Steinbeck (73 page)

Yours,
John Steinbeck

New York
November 20, 1958

Dear Hank,

It is strange but perhaps explainable that I find myself very often with a picture of you in front of my mind, when I am working on a book. I think I know the reason for this. Recently I ran a 16 mm print of The Grapes of Wrath that Kazan had stolen from Twentieth Century Fox. It's a wonderful picture, just as good as it ever was. It doesn't look dated, and very few people have ever made a better one—and I think that's where you put your mark on me. You will remember also that when I was writing Sweet Thursday I had you always in mind as the prototype of Doc. And I think that one of my sharp bitternesses is that due to circumstances personality-wise and otherwise beyond our control you did not play it when it finally came up. I think it might have been a different story if you had.

Now I am working on another story, and again I find that you are the prototype. I think it might interest you. It will be a short novel and then possibly a motion picture, possibly a play—I don't know. But it's just the character and the story that remind me so much of you that I keep your face and figure in mind as I write it. I don't know whether you're in town or not—but if you are I wish you'd come over some evening, and maybe we can talk. I'd like that very much. And you might be very much interested in the story I am writing. It seems made for you. In fact it's
being
made for you—let's put it that way.

Yours,
John

New York
November 30, 1958

Dear Eugène and Betty:

When one is as neglectful as I have been of you since the wonderful June, it must be obvious that it is not carelessness. It is either guilt or confusion or a combination of both. Actually the second is the more compelling of the two—I came back crammed with Arthur and the flashing lights you did so much to ignite. I sat down lightly and gaily and like our giant missiles, I didn't get off the ground. I was too full of too much recently absorbed. Digestion had not occurred. Nevertheless, I drove myself like a reluctant mule. It was no good. The lump remained undigested.

Finally, thank heaven, I put it away, back into the dark places of mind and feeling, put it in my personal cave like a wine or a cheese, to mature.

You remember, Eugène, how the wine masters in France say that in the winter the wine sleeps—but when spring comes and the vines cluster with flower then the wine remembers its flowering and it grows restless for a time. It heaves and referments a little—memory of the flower. And if it does not—the wine is dead. And this is so. At that season one can taste the little anguish in the wine. And we have learned no technique nor ingredient to take the place of anguish. If in some future mutation we are able to remove pain from our species we will also have removed genius and set ourselves closer to the mushroom than to God.

Elaine the Fair who is good and loving but more wise than her cousin of Astolat, said very recently, “Are you troubled about not working on Malory?” and I said, “Of course. Always troubled, even when I have explained it to myself.”

Then she, that wise one, said, “Could it be that the dissonance created by the clash of 15th and 20th centuries is making trouble?” My words but her meaning. And I said, “That is certainly part of it. Too many friends, relations, children, duties, requests, parties. Too much drinking-telephones-play openings. No chance to establish the slow rhythm and keep it intact.”

Then she said, “Would it be good to go away—say to Majorca or Positano?”

“Yes.”

“Where would you like to go?”

And I said, “One place. Where it happened—to Somerset.”

And this pleased Fair Elaine. We are moving on it now—asking about renting a small farmhouse in Avalon. Something very simple—kitchen, sitting room, two bedrooms and a cubicle for work. We plan to stay here and finish the little work and in March to move with books and microfilm and all the squirming ferment in my head to Somerset, there to center and to remain until the work is done. We will rent a small car because I will want to move about now and then—to Worcestershire, to Manchester, to York and Durham, to Bamburgh and Alnick, to Sandwich and all of the haunted places in Cornwall. To hear the speech and feel the air, to rub hands on the lithic tactile memories at Stonehenge, to sit at night on the untouristed eyrie at Tintagel and to find Arthur's mound and try to make friends with the Cornish fayries and the harsh weirds of the Pennines. That's what I want, so that my book grows out of its natural earth.

Do let me know what you think of this. I'll want to know.

Our love and greetings to you both.

Affectionately,
John

 

Elaine sends double-love and she can afford it. She's rich in love.

[New York]
December 7, 1958
Sunday

Dear Elizabeth:

We never seem to get things talked out. Every time I have been with you I remember a hundred things I wanted to say or to ask. And as usual I get frantic when I try to do or think more than one thing at a time.

I think the Somerset plan is good. I know it is self-indulgence, but if it works, it is worth it.

There's the matter of money and in this you and I are very much alike. First I never expected to make any and you didn't expect me to. When outrageous amounts of money began to come in, both you and I took a very simple course. We didn't believe it. And we still don't. There is nothing real about this money. On the other hand we are well prepared for poverty. Our only reaction to money is a kind of panic that we won't have enough at tax time.

I live in two houses. The expenses are enormous by our old standards. Sometimes I break out in a cold sweat at the size of the monthly bills, but mostly I don't even think about it. Then if I haven't worried enough I make it up, wondering how I am going to leave some for the boys. And I do this right alongside of being sure that the worst thing I could do for the boys is to leave them money. And my expenses aren't enormous at all. I can even whip up a guilt about owning a 22-ft. boat. People with one quarter of my recent income have a 40-ft. boat and want a bigger one. It all goes back to our basic disbelief in the stuff.

Right now I am pounding away at Don Keehan, working much too hard and too fast, and maybe it is because I feel guilty about putting the Malory off.

Now let's move into the loyalties division. Not the loyalties to you because I don't have any. I might as well say that I was loyal to my right arm or my heart as to you. No, I feel a responsibility toward Harold. Harold bought my contract to make money. His sense of loyalty has never for one second interfered with Viking's intention of making a profit. And I feel responsible for Pat. He may love me dearly as I do him but that hasn't limited his endless attempts to con me. He worries about me if I am not writing and even more if I am writing something which won't sell. But do we ever think of getting some competitive bidding from other publishers? Never. We are loyal. I'm not against this, Elizabeth, but by every standard of practice in this period we are nuts. Quixotic and crazy. I am not suggesting that we change because I know that even if we decided to, we wouldn't.

But I wouldn't mind it if you stirred them up a little. For instance, if you wanted to indicate to Pat and to Harold that I was bravely and secretly nursing a broken heart over the fact that so many letters come in saying my books are out of print. You can say, if you, wish, that I asked you how it is possible for France and Italy and Denmark and Norway to keep them in print while American know-how lets them lapse. Also, we might suggest that the lapsed titles might be of interest to another firm. I was quietly visited by a representative of a rival publisher who wished to publish a complete list. There's not a word of truth in this of course but we could cause it if we wished.

Now I've told you that I had a double life. I must live as though I were going to live forever and at the same time as though I were going to die tomorrow. That's quite an assignment. And with your knowledge and permission I am going to make some conscious and earnest attempts to change some of my attitudes. I am going to try to abandon my feeling that I am poverty stricken. And I hope you will encourage me in my attempted new attitude. I know that I am not bright about money but one of the real unfortunate tendencies I have is a feeling that I should put in a time of worry about doing something I'm going to do anyway. I would have more time for writing if I gave that up. Anyway, I'm going to try.

I'm taking most of Sunday composing this letter because I think it is important for me to say. Sometimes a kind of quiet weariness settles on me—a listening and a waiting. And when the clamoring from outside goes on too long and too stridently and too repetitiously, the weariness gets sometimes a kind of hunger in it. I've heard it too often, like the letters from schoolchildren, or the requests for essays from little magazines which can't pay—just write anything—you know? So many things are beginning to sound like refrains. This isn't always. I can get as excited as ever about a high velocity word or a supersonic sentence that comes flying in, unbidden but welcome. But at night too often when sleep does not come, the yammer comes in my ears and I grow lonesome for death. That must happen to everyone. I think I remember it in my father's eyes. But then the new and exciting comes back and I get up and write the little poems that must and should be thrown away as this letter should be if it were to anyone but you.

One of the hangovers from the old poverty that never loses its impact is a hatred of waste. Locked up and unused and unenjoyed, Sag Harbor represents waste to me. And this did occur to me. The people in your office—they take vacations and they need them. Would it be a good thing if they could use the Sag place? I haven't discussed this with Elaine but I know she would approve. She doesn't have my sometimes sense of privacy and possession. I'm going to offer Shirley the use of the boat because she loves it and I trust her with it completely. Maybe some of the people in your office might have a frantic need to dig in a garden. I get that sometimes, a hunger to put my fingers in the soil. It's such a wonderful place and it should not be locked up if it could give as much joy to someone else as it gives me.

I think that's all. Maybe this scribbling will be the basis for some good constructive thinking on the part of both of us.

Love,
John

[New York]
December 26, 1958

Dear Pat:

You and I have had crises enough over the years so that a small one is not likely to throw either one of us. I do not intend to finish nor to publish the little book you have been reading parts of.

It isn't a bad book. It just isn't good enough—not good enough for me and consequently not good enough for you. It is a nice idea—even a clever idea but that isn't sufficient reason for writing it. I don't need it. The danger to me lies in the fact that I could finish it, publish it, and even sell it. The greater danger is that it might even enjoy a certain popularity. But it would be the fourth slight thing in a series.

It would bear out the serious suggestion that my time for good writing is over. Maybe it is but I don't want that to be for lack of trying.

Frankly this is a hack book and I'm not ready for that yet. To be a writer implies a kind of promise that one will do the best he can without reference to external pressures of any kind. In the beginning this is easier because only the best one can do is acceptable at all. But once a reputation is established a kind of self surgery becomes necessary. And only insofar as I can be a more brutal critic than anyone around me, can I deserve the rather proud status I have set up for myself and have not always maintained.

Anyway, we come to the final thing. In the time left me, I want to do the best I can and I shall look with a very sharp eye on what it is I do. I know you will be glad of this since over the years we have come to be woven of one pattern.

I know that a publishing house must show a profit, but when a writer does, he should be doubly inspected. It's a strange business. Maybe the fires burn out—surely they burn differently, but in me they
burn.
I take a very long time with everything. How many years it has been before any decent thing could bear fruit! You remember them—the false starts, the endless searching. And what has emerged may not have been the best but at least it was the best I could do.

It has been a good Christmas. The boys are coming along more satisfactorily than I could have hoped. We have spent too much money, eaten and drunk too much and in every way displayed the intemperance of the season.

Now there will come a little time of getting ready and then we will go to England and there will be quiet and peace I hope and a chance to bring out and inspect the wares I have accumulated. Anyway we'll see. It's always that—we'll see, but we'll also look.

love to you
John