Steinbeck (90 page)

Dear Betty and Eugène:

We have just dug ourselves out from under an avalanche of communications but I put your cable at the very last because I liked it so much. So often in the last week I have wished to be with Eugène to discuss and to turn over leaves of thinking. And I am sure I could have found not refuge but enlightenment.

This prize is a good prize—good in intent and valuable if properly used. But it can be a dangerous and engulfing thing. To many within my memory it has been an epitaph and to others a muffling cloaklike vestment that smothers and warps. This would be good if I were ready to die or if I were material for a priesthood or if I could believe what I am expected to believe. However, none of these things is so. I have work to do. I think I am near to ready for not the Morte but for the Acts. And that is a task into which one must be born fresh and new and very humble. It is a job so precious to me that I cannot permit any academy nor any dynamite-maker to look over my shoulder. It would be far better to be in prison as Malory was because there he was free from expectation. Perhaps I am taking this too hard but I have seen it happen to people. My sign at the top is still my sign and in a very short time I shall hope to settle back into the anonymity which is required.

Don't worry about my gloom. But the danger is a very real danger. Only perhaps an awareness may pull its fangs. Again thanks for your wire. I want the [Glastonbury] thorn to bloom but really to bloom. To that end please help me to plunge my walking staff into a hospitable earth.

Love to you both,
John

Sag Harbor
November 6, 1962

Her Serene Highness
Princess Grace of Monaco
Palace of Monaco
Principality of Monaco

Dear Madame:

Dear Grace honey:

It was very kind of you to wire congratulations on the Nobel award. We liked that. And I remembered what you said one night at dinner soon after you had an Oscar. Judy Garland, I believe, was your runner up. You said, “I felt so sorry she didn't win but I felt very glad that I did.” That was a statement of truth. And I feel the same. Maybe I don't deserve it, but I'm glad I got it.

Thanks again for your telegram.

Yours,
John Steinbeck

Sag Harbor
November 7, 1962

Dear Louis:

Your sending back the letters and cards was a true act of friendship and I appreciate it very deeply. But hell! Louis—when I wrote them they were as honest or as dishonest as I was at the time. I haven't reread them. Maybe I don't want to. But they are what they are, and they were written to you because I was and am fond of you.

I have always been afraid of prizes for fear they might have a warping effect—I mean one might try to live up to them, and then get to believing what he was living up or down to. I think the current word is Image. Now I've had this award about a week and I don't feel any different except that I am a little richer. And I don't mind that at all. No, they are yours if you want them.

You say they might be sold—bring someone a buck. It seems to me if someone could make a buck out of them—good luck to him. I couldn't.

Let's face it. In 60 years I've left a lot of tracks. To try to cover the trail would be nonsense even if it were possible. I've done some pretty silly things but I did them, and they're my product. The Soviet Union with complete control has tried to clean up some history and has utterly failed at it. What chance would I have, even if I cared? Some of the most convincing stories about myself never happened but I haven't a bat's chance in hell of changing them. Besides, some of the stories are better than what really happened. Besides, what the hell difference does it make!

I had a roommate in college who couldn't read Walt Whit-man because he had heard somewhere that Walt didn't wash his socks. On such things are images made. I think the best thing is to forget the whole thing.

There's only one thing. If you would look through these and ink out references that might hurt feelings of some living person, it might be good. Anyway, Louis—do what you want with them. They're yours and were written to you. They could probably be better written but I can't help that.

I do hope to see you and meanwhile thank you again for a very generous act.

Yours,
John

[New York]
November 10, 1962

Dear Georg:

Now is a weekend of small quiet and I shall try to get your letter of Nov. 9 answered in some detail.

May I say first that I am deeply happy to have this prize. I shall go to Stockholm where, dressed in unaccustomed garments, I shall make
one
short and, I hope, well-proportioned speech and only one. For myself, I hate all speeches but I hate short ones a little less. So mine will be short. It seems to me that the rostrum brings out certain intolerable tendencies in the human. Also I shall go through the ritual of acceptance and thanks when I know what it is. For this I will need help, but your letter assures me that I will have it. I can only hope that the Foreign Office attaché assigned to me may have a reasonable sense of humor and an abundance of tolerance. Both of us will need it. As for a “nice temporary secretary” —it occurs to me that such a person might be of great help in the field of literary courtesy.

Now one more thing. I believe that Mrs. Guinzburg, the widow of my beloved publisher Harold Guinzburg, will be coming with us. I would be pleased if she can be included in whatever affairs are seemly. She is a lovely woman and one of our dearest friends.

Now Georg—I think you will understand that this letter must be private. This prize, and it is far the greatest honor that can be given a writer, can, if permitted, destroy the climate in which the work for which the prize is given can operate and have its being. And since I still have work to do, I cannot permit this to happen. The requests for time, for money, for appearances are pouring in. One television man went so far as to say that since I have this award, I no longer have the right to refuse to go on his television show. I assure you that he was quickly disabused.

I must tell you that since my illness of last year, my energy is not endless. If some periods of rest can be allowed, I will have a better chance of completing the cycle.

Now finally, I must ask help in carrying out what is expected of me and particularly that I am not permitted to err through ignorance or forgetfulness and for this I must depend on you as well as on others. I should like Bo Beskow to be included in anything he may wish. After all, he is my oldest friend in Stockholm.

I think that is all. I have a feeling of unreality about all of this. Perhaps this is nature's way of applying shock as an anesthetic.

Yours,
John

New York
November 8, 1962

Dear Dook:

I can think of a number of people who deserve this prize more than I and many thousands who want it more than I do. Of course I like it but it has a way of kicking people around and that I'm not going to stand. I've got some work—quite a lot yet—to do and even more sit-and-stare-into-space to do and they ain't nobody going to take it away.

You say in your card that I said I wanted to be the best writer in the world. I've learned a few things since. I would say now that I want to
try
to be the best writer in the world. That's a very different thing. In our basement room in Encino I didn't know the tendency of horizons to jump back as you move toward them. And I didn't know that the tired farther you go—the farther there is to go. But these are the realities. This prize business is only different from the Lettuce Queen of Salinas in degree. Basically it's the same thing. There's no sadness in this. It's a kind of a joke. The sad thing would be to believe it.

Meanwhile—thanks for your card. I can't write little any more because I can't see that well.

Yours
John

New York
November 14, 1962

Dear Bo:

Your good and warm letter arrived in record time and pleased us very much.

I suppose you know of the attack on the award to me not only by Time Magazine with which I have had a long-time feud but also from the cutglass critics, that grey priesthood which defines literature and has little to do with reading. They have never liked me and now are really beside themselves with rage. It always surprises me that they care so much. If I get the same thing in Stockholm I may just remind them of the things said against Dag—and by people who would now be glad to forget they said them.

All in all I could relax and go along with the little play acting were it not for this damned speech I must make. I never make speeches as you know. I haven't an idea of what to say. I've read Lewis' wild and ill-considered rambling and I've read Faulkner's which on many readings turns out a mass of dark egotism. But what am I to say? Maybe I'll ask Adlai Stevenson to write it for me. He makes the best speeches in the world today. It will be short, I know that. I should like to make it as near to the truth as is permissible. Do you have any ideas? The idea of having to stand up there and speak just scares me to death. If I could just get clear on that I wouldn't have a worry.

One thing is certain and Elaine and I have discussed it. We must be very careful about drinking. It is not so much that I'm afraid of getting drunk but I'm afraid of getting tired. Also, except when we are alone with you, we will be in a goldfish globe and if I am going to do this thing at all, I would like to do it well. Kings don't bother me but academicians do.

Also I am having to buy tails, a costume I have always found ridiculous. I would rent them but Elaine says they wouldn't fit well enough. Who do you suppose invented the damn things?

Now let me ask you this very clearly and concisely—are there any events, flummeries in the sacrificial parade, to which you haven't been invited and to which a request from me would answer? If there are such, please let me know. Probably you feel well out of it. While I, clad in the costume of a penguin, must stand in the dock—you, at your ease, can swill your red wine and laugh.

Oh! This damned speech.

Love to you both.

New York
November 20, 1962

Dear Adlai:

In a fairly long and restive association, I think you will agree that I contrived to put you in my debt. Lest you forget, I will list only a few of my contributions:

These are only a few of the things I have done for you, and over the years I have never asked anything in return. This vacuum was bound to leak.

I have now to ask a favor of you.

As you may know, I am expected to make a speech in Stockholm on December 10th to the Swedish Academy and a gallery of critics.

Now I, who have always been at anybody's service as a critic of speeches, have never made one. The whole idea fills me with horror. Then it occurred to me that you are undoubtedly the best speaker in the world; that having made so many speeches, one more would mean nothing to you. I'm sure you wouldn't mind making this speech for me. And I'm sure the Academy would be more than pleased.

By this single simple favor, you would retire all of your indebtedness to me in addition to saving my life, since I am literally scared to death.

May we consider that settled and may I have a note of confirmation from you?

Thank you. I feel so much better.

Yours,
John

New York
[November 1962]
Saturday

Dear Elizabeth:

I had your letter this morning. I'm working on the speech. It is done in that I think it has in it nearly all I want to say and in the proper sequence. Now I am going over it word by word to see whether each word has the value and meaning I want it to have. Then, probably tomorrow, I will record it on tape so that I can hear whether it has the rhythms I want, those and the pronouncability. Some words of great meaning to the mind are utterly unspeakable aloud. Finally, I want to go over it very carefully to be sure there is no single extra word nor any repetition. Probably Monday it will be done, and then I would rather bring it to you than send it to you.