Steinbeck (57 page)

Nantucket
[March 24-27, 1953]
Tuesday

Darling:

It's been busy all right but fun. Burgie and her brother were waiting for us and we got here well before dark. Fires were burning and the house warm. The days have been beautiful but at night a real winter chill sets in. Then we build big fires.

Yesterday we went to town and I ordered a jeep to be delivered today. We will go out for driftwood for the fires. We made menus for the whole week. Boys make their beds and wash and wipe dishes. They do it pretty well—sometimes three times before perfect. But they do it. Tonight we wash clothes. Yesterday we walked to the lighthouse and back. Boys want to stay up late but what with the cold air and the exercise they conk out at about 8 o'clock and I about 8:30. There has been no talk of radio, television or movies. I made my justly world famous corned beef hash last night. A dead and properly mummified seagull on the beach is being re-buried for the 8th time right now with a border of clam shells. This time he is being interred with his head above ground so he “can look out.”

I love you and miss you. The jeep is coming and will have to close.

Love,
John

 

 

 

Wednesday

Dearest Elaine:

Your card came yesterday. I miss you very much and hope these goings away do not happen often.

Two good sunny days and today hard rain. But the boys are out in it. I have a big fire going in the kitchen and when they come in soaked and freezing I'll shuck off their clothes and warm them. It is working well. Each makes his own bed—and well. Thom cleans living room and wipes dishes. Cat carries, brings coal and sweeps kitchen. I coach. Big washing today. Everyone did his socks and underwear. All hanging in kitchen over the stove.

All in all, it is going better than I had imagined it could. Boys are cooperative but incredibly thoughtless. I am going very slowly, insisting that they finish every single thing before starting on the next. We get along fine. Bed making is a singular triumph because a badly made bed lets cold air in and the nights are freezing, and I don't keep any fires. We dress by kerosene heater.

Love—and I'll be glad when you're back.

John

 

 

Thursday

Dearest:

Last night after airplane building and painting I started reading The Black Arrow of RLS. The language is that of the Wars of the Roses. The kids are fascinated by the change of word sequences. “I think me not—etc.” There's a murder in the first chapter with a black arrow with the victim's name on it, so all is well.

Rain is over—sun is bright so we will go for a Moor Tour today in the jeep—collecting fireplace wood.

Thom just got up.

 

Later—breakfast over, beds made, dishes washed. It will be Sunday before we know it.

Gwyn is going to be very surprised. Always before the boys have come home with a bag of dirty clothes. This time, their clothes will be clean—well, pretty clean. The boys respond beautifully and they are very proud when they do a job well. They have carried logs as big as themselves. No wonder they sleep so well.

I hope you are having a good visit. New York will be in full spring before you get back. I miss you.

Love,
John

[New York]
April 7, 1953

Dear Dick:

I disagree with your criticism of Tennessee Williams' show Camino Real, but I don't intend to let that interfere with an old and valued friendship. There's no reason why you should like a play; there's no reason why I should not like the same play. I found in this one clarity and beauty. I listened to what seemed to me a courageous and fine piece of work, beautifully produced, and filled with excitement.

But apart from the fate of Camino Real, I think a more serious matter is involved. At least twice a year, every critic, during the dead period, writes a piece bemoaning the lack of courage, of imagination, of innovation in the American theatre. This being so, it is my opinion that when a play of courage, imagination and invention comes along, the critics should draw this to the attention of the theatre-goer. It becomes clear that when innovation and invention automatically draw bad notices, any backer will be cautious of investment, and furthermore will not playwrights stop experimenting if their plays will not be produced?

The democracy of art does not require universal acclaim. In fact instant acceptance is often a diagnostic of inferiority.

I hope you will find it in your heart to print this letter. I am not an investor, nor am I involved in the production but both you and I are amply involved in the survival and growth of the American Theatre.

See you soon, I hope. Yours in continued friendship and admiration.

John Steinbeck

Sag Harbor
September 14, 1953

Dear Elizabeth:

The time of the boys is over now. Elaine is in New York with Waverly this week and I am alone out here. The fall is coming quickly, a chill in the air and a hoarse wind blowing over the water. This is my favorite time and I couldn't be in a better place for it. I'll get my first draft of Bear Flag finished this week. That and walk and smell the good wind. I take great comfort from this wind and from the ocean. I didn't know I missed it so much. One gets so involved in New York.

Feuer and Martin are here most of the time and we work on the story line for the musical. That was, of course, one of the main reasons for coming here. They suggested it.

I have enjoyed writing this book, the B.F.

There is a school of thought among writers which says that if you enjoy writing something it is automatically no good and should be thrown out. I can't agree with this. Bear Flag may not be much good but for what it is, I think it is all right. Also I think it makes a nice balance for the weight of Eden. It is kind of light and gay and astringent. It may even say some good things.

I'll be sad to finish Bear Flag. I have really loved it. I am reluctant to start into the last two chapters. But I will. I do hope you love this book, a little self-indulgent though it may be. Try to like it.

Oscar Hammerstein took what I had of Bear Flag to England with him. He is very much interested in doing it. Now F & M have to sell the idea to Dick Rodgers. [Frank Loesser had resigned as composer.] I hope they will do it but I have my fingers crossed. That is supposed to be a secret by the way.

I keep thinking of the European trip next year and coming up with new ideas for things to write while there. I wouldn't be surprised if this should be one of the most productive times of all. It is time for me to do short things—but short things I like. I'm making a list of them.

Time goes so very quickly. Living in New York I never get a chance to write to you.

Now I'll get back to Bear Flag—refreshed and full of hell.

Love,
John

 

It's very late now. I just finished Bear Flag. It's crazy.

New York
November 2, 1953

Dear Dook:

Meant to answer yours a long time ago and instead had a stretch of illness and a stretch of hard work. You say that my memory of events long past did not coincide with your memory of my original report of them. I wonder how accurate any of it is. I suspect that the most recent is the most accurate. Surely it is the most objective. I don't have to appear in a good light now, for anyone, even for myself, so perhaps it is less gilded. And I have less regard for truth than I once had with the result that I violate it less.

Anyway, a new book finished in first draft. I'm going to put it away for a few months. See whether it makes any difference in the rewrite. It should. I always want to rewrite them after it is too late.

 

I'm going back to Spain in the Spring. I feel an affinity there. Mexico is a kind of fake Spain. I feel related to Spanish people much more than to Anglo-Saxons. Unusual with my blood line—whatever it is. But they have kept something we seem to have lost.

It's a restless time for me between jobs. I look forward to it and then it comes and I don't know what to do with it. Once I was able to take up the slack by writing letters but that doesn't work any more. I write very few letters. There is a vast difference between writing letters and answering letters.

Then too, between jobs, the pressure is on me to write “short pieces” for this or that. It is generally considered that I can whip out a short piece—about anything you want. And damn it I can't. Or if I do it stinks. It takes just as long for a short piece as a long one.

Viking reissued six of my short novels in one volume and I happened to look at the list of my titles. It is frighteningly long. Gave me a shock at the passage of time. Lord, there are so many of them and they took so long. Recently I had an amusing lunch with six critics. They were the men who had knocked each book as it came out. Reading the books over again, they said they couldn't recall why they had got so mad. Harry Hansen said the books were so different one from another it used to make him mad because he thought it was a trick. Only now he said was he conscious of the design. Well, there wasn't any conscious design. I suppose what it boils down to is this—a man has only a little to say and he says it over and over so it looks like a design. And the terrible thing is that I still don't know what it is I have to say, but I do know it isn't very complicated and surely it isn't new.

Let me hear from you.

love
John

Hotel Madrid
Seville
April 21, 1954

Dear Elizabeth:

Can't seem to stay awake very much. But when luncheon is at 2:30 and dinner doesn't start until 10, it kind of cuts the day wrong for my training.

A few quotes for your pleasure. Written with black chalk on a wall—“Luisa, he who writes this is leaving you forever.” On hotel porch an American woman and her little boy. Spaniard asked, “Do you like the bull fight?” Woman—“We haven't seen them but I'm sure we will like them. You see my husband is a doctor so we are used to all that.” Wouldn't you like to go to her husband for an office call? Over the horns with a scalpel. A new dicho or at least one I had never heard regarding drinking strong liquor. “El primero con agua, la segunda sin agua, el tercero como agua.” The first with water, the second without water, the third like water. And it's true.

Am rereading Cervantes. He lived here and was in prison here and the city has not greatly changed. The little square where we drink beer and eat shrimps he mentions many times. The prison where he served was about a block from the bull ring and his window looked out on the Tower of Gold which is still there.

Also the habits of the gypsies have not changed. This morning I was sitting on a wall by the river when a gypsy asked to shine my shoes for a peseta. As he finished he caught his cloth under my rubber heel and ripped it off. It was a good trick. He then put on a new heel for 20 pesetas. Then he asked if I would like a new heel on the other shoe. It had taken me a long time to catch on. I told him one was a lesson but two would be an insult. I told him that for the first heel he would get 20 pesetas but for the second 20 days in jail. We ended good friends. In a way I love the gypsies. They are so uncompromisingly dishonest. Never for a moment do they fall into probity.

The weather continues wonderful and we are getting a little afraid it will rain for the Feria. It did last year and completely washed it out. That would be a shame.

I'm going to the Archives of the Indies tomorrow and try to get a look at the Columbian documents. They are all here. The bones of the old boy are supposed to be in the Cathedral, in a great bronze casket carried on the shoulders of bronze kings and bishops. But then, said bones are supposed to be in lots of places.

I wonder what's the matter with me? I want to sleep all the time.