Steinbeck (85 page)

And the little book of ambulatory memoirs staggers along, takes a spurt and lags. It's a formless, shapeless, aimless thing and it is even pointless. For this reason it may be the sharpest realism because what I see around me is aimless and pointless—ant-hill activity. Somewhere there must be design if I can only find it. I'm speaking of this completed Journey now. And outside of its geographical design and its unity of time, it's such a haphazard thing. The mountain has labored and not even a mouse has come forth. Thinking and thinking for a word to describe decay. Not disruption, not explosion but simple rotting. It seemed to carry on with a weary inertia. No one was for anything and nearly everyone was against many things. Negro hating white. White hating negroes. Republicans hating Democrats although there is little difference.

In all my travels I saw very little real poverty, I mean the grinding terrifying poorness of the Thirties. That at least was real and tangible. No, it was a sickness, a kind of wasting disease. There were wishes but no wants. And underneath it all the building energy like gasses in a corpse. When that explodes, I tremble to think what will be the result. Over and over I thought we lack the pressures that make men strong and the anguish that makes men great. The pressures are debts, the desires are for more material toys and the anguish is boredom. Through time, the nation has become a discontented land. I've sought for an out on this—saying it is my aging eyes seeing it, my waning energy feeling it, my warped vision that is distorting it, but it is only partly true. The thing I have described is really there. I did not create it. It's very well for me to write jokes and anecdotes but the haunting decay is there under it.

Well, there was once a man named Isaiah—and what he saw in his time was not unlike what I have seen, but he was shored up by a hard and durable prophecy that nothing could disturb. We have no prophecy now, nor any prophets.

[unsigned]

Sag Harbor
[July 1961]

Dear Pat:

Before I am tempted into civility, let's get one thing straight. It made me proud to see how here at New Discove you resisted rushing to cut the lawn and plunge your arms into the soil. Marvelous example of self-control. I could see your knuckles pressed white on your Vodka glass while your whole being cried out for hard physical labor.

The first thing we heard of Ernest Hemingway's death was a call from the London Daily Mail, asking me to comment on it. And quite privately, although something of this sort might have been expected, I find it shocking. He had only one theme—only one. A man contends with the forces of the world, called fate, and meets them with courage. Surely a man has a right to remove his own life but you'll find no such possibility in any of H's heros. The sad thing is that I think he would have hated accident much more than suicide. He was an incredibly vain man. An accident while cleaning a gun would have violated everything he was vain about. To shoot yourself with a shot gun in the head is almost impossible unless it is planned. Most such deaths happen when a gun falls, and then the wound is usually in the abdomen. A practiced man does not load a gun while cleaning it. Indeed a hunting man would never have a loaded gun in the house. There are shot guns over my mantle but the shells are standing on the shelf below. The guns are cleaned when they are brought in and you have to unload a gun to clean it. H. had a contempt for mugs. And only a mug would have such an accident. On the other hand, from what I've read, he seems to have undergone a personality change in the last year or so. Certainly his last summer in Spain and the resulting reporting in Life were not in his old manner. Perhaps, as Paul de Kruif told me, he had had a series of strokes. That would account for the change.

But apart from all that—he has had the most profound effect on writing—more than anyone I can think of. He has not a vestige of humor. It's a strange life. Always he tried to prove something. And you only try to prove what you aren't sure of. He was the critics' darling because he never changed style, theme nor story. He made no experiments in thinking nor in emotion. A little like Capa, he created an ideal image of himself and then tried to live it. I am saddened at his death. I never knew him well, met him a very few times and he was always pleasant and kind to me although I am told that privately he spoke very disparagingly of my efforts. But then he thought of other living writers, not as contemporaries but as antagonists. He really cared about his immortality as though he weren't sure of it. And there's little doubt that he has it.

One thing interests me very much. For a number of years he has talked about a big book he was writing and then about several books written and put away for future publication. I have never believed these books exist and will be astonished if they do. A writer's first impulse is to let someone read it. Of course I may be wrong and he may be the exception. For the London Daily Express, I have two lines by a better writer than either of us. When they call this morning, Elaine will dictate them over the cable. They go—

And since he was called Papa—the lines are doubly applicable.

That's all today. I got up at five. Now it's time to work.

 

And I did work and got a goodly part of a thing done. So I will send this.

Prosit
John

Sag Harbor
The Glorious Fourth, 1961

Dear Frank:

Your description of overcoming your son has to be true in detail—I know every instant of it. I am glad to have you available for proof. A number of our childless friends, on hearing of the peccadillos of our offspring, are prone to say —“But these are monsters.” But they're not. They are just ordinary kids.

You are now in a position only recently removed from us. Just as the boys had got used to our way of living, they went to Gwyn. They found it a rich field for various kinds of blackmail and a very Ft. Knox for excuses for any kind of conduct. I am not saying that Gwyn's plateau is higher or lower, better or worse than ours but there is no doubt it is different. If, when Gwyn was divorcing me, I had had any experience, knowledge or even kindness, I should have insisted—All right, if you want the boys, take them and I will disappear. If you don't, give them to me and you disappear. And now I see you, with the best intentions in the world, doing the same things at the same cost. You can make arrangements with a dead parent. But a living and absent but available parent does untold harm and no possible good.

I think this will amuse you. For the last little while Thom has been denying that I am his father, when he meets new people. Sometimes his father is a doctor and sometimes he is adopted. I expect that this is one of the commonest of all adolescent practiced—I think I have found its origin and it isn't limited to children. World myth is full of it. Let us say you want to be a hero. A hero can't have a common origin. One's parents are common no matter who they are. And since one feels different from one's parents, one can't be their child. All the world's heros have magical or mystic origins—Christ, Hiawatha, Zeus, Achilles. Even Lincoln has the mysterious illegitimacy in his background. So perhaps what Thorn is telling himself is this—“I am special. My father is a tiresome fellow. Therefore he can't be my father, therefore he isn't my father. Now—that frees me. Who would I like for a father—?” My so-called ability or celebrity has nothing to do with it because Thom knows I am a dull fellow. The reddish smudges on this paper are from jeweler's rouge. I have been polishing a knife blade.

Thom solos this week I think. He is very excited. He spends about twelve hours a day at the airport. They pay him for eight. He cleans aircraft and services them and works on motors and next week he's going in the tower. I go on plugging at my travel piece. One day I'll stop writing and that'll be the day.

Now—back to the pad.

So long
John

Sag Harbor
August 1, 1961

Dear Frank:

A wee mousie got into my little work house on the point. Now on the bottom shelf behind a curtain there sits a saucer of goodies. There is a sign on the plate which says “Welcome Visiting Mice. Register here!” You will have guessed that these mouse d'oeuvres are actually Mouse Mickeys.

Our little friend had a nibble and a martini and put on his badge. Suddenly he was too dizzy. He staggered and fell, got up, staggered and fell. Yesterday, some weeks later, I found him. He was lying with his head on the enclosed letter written by me to you some weeks ago. I think the spots are tears.

This is no new thing. Only about one tenth of the letters I write get sent. In the long run this turns out to be a very good thing.

Thom is still working at the airport. John comes back from Amherst Music Center. I expect him to join a hippie band any moment. Thom goes on with his dreary love affair, suffering every step of the way. God, the loves of the young are dull. Waverly got married last week to a nice guy, a U.P.I. photographer [Paul Farber]. We know him and like him. It takes a great weight off Elaine -and I hope to God it sticks.

Elaine is fair blooming but the hot weather gets her down, as it does me. She has a birthday on the 14th. Bastille Day in August. If you think of it, drop her a card, will you? She adores her birthday and loves to have something made of it. I fire cannons and such-like things.

When I finish the travels I don't know what I'll do. Sooner or later I want to get back to the Arthurian stuff. But not sure this is the time. I'd like to write a few short stories but they are very hard. They knock the daylights out of me.

Love to your tomato,
John

Sag Harbor
June 27 [1961]

Dear Marion:

I write few letters now and answer even fewer. The result is that my post box is daily choked with mail from strangers. Therefore, it was a pleasure to get yours and while my eyes have slipped, I still have a 20-20 memory, sometimes too good, too harsh, and too critical.

I used to wonder what had happened between Dook and me. Perhaps there were many little things, but I believe now that the most powerful force was simple drift. Over the years both of us made timid and futile attempts to reestablish something which was once good and true, but the process ground to a halt every time, and the fact would emerge that due to drift, we had become strangers.

I have always admired Dook's choice of a life for himself and his rugged defense of it. He has been far more successful than I have, in making his own kind of life, while I have been pushed and blown by people, circumstances, and emotions, some valid and others rather tawdry and not to be dwelt upon with pleasure and satisfaction. But always my intentions were the best paving material, at least I thought at the time they were. One thing, however, has never changed in me. The meaningless, pointless endless restlessness is just as powerful as it ever was, and that, I know now, will continue to the end.

That's an awful lot about me, but because much of it concerns your brother, I thought you might like to know. Long ago, I knew perhaps that mine was not a truly first rate talent. I had then two choices only—To throw it over or to use what I had to the best of my ability. I chose the second and I have tried to keep it clean.

I am married for the third time to a wise and gracious woman whom I love very much. My two sons by my second wife now live with us. They are 15 and 17 and they have all of the faults and some of the graces the race is subject to. They are bright and intelligent and they fail in school. They are slaves of love for everything that walks upright and some things that do not. They are young agonies and very beautiful.

About a year ago, I got the light tap on the shoulder, that must come to everyone so that I began to wonder what I could do for my boys that would have surviving meaning and value to them. And suddenly it seemed very clear. I would give them a large part of the world and fortunately, for the time being at least, I can afford it. Early in September we will start out and travel slowly around the world taking ten to twelve months to do it. A young Irish tutor will go along so that their school work can go on. Some of the world I've seen but much I haven't, so in a large part, we will discover it together. Of course they may resent it at first because it may take them away from the particular teen-age squaw-lings of their dreams of the moment. But I think in the future, what they hear and see and feel will more than repay them. Geography doesn't mean much until you've moved over it and one bicycle trip along Hadrian's Wall makes you know the Roman Empire as you never could otherwise. And we'll hear the music of the world, and about music both boys are passionate. It's about the only thing they truly believe in and quite properly. You can't fake music really. One thing I insist on and that is that we don't move constantly. Here and there we will sit down for a week or a month. I know how that is. I spent ten months in Somerset two years ago counting grasses in a meadow. At the end of a year, I think I will have carved very deeply in them the one thing I truly believe—that all that is is holy, with its sub-heading—a penny has two sides.

Your news that Dook had taken a job surprised me. He had so successfully geared his wants to his income in a high classical sense. I can only suspect that an inflationary, economy and a fixed income have got to quarreling. That would be a shame. With the years of reading omnivorously and in many directions, what knowledge he must have accumulated.