The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (66 page)

…Yesterday, out hiking, the “doubling” structure for
Winterthur
struck me as necessary…but since I’ve used it before, in
Bellefleur
, why did it take so long?…This time it must be shorter, tighter, compressed, enigmatic…. If my
will
had its own inspirational energy, its own vigor, I would write for hours, for hours…I would rush into and through Xavier’s story…but I’m unable to. I type a page or two, I scribble notes, drift out into the living room, work on my Bach two-part invention (Number 8—which, oddly, I seem able to play before having read it through: but I’m certain I’ve never played it before)…. The peculiar recalcitrance of the material. I suppose I should give up. Begin again. Begin something new. I sense this “failure” as a punishment of sorts. But do I dislike myself; do I want to be hurt; on the contrary, I can see that I might even deserve a reward now and then…for having taught a class, for having finished a short story, for existing…. The immanence of the Divine, not the transcendence. (We were talking of this last night. But no one at the table seems to have thought I might be right…. Logic instructs us that if there is a “divine element” to the uni
verse or the world, then this element is
in us
and
through us
and
by way of us
. A distant, detached, absurdly patriarchal phantom is highly unlikely…though my deluded characters pray to no one else but this Daddy. However, beyond the logic of the “if”…?)

…Reading Sylvia Plath’s journal, and W. S. Merwin’s memoir,
Unframed Originals
. Thus far, oddly, I feel a stronger kinship with Merwin; and the prose is far richer…though of course he is writing self-consciously and Plath is, or was, writing for no one’s eyes but her own. (One wonders—why didn’t the unfortunate woman destroy her journals before attempting suicide? She seems to have been completely incapable of projecting into the future—the future that would exclude her while including, for the benefit of Ted Hughes […], every page and scrap of her writing. The cruelest and in a way the most stupid of fates.)…

…Just now, bicycling in Pennington. Always more cheerful & hopeful about the novel (chap., “The Diamond-Etched Love Letter”) when I return from one of our energetic outings.

May 7, 1982.
…Working off & on all day, and have written the first five pages of
Mysteries of Winterthur
…about which I feel tentatively pleased: but, at least, I know I am headed in the right direction, and have stopped groping piteously about for the way in. As for the voice—it is
almost
in focus (or should I stay in tune)—and should gradually accommodate itself to the story.

…Days, a week, of unusually interesting adventures. Dinner with Anne Tyler and her husband Tighe, in Baltimore, on Sunday […]. My feeling for Anne is very strong, immediately & deeply sympathetic…despite her reputation as a “recluse” (she isn’t even reading reviews for
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
, let alone venturing forth for readings and publicity) I find her marvelously “normal” in every respect…quick-witted, funny, intelligent, totally without pretension. And she is a superb, unfussy cook as well. If only we lived closer to each other, I’m confident that we would be friends—perhaps even intimate friends—which is the way I feel about Gail Godwin as well.

…Washington, a morning in the East Wing of the National Gallery, azaleas, blossoms, remnants of tulips, a long hike in the National Arboretum, Tuesday’s luncheon at the Library of Congress in honor of outgoing consultant in poetry Maxine Kumin and incoming consultant debonair Tony Hecht […]. Washington traffic was fatiguing, and the nexus of streets no less bewildering than we’d remembered them, despite our good intentions, & my steering us about with a somewhat crude map…hence we are not eager to return to that city, or, in truth, to any city…. Spent two idyllic days along the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay (a night at St. Michael’s, a fishing village of sorts) qualified only by the fact that I’d brought along the weighty galleys/page proofs of
A Bloodsmoor Romance
which I actually tried to read & to correct. (At times, queer times, I felt intimidated by the authority of that novel—its voice, its structure, its amazing assurance. How can I possibly do anything like that again? Or have I, in
Crosswicks
…? Whereas, by contrast, the tone of
Winterthur
seems so tentative.)

…(Did in fact visit the Du Pont gardens & museum at Winterthur, Del. But found the experience only—enjoyable; agreeable; a pleasant two hours; not very helpful or informative. All I want, after all, is the haunting name
Winterthur
. A Swiss word evidently—a Swiss town or region—pronounced “Winter-tur.”)
*

…Returned home to a cardboard box of mail. & last night’s elegant dinner at the Bromberts’ (Shirley Hazzard & Francis Steegmuller the guests of honor), and Shirley’s impressionistic, marvelously informed, inimitable Gauss seminar (the topic being, last night, literary posterity…about which Shirley and the Princetonians had a great deal to say, but never touched upon the—perhaps too obvious?—point that one doesn’t write primarily, or even secondarily, to shore up one’s ego against the ravages of time, but in order to communicate with one’s contemporaries…and to work, to play, with language…to investigate the mysterious “integrity” of whatever it is that demands to be written). Set beside these eloquent and
unfailingly genial mandarins, I felt both sly and crude, like a proletarian spy, a Bolshevik, in the stronghold of the bourgeoisie.

May 15, 1982.
…This most exquisite of days, which fairly stupefies with its beauty…birds calling to one another back in the woods (among them, among the familiar songs, the purple finches’ warbling—they have built a nest in our “bluebird” house)…a single deer, a doe, picking her way unhurriedly through the backyard…sunlight streaming into this most beautiful of rooms…and on, and on, a cornucopia of marvels & blessings: which must be here recorded, along with the information that, tentatively at least,
Mysteries of Winterthur
is taking shape…and a certain frenetic busyness of the past several weeks has subsided (to be aroused again, I suppose, by next week—two days in NYC: a poetry reading at NYU on Monday; the American Academy-Institute luncheon & interminable ceremonial on Wednesday, followed by dinner at Bob & Lucinda’s)…. At this moment Ray is in town; everyone except me is sleeping (by which I mean the three cats, lazy in the mild heat); the world is actually on the brink of bursting into…Paradise?…the kind of half-surreal image, idyllic to the point of parody, one cannot very easily or gracefully write about, but must, I think, really
must
, for the sake of the record, in order to avoid the chief failure of most journals & diaries—including only disasters, complaints, mordant speculations. Yes, there is a Paradise and, yes, sometimes we live in it, with or without deserving it….

…Midway in the second chapter of
Winterthur
, “Trompe l’Oeil,” and I
seem
to have the voice I want. Now it seems clear that my original structural plans must be altered—this is a real novel, and not a sketchy “detective-mystery” novella—I can’t possibly fit five of them together, but will try for three, a more practical number. Xavier’s life divided in three?…at sixteen, at thirty-six, at fifty-six…? A possibility.

…The absolute pleasure of such solitude. Because, perhaps only because, it is temporary. Bracketed by marriage, friends, telephone calls, mail, parents who will come to visit in late June…“career”…and all the rest. One really
can’t
write about such things in any other guise but
the diary because they strike the ear as self-congratulatory. Knowing oneself blessed is also knowing oneself undeservedly blessed, and others undeservedly damned, but what of it?…what can one do about it?

[…]

May 20, 1982.
…Another splendid sunnily warm day; finished the chapter called “Trompe l’Oeil”; have forbidden myself to immediately plan the next…“The Keening”…since I should (shouldn’t I?) allow myself some space…time to breathe. Hours, events, people, snatches of conversation, images, books, pages, unfortunate flashes…tumbling in all directions…. Monday, lunch with Bob [Phillips] at the oldest tavern in NYC, East 18th St.; a quick visit to the Brazillers’, to see the watercolor/dust jacket for
A Bloodsmoor Romance
…which is attractive enough but which, I suppose, I don’t truly like: it doesn’t express the novel’s ambiguities, and makes no attempt to suggest the masculine presence…JQZ and the increasingly diabolical inventorly “progress.”…And the attractive, in fact pretty, watercolor for
A Sentimental Education
: what relationship has it with stories like “Queen of the Night,” “A Middle-Class Education,” etc….? But I said very little to Karen of a critical nature since, at bottom, I
don’t
really care about such things; and perhaps Karen is right—the covers are superb. (Who can be wrong, or right, about anything so essentially minor…. ) Monday evening, my reading at NYU, which went well enough: the usual surprises: disparate enthusiasms that should be, perhaps even are, gratifying in odd angular ways. […] Home at midnight alarmingly exhausted; sank into sleep besieged by those curious, inexplicable, utterly exotic “hypnagogic images” I generally experience when I’m in so drained a state…. And yesterday, alternately bemused & exhilarated, the American Academy-Institute luncheon and ceremonial, lasting most of the afternoon. Nice conversation with Mary Gordon, whom I like immensely (though she has grown waif-like…even younger…since I’d seen her last; she had a baby a few months ago); and Norris Mailer (lovely as a Manet—beflowered, behatted, slender, tall) and of course Norman (uncomfortably warm in a three-piece suit, looking rather more like a successful attorney now than a stockbroker/cleric).

[…]

May 25, 1982.
…Quiet, late-afternoon sunshine, sifting through my mind amid the convolutions & meanderings of
Winterthur
’s long sentences…the outrageous (though always understated) record of the “wrongs of women.”…Mid-way in “The Keening.” My method is to go very slowly, one page at a time, then go for a walk, or a bicycle ride, or play piano…return, & rewrite the page…then again, usually rewrite it again…this novel being a matter (I begin to see) not of writing at all, but of rewriting. All of which is fine with me; suits me perfectly; prevents over-excitement & strain & insomnia…since nothing has to be right the first time, in fact nothing is right the first time. (
Winterthur
may prove a novel that will never end. Because, now that I’ve found the voice, now that I begin to feel comfortable with my alter-ego hero, why should I ever want to break it off…?)

[…]

…The almost sybaritic pleasure of a slow, quiet, insular, eventless day. A measure of good news (John Gardner has chosen “Theft,” of all odd stories, for
The Best American Short Stories 1982
) in a very slim pile of letters…but not too much good news…one telephone call (a gossipy chat with Elaine) worth a dozen calls…an hour’s intense reading in the sunny courtyard & note-taking for
Winterthur
…a hike to the lake; a brief bicycle ride to Bayberry Hill; modest plans for tonight’s dinner (though immodest prices—fresh flounder from Dockside); nothing more exciting for the evening than reading; plotting out further episodes for Xavier; the utter exquisite bliss of…whatever it is, that constitutes our “life.” And nothing, virtually nothing, of a professional nature, until June 17, when I give a paper (of sorts) in Hartford, Connecticut…. “I haven’t any interest in sex or sexual activities, except as ‘literary’ or ‘psychological’ material,” an acquaintance says, rather reasonably I thought. It’s not unlike a consuming interest in money, class distinctions, crime, etc., as emblematic of Society, but dull in themselves.

May 31, 1982.
…For days I have been sifting through, eliminating, revising, rewriting, the various pieces in
The Profane Art
…certain short stories in
The Rose Wall
*
…both these manuscripts being due at
Dutton next week. For some reason it’s like pulling teeth (as the saying goes) for me to turn my attentions away from
Winterthur
, though the publication of that novel, that project, is decidedly fuzzy…and onto these more immediate concerns. The law of inertia operates powerfully with me…by which I mean, whatever I happen to be doing, I want to continue doing; wherever I am; which schedule, which friends, which students…. Inertia means motion too. (“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”) It may mean
not
being paralyzed by a sudden attack of malaise (not out of the blue,—indeed, in 1982, not ever out of the “blue”—but directly out of the
New York Times
: U.S. Defense Sets Forth Plan for Prolonged Nuclear War.)

…My writing is usually political. Yet I can’t be “political” each day, each hour. That too is paralyzing. That too is the wall—the metaphor-of-concrete—the unspeakable unshakable end. Just as one must live as if immortal, one must (I suppose) grant some sort of immortality to the species…or to the culture, the language. These beliefs, illusions, delusions, hard nuggets of “truth.”…

[…]

…This quartet of American “genre” novels absorbs me nearly every minute. It has become a mild obsession. (Navigating an outer life while sunk in
Bellefleur
,
Bloodsmoor
,
Crosswicks
,
Winterthur
…a bracing challenge. My fascination for the inner world vies with my admittedly ingenuous fascination with the outer: sometimes the one triumphs, sometimes (but I think less rarely now: could I ever “fall in love,” as the expression would have it, again?) the other…. But there is an unstated fallacy in all this, or, in any case, something not considered: the companionable support of my husband, the playfulness, love, loverlike moods…. Hearing Elaine describe Ray as “handsome”…hearing of him, seeing him, by way of others…as if in a three-way mirror, that unsought image…. He
is
remarkably handsome, though not photogenic, invariably stiffening when his picture is taken…. After twenty-one years one is in danger of not seeing the other, not actively seeing…recording…two people dissolved in a sense into one…it isn’t the phenomenon of trust or faith or compatibility, but the gradual growing-into,
one into the other, or into that curious third entity—the “marriage”—like realizing you require oxygen only when it isn’t available.