Steinbeck (66 page)

Charley is having a wonderful time trying to walk on the ice. He falls through at every step and looks puzzled every time. One day soon it will support him and then he'll give those seagulls hell.

That's all for now. I'll get back to my Legend and I'll bet it turns out that it isn't a Legend at all any more than any dream is.

Love
John

Sag Harbor
January 12, 1957

Dear Chase:

I come from a line of inventors. Several years ago in a Midlands, I think Birmingham, newspaper I read a bitter request from the local public librarian, asking the subscribers not to use bacon or kippers as book marks because the grease soaked through the paper.

I have never used book marks no matter how pretty or ingenious they were. Therefore you may believe me when I say I was surprised to find I was using your very pretty cloth ones. I couldn't figure why and so I watched myself and do you know why? I found that I was wiping my glasses with them. They aren't very good for that but it was better than getting up and finding a kleenex. Hence my invention—a book mark made of cloth designed to wipe glasses, perhaps impregnated with one of those silicate compounds which coat the lens. These could be in bright colors, could have pretty designs, and perhaps an indication of their use such as:

Such a book mark could also have printed on it advertising of publisher or book shop which would remind the reader where he got it. What do you think of this? Want to go partners in it?

And by the way, if in your wandering you should see a stuffed owl—I want one. I need it for a birthday present this summer—almost any kind of owl, screech, barn, fence post, ground, hoot.

Yours,
John

[New York]
January 12, 1957

Dear Mr. Larson:

The following notes arise out of a genuine concern about our communications with our neighbors.

Recently the President asked William Faulkner, perhaps the dean of American writers, to form a committee to recommend techniques for what Mr. Eisenhower tellingly called “a People to People program.”

It has been our misfortune to dangle our freedom in front of our neighbors and then to refuse them even the simplest hospitality. Our closed and suspicious borders have not reassured our friends and have given our enemies magnificent propaganda fuel.

Our refusal of a passport to Paul Robeson, for example, was stupid. An intelligent move would have been to let him travel and to send Jackie Robinson with him.

The second item grows out of our uneasiness that we are constantly re-converting our friends who do not need it, and ignoring our enemies who do. In this, of course, we are driven by our hysteria about security.

I believe that commerce is not only the mother of civilization, but the teacher of understanding and the god of peace. And I mean all kinds of commerce—movement of goods and movement of ideas. The first act of a dictator is to close the borders to travel, goods and ideas. It is always a matter of sadness, and of suspicion to me, when we close our borders to any of these.

In 1936, I went as a tourist to Russia and what were then called the Balkans. In 1947, with Robert Capa, I toured Russia and some of the satellites for the Herald-Tribune. We asked many people who had been kind to us what we could send them. The invariable answer was “books.” On returning, we sent books. They never arrived. We sent them again—and again they failed to arrive.

Next—I have had a number of letters from East German students who crossed into West Germany, ostensibly to take part in Communist rallies. These letters asked for books, gave Berlin addresses to which they should be sent, and guaranteed wide distribution. One student said, “I can assure you that at least a thousand people will read each book you send.” Naturally, I sent the books—not only my own books, but many others.

Now—My conclusion is that the book is revered. The book is somehow true, where propaganda is suspected. Denial of the right to read whatever they want to is one of the most bitterly resented of all of the Soviet's tyrannies.

You will remember the Army editions of books sent to troops during the last war. They were small, compact—designed to fit in the shirt pocket. They were distributed by the millions. Publishers and authors contributed their services. Where are those plates? Could they be reprinted? They could be moved over borders in various ways—by Underground, as the East German students suggested, by balloons as Radio Free Europe has flown pamphlets, and by the inevitable movements across borders, no matter how closed they are. A packet of books thrown over the barbwire fence and picked up by a border guard
might
be burned, but I swear it is more likely that the books would be hidden, treasured and distributed. During the German occupation of Norway and Denmark, my own books were mimeographed on scraps of paper and distributed.

Now—What kind of books?

Any kind. Poetry, essays, novels, plays—these are the things desired and begged for. Pictures of how it is in America—good and bad. The moment it is all good, it is automatically propaganda and will be disbelieved.

These are some of the conclusions of the best writers in our country, and they are offered out of a simple desire to help in your very difficult task.

Yours very sincerely,
John Steinbeck

New York
January 18, 1957

Dear Frere and Frau:

Your letter arrived with its charming news that we can lay down our heads at the Dorchester.

First, I and later we have been to Sag Harbor. I've been doing some concentrated reading—a lovely thing—and not done by me in recent years. To read and read in one direction night and day; to pull an area and a climate of thinking over one's head like a space helmet—what a joy that is! No telephones, no neighbors, no decisions except great ones—that is a good way to live for a time.

Working on the Malory is a thing of great joy to me, like coming home. I am having a wonderful time. The Morgan Library has opened its arms and its great manuscripts to me, and I can touch and feel, put a microscope on the vellum. I think I will write a small essay on what one finds on a monkish manuscript under a powerful glass. I am convinced that with practice I could tell when the copyist had a hangover. Every sharpening of the quill is apparent and since cleanliness was not a monkish virtue, the pages are rich—even racy—with fingerprints and smudges and evidences of pork pasty on fingers hastily wiped on nut-brown robes. It is fascinating and some of the scholars down there are a little puzzled and aghast at my own inspection with a sixty-power glass, but they are fascinated too. I haven't yet dared ask permission to take scrapings for analysis, but maybe later when they find I am not a crank, they may permit it.

 

I am having the time of my life with the work, and although I have a fairly good background, I am learning much in supplemental reading.

My love to your darling wife and whatever you can get for yourself.

Yours,
John

[New York]
February 21, 1957

Dear John:

After talking to Elizabeth Otis, one of the best judges in the country, who has seen the beginning of Dennis' book
[The Sergeant],
I shudder to tell you what I have strongly suspected—that you have a writer in the family. This is sad news, but I can't think of a thing you can do about it. I can remember the horror which came over my parents when they became convinced that it was so with me—and properly so. What you have and they had to look forward to is life made intolerable by a mean, cantankerous, opinionated, moody, quarrelsome, unreasonable, nervous, flighty, irresponsible son. You will get no loyalty, little consideration and desperately little attention from him. In fact you will want to kill him. I'm sure my father and mother often must have considered poisoning me. There will be no ease for you or for him. He won't even have the decency to be successful or if he is, he will pick at it as though it were failure for it is one of the traits of this profession that it always fails if the writer is any good. And Dennis is not only a writer but I am dreadfully afraid a very good one.

I hasten to offer Marie and you my sympathy but I must also warn you that you are helpless. Your function as a father from now on will be to get him out of jail, to nurture him just short of starvation, to watch in despair while he seems to be irrational—and your reward for all this will be to be ignored at best and insulted and vilified at worst. Don't expect to understand him, because he doesn't understand himself. Don't for God's sake, judge him by ordinary rules of human virtue or vice or failings. Every man has his price but the price of a writer, a real one, is very hard to find and almost impossible to implement. My best advice to you is to stand aside, to roll with the punch and particularly to protect your belly. If you are contemplating killing him, you had better do it soon or it will be too late. I can see no peace for him and little for you. You can deny relationship. There are lots of Murphys.

This is a strange phenomenon—No one understands it. In the Middle Ages they ascribed it to evil spirits or the devil and they may not have been far wrong. But there is a heavy penalty for excellence. I have tried to explain this to Dennis—and I think he knows it but knowing some things doesn't make it easier. And out of all the mess sometimes comes great beauty—the only thing that survives in our species.

We're on the move again. We go to Italy March 25 and to Japan in September. If I have any complaints with my life, one of them can surely not be that it is dull.

Again my condolences to you and Marie—but you're stuck with it.

Yours,
John

Rome
April 26, 1957

Dear Elizabeth and Chase:

I have been reading all of the scholarly appraisals of the Morte, and all the time there has been a bothersome thought in my brain knocking about just out of reach, something I knew that was wrong in all of the inspection and yet I couldn't put my finger on it. Why did Launcelot fail in his quest and why did Galahad succeed? What is the feeling about sin, the feeling about Gwynevere? How about the rescue from the stake? How about the relationship between Arthur and Launcelot?

Then this morning I awakened about five o'clock fully awake but with the feeling that some tremendous task had been completed. I got up and looked out at the sun coming up over Rome and suddenly it came back whole and in one piece. And I think it answers my nagging doubt. It can't be a theory because it won't subject itself to proof. I'm afraid it has to be completely intuitive and because of this it will never be very seriously considered by scholars.

Malory has been studied as a translator, as a soldier, as a rebel, as a religious, as an expert in courtesy, as nearly everything you can think of except one, and that is what he was—a novelist. The Morte is the first and one of the greatest of novels in the English language. And only a novelist could think it. A novelist not only puts down a story but he is the story. He is each one of the characters in a greater or a less degree. And because he is usually a moral man in intention and honest in his approach, he sets things down as truly as he can.