Annie Laurie.

We got in here last night and your letter was waiting for us. It is very hot in Rome, I am sitting in my shorts in an open window writing this.

Gadg [Kazan] called this morning from Paris. He says he is absolutely crazy about East of Eden and wants to do it. He says he is going to talk to Zanuck about it. He says he wants to do it whether Zanuck does or not, under United Artists independently or something like that. He told me that Zapata has already grossed three million dollars. He wants to work out some kind of deal where we own a chunk of the picture and can share in the profits. I told him to call you when he gets in town. You know of course that this Congress thing tore him to pieces. He is just getting back on his feet and sounded fine on the phone. And as you know I would rather work with him than with anyone I know. We know that works. He is the very best and there is no doubt at all in my mind about that.

Well, the summer moves on and it has a kind of dream-like quality. Soon it will be over and then as usual it is as though it had never been.

love to all there
john

Rome
June 23, 1952
Monday today

Dear Elizabeth:

Drudi's [Gabriella Drudi, Steinbeck's Italian literary agent] office is giving a monster cocktail party this afternoon in my honor. You know how I loathe them. But I seem to have to do this one. All last night and a good part of today with the most violent stomach cramps and dysentery which does not make any kind of party seem very desirable. I shall have a number of glasses of iced tea, which looks lethal and will keep me from retching.

I have a kind of a desolate feeling of failure in this whole trip. I wish I could talk to Mr. Anthony [Edward Anthony, publisher of
Collier's
] again. I like him. What I would like to tell him is that when you have finished a long piece of work any work seems easy. You know as well as I do that I have never turned out a really easy piece of copy in my life. I wonder why I always fool myself and, through myself, other people. But I don't think I fool you. But here I am trapped again in my own upswings of enthusiasm. The easy way in which I can turn out the pretties of copy. Just interview a few people, take some pictures and there you are. Well I can't do it. These articles are going to be just exactly as hard as anything I have ever done. And it is troubling me that I have fooled people. Will you tell Mr. Anthony that? The whole thing is making me sick and putting a pressure on me that makes it impossible for me to work well. But the main thing I want you to tell him is that I will do the work and I will do it if it takes the rest of my life. I did not intentionally fool him or any of them. I fooled myself. Maybe this upset is caused by a block of this kind. But I think I will feel better about it if you will tell that one man.

The first of my cool clothes are supposed to arrive this afternoon—and at that moment they did and it is such a relief.

I'm going to leave this letter open to tell you about the cocktail party. I will put on my pretty new cool clothes and get ready for the guillotine. That is exactly what I feel like.

Love,
John

Paris
July 23, 1952

Dear Roberto and Ingrid:

We were sorry not to see you again, but you were busy and we were frantic. However, we were glad to have seen as much of you as we did and I was particularly glad at last to meet Roberto.

I hope things are easing up for you now and that there can be some relaxation for a while. You are in good hands and I must say I feel much better for you. Let Giesler do it all for you. He can and will do it well and at least you will know that you have a man who is for you, not against you.

We leave tomorrow for London and thence to Ireland, and then if we have a little more time, to Ingrid's home town for a week.

I am going to make the Ibsen play The Vikings at Helgoland in Stockholm next summer. It will make a very fine picture. You will remember I discussed it with you a long time ago. Probably make it in the archipelago. There is a great deal of enthusiasm in the Svenskfilmindustrie about it. Hjordis is one of the really great women's parts. Would you be interested, Ingrid? Besides being a good part and a good picture, it might give you the chance to kick the pants of some of the people who have been kicking you in the pants for a long time. We will have a major release but the money will be private money so there will be none of that tampering with the script. Let me know whether you might be interested. It is one hell of a part.