The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (37 page)

[…]

…Dreams whirled about.
Bellefleur
. “Don’t draw back from touching a corpse” was one peculiar admonition in some now-forgotten fragment of a dream. My unconscious, such as it is, is certainly active re. the new novel but its offerings are…well, distinctly odd; not very helpful. Perhaps this will be the lush, gorgeous, lurid novel I had wanted
Son of the Morning
to be before I actually began it…. Ideas, ideas. Notes. The usual flood. But this time I want to allow myself to feel no discouragement, no frustration, because after all I’ve been here before: most recently with
The Evening and the Morning
which under its earlier working title
Graywolf
irritated, baffled, exhausted, depressed, and infuriated me so shamelessly. (I mean, I was shameless in allowing myself to be so blown about.)…How I miss
Son of the Morning
, and
Childwold
. Both the novels are so vividly present, so “new.”
Childwold
is closer in time to me than “Cybele,” which fades. Closer even than
The Evening and the Morning
which contains so much personal “intellectual” material, the Greek business especially.
Childwold
,
Bellefleur
. I loved writing
Childwold
and I want, I hope, to love the experience of writing
Bellefleur
. The thing is not to rush, not to feel guilty if days pass idly, not to take too many notes, as w/
The Assassins
. Some novels are
organic blossoming things, some are rigorously put together, executed. “Cybele” the latter, obviously;
Bellefleur
the former.

[…]

July 5, 1978.
…Walking & thinking of
Bellefleur
. Whether it’s quixotic, to embark upon such a lengthy, admittedly queer narrative. Whether it’s going to prove in the end, after many months of work, abortive…. After all,
Son of the Morning
at 348 pp. in the published version struck a reviewer for the American Library Association as “overlong.” (I have just reread the review: overlong “but mesmerizing.” An ideal review, in fact: “With its unrelenting dark prose and tragic aura, this is Oates at the passionate and compassionate peak of her powers.” How could one quarrel with such a review…!) Yet—overlong at less than 400 pages; and I quite calmly set about organizing a structure to accommodate 800.

…In an initial burst of feverish optimism I had been thinking of 1000 pages. After all, these are the Bellefleurs, gigantic oversized people….

A lovely day after three or four days of straight rain, opaque gunmetal skies, general dreariness. Went to the Walker Rd. nursery, bought some evergreens, plants, special bargains at this time of year, have been working in the rose garden & the courtyard.

…Yesterday, a piano lesson w/Carolyn; then Ray and I had lunch on the 18th floor of the Viscount Bldg.; then returned home to work on the novel, taking notes on Leah. Leah & Gideon. The problem: what I’ve been writing so far is more or less realistic. I seem to be drawn into the “psychologically real”…but the novel isn’t going to be realistic…. Some of the same difficulties w/
The Evening and the Morning
. And then I was so vexed, so frustrated; and wasted weeks of writing. The tension between the “real” and the “surreal,” the fable. An almost physical tension—physical in me, I mean. Hence my not-thereness today, my penchant for staring at the river, walking along w/my gaze fixed to the sidewalk, only peripherally aware of what surrounds me.

[…]

July 18, 1978.
[…] Beautiful summer days. Reading in the courtyard, working here at my desk, walking along the river: the usual things, so lovely. Ahead, dimly, the chore of moving to Princeton; more immediately, the chore of signing 10,000 signatures for the Franklin Library edition of
them
. (10,000 signatures! Should one laugh or cry or stare glassy-eyed into the sky…. )

…Finished “Reunion” & should send it out to Blanche soon.
*
Calvin Chase. Rilke, Valéry. A life “committed” to art. But if one is alienated from life, imagining oneself superior to it, what will the poetry contain? Rilke, Valéry, etc., can be seen from certain angles as rather silly men.

…Priggish self-important thought-ridden artists—“artists” for the sake merely of “art.” An appealing theology but it simply doesn’t work; one might have predicted that it could not possibly work.

…Notes on
Bellefleur
. More from Raphael’s point of view. But slowly. Slowly. I want to take months, years, with this….

[…]

July 26, 1978.
[…] Thinking of Philip Roth, our conversation in Central Park, on our walk. I spoke skeptically of the “circumference” of the circle, saying that the meaning of our lives is the center, the kernel of Self; Philip said he was most interested in the outer, the circumference (at that moment the Watergate hearings, which he watched constantly), since he didn’t much believe in the center. In a letter, or was it at Dan Stern’s, a year later, he said he’d lost interest soon afterward in the “outer”; and I told him that I had gained new interest in it (which I needed, of course, to write
The Assassins
)…. Philip, even, might have mystical leanings. Everyone might. Does. The only thing is, one must not lose one’s sense of humor! But it’s awfully chilly, awfully dark, when the warm glow of the phenomenal universe is withdrawn; in the Void there are no jokes because there is no one to register them.

…I cling to the immediate, the task-at-hand. I’m most comfortable here. Could I cultivate pettiness I might try that: it’s a firm anchor, certainly.

[…]

…Nothing so preoccupies the novelist as the pace by which the new work comes; or fails to come. But nothing is less interesting afterward. Still. Nevertheless. The value of this journal for me is that, strictly speaking, it makes no pretensions about being “interesting.” It isn’t supposed to be dramatic, there is no organized emphasis, no plan. Rather, this is the flow, the meandering stream, of my inner life itself. It forces its own way, stubborn and bent on victory. What can I do but follow, what can I do but follow….

July 28, 1978.
[…] Query: If you could be transported into another era, if you could meet a great figure out of the past, whom would you choose?

Answer: I would choose not to meet (because I’m not equal to it) but to be in the presence of Chopin. I would choose to attend one of his typical salon performances in the 1830’s, in Paris. Simply to listen. To be a witness…. Of course, I wouldn’t mind attending one of Liszt’s notorious, magnificent public performances; but Chopin above all.

…No doubt about it, one gets the best of Dostoyevsky, Yeats, Shakespeare, etc., etc., by reading their work with care; one gets the essence of Van Gogh and Monet and Matisse and all visual artists by studying their work reverently; but music…! Chopin as interpreted by even the most brilliant pianist is still Chopin filtered through another consciousness. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like to hear Chopin in person…. So much has been written about his playing, so much excited adulation, even from his rivals Schumann and Liszt, and others…. The photograph of him, thirty-nine years old, soon to die. The Second Sonata. The Second Prelude. The Fifteenth. The Sixth Nocturne, which I’m working on, but how falteringly, how inadequately….

…If I didn’t have my writing, what would be more delightful than to give myself up completely to a study of music, concentrating on Chopin, of
course. With all my limitations, my hesitancies…. But who cares? There’s a kind of hearty cheerfulness in not being a contender for any degree of excellence…. What point, really, is there in
being
the genius? If genius is a natural event, a gift, a fluke, perhaps the genius’s contemporaries or admirers benefit most from it. Chopin, embodying his music, might not have
heard
it as his most intelligent and passionate admirers did…. And surely Shakespeare was not SHAKESPEARE to himself as he is to us; one halfway wonders if the original man existed as anything other than an extremely gifted, facile, inspired, reliable hack.

[…]

…In the presence of Chopin, and Liszt, an ordinarily “talented” pianist would simply begin to sob. Knowing that such geniuses exist, how is one to gauge one’s own effort? Virginia Woolf said that reading Shakespeare distressed her, she wondered what was the point of trying to write, he was “beyond literature” altogether. But still. Still, Woolf does things Shakespeare didn’t; she does things, and very nicely too, that Shakespeare couldn’t have done…. The piano, though, is different. Music is somehow different. My faltering amateur efforts are, from a certain angle of vision, comic. But then the efforts of all hopeful musicians, with the exception of the most gifted, are comic…. Music, the execution of, the performing of. A vexing riddle. The most demanding of all disciplines: yet those who find it hardly demanding at all (Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, etc., etc.) are the most brilliant. (Still, that’s an overstatement. Chopin worked very hard at his compositions, after the first flood of inspiration.) How fascinating, to be a “prodigy”! Yet how unsettling, how ruinous. I am drawn to the phenomenon of genius but not really to genius itself. And I would not have wanted to be a prodigy of any kind….

[…]

July 29, 1978.
[…] Why is this an ideal day? Because I was shrewd enough to divide it into activities. That way it did not seem to fly, as others have, producing a sensation of alarm in me…. Some thoughts re.
Bellefleur
. Note-taking for “The Death of Randall Berg” (which should perhaps be re-titled).
*
Finished the Schönberg book. Played piano for
about 2.5 hours (unusually well, for some reason). Listened to Rachmaninoff’s Etudes, Chopin’s Etudes, and other Chopin pieces, rather intently, for about 2 hours. And did the chart for
Bellefleur
. And took a lengthy walk, in the wind. And signed my name several hundred times. Right now the salmon is baking, and the tomato-and-eggplant dish; it’s 7:40. I want to record these utterly placid eventless neutral non-feverish (and essentially non-writing) days simply to keep track of them, to remember (if my life ever changes) how easily it did go, and has gone for years, in this phase….

…Can one “enjoy” moderate fame, and also retain a private life? But certainly. There’s just enough risk in each undertaking (the writing, the move to Princeton, the various reviews) to keep me agile, even restless; there’s no possibility of becoming complacent…. “Fame” as a theme, a fascinating one. The point at which one becomes a public self…and loses control of sanity, direction…. This is very interesting. Perhaps I could become “famous” if I strove for it, who knows, but I certainly don’t want to. It excites me to think that I can spend a great deal of time on uncommercial, perhaps even unpublishable (but then someone will publish them eventually) work, like
Bellefleur
and certain of the stories, that I don’t feel pressed or agitated or guilty or impatient….

[…]

August 2, 1978.
[…] Planning the trip. Household chores, telephone calls, discussions. Ray’s good humor. Mine also, I suppose. Fantasizing comic incidents on the expressway with this truck we plan to rent….

…Marriage. 18
¹
/2 years. Who would ever have thought it would turn out so well…! Yet we’re surrounded by people who have good marriages, contrary to fashion. We know almost no one who has been divorced…. Marriage & friendship. I had wanted to write of it in “Scherzo” but had to pare back ruthlessly, & wanted also to avoid sentimentality.

…Where art distorts, or fails to suggest the ongoing daily consistent quality of marital happiness; domestic concord; harmony. Since there is nothing dramatic about it, it rarely gets into literature. One takes a happy
relationship for granted. There is no need, really, to comment on it. Like the air we breathe: only when it’s contaminated do we notice it. The thing is, one
must
notice these things to prevent their slipping past, & personal history becoming a mere record of things that are unusual, or troubling….

…Ray’s sense of humor. Intelligence. Kindness. Patience. (Though he is not
always
patient.) Easily hurt; but not inclined to brood; not at all “philosophical” (as I am); perhaps a sunnier nature; or at least a less dense one. My conviction, the first evening we met, that I would marry this man, that I would fall in love with him…. An uncanny certainty. But then I’ve had these certainties throughout my life, very few of them, but memorable…shattering…. For a generally thoughtful, contemplative, analytical, rather logical person I am capable of behaving impulsively from time to time […], & these inexplicable lapses always seem to work out well. Perhaps at such emotional moments there is a kind of break or fracture in time, and one sees ahead into (personal) history…. But that sounds occult, it sounds absurd. Foreseeing that I would fall in love with Raymond Smith: how could that be distinguished from falling in love itself?—and wouldn’t it be self-fulfilling?…The loves of other people are rarely very intriguing. Unless one is a gossip. Loves, like dreams, tend to be unconvincing, too wildly subjective. Yet what else is so important, to us? The only human experience that can stab with as much indefensible violence as pain is love. The transcendental experience of art, which I believe in more and more passionately, simply cannot strike as deep in us: it
cannot
.

…Query: Are people who have never had the violent erotic experience of “romantic love” really complete?

[…]

August 7, 1978.
[…] At the age of forty one should attempt a complete re-evaluation of one’s life. Perhaps. (Freud’s self-analysis, which perhaps pushed him farther into self-deception: seeing what he wished to see, what made a pattern, a way of establishing his “scientific” mark on the world: and then in the end seeing not only what he wished to see but what others might
not
wish to see.) But novelists and poets are different,
I suppose, from “systematic” thinkers. Or those who, like Freud, presume to be systematic. After all there is no need for evolution in one’s art, any more than in any self. Why? Early works of Chopin’s are as perfect as one might like. Had he written no more, he’d be Chopin—or almost. One can’t, one certainly shouldn’t, demand of an artist that he repeat himself, in quality any more than in subject matter. If I’ve written a good novel, a few good stories, if…if there are some poems that halfway work…. Why, then, feel obliged to create more? Why feel obliged to feel obliged?