The Making of a Writer
Page 21
Said Bruce Hogg, 294 taking my hand, “Look, may I take you out sometime?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Wouldn’t you like to go to the theater with me?”
“What’s the use to start all over again? Oh, yes. I’d like to go to the theater with you.”
And tomorrow I’ll wake, full of Monday-morning bravado because I have five days of forced labor. Then “Ambrose” will become incredibly dear.
On Saturday, there is much to
be done.
Supplies must be gotten in:
the milk, bread, and eggs
for the weekend;
and the sheets must be
changed.
There is probably even somewhere
to go.
Spinning along in a convertible;
drinks in someone’s flat, listening
to Beethoven or some jazz.
The beat moves toward Saturday
night and is limned with
Possibility, the chance encounter—
quick, to the wine merchant.
He closes at six
even on Saturday.295
Sunday is a different story.
Sunday is a day of falling back on oneself.
Whoever made the day of worship a non-
Working day was no fool. We have no choice.
We will arise early, put on clean underwear
& sit in hot churches to be cleared of
part of the burden.
Then there are the walks,
the parks, for some.
There are afternoon concerts
& window shopping—only look, you can’t
buy anything.
And there is the zoo.
And there are one hundred & forty-nine
cinemas in London.
There is something good at the Kilburn
Classic.
But where is Kilburn
& how does one get there?
If I had an underground map . . .
but it is too risky to walk to the
nearest underground.
It is too far & what if I change
my mind on the way, decide I do
not want to see the film in Kilburn?
Look once more through the newspapers.
Sunday victims, combing the
Newsprint for salvation?
I have a pound in my pocket. The door
key. Take my glasses, just in case
I should come across a film on my way
to somewhere.
There are many like me. Note the
long queues outside the cinemas
—even in the rain—
waiting to pay four & six for
two hours of alleviation.
Let me, then, emerge, start off down
the street in a false burst of faith,
spend two or three hours combing the
streets, parks & shop windows for a cure,
brush past my fellows—displaced persons—
seeing, perhaps, in one or two faces, qualities
that I will not be allowed to know.
Eyes meet, we wonder, but one does not
just go up to a stranger for any good
intention in this best of all possible
worlds.
Returning home & the sun has cooled
off. The threat of warm pavements &
blue skies & all the places you cannot
be at once is receding.
Soon it will be suppertime.
And then there are dishes to wash,
shoes to shine,
baths,
perhaps a little tidying,
and a bedtime paperback.
The malaise is fading fast.
The Home Service goes off the air.
Tomorrow is planned for us, dull as it
may be.
What, then, is the best way of making do?
I am always aware that my days are
numbered. I am always measuring the
quicksilver. Surely, there must be
others like me. Why can’t we touch?
I must keep on being light & wide-eyed,
a little kooky, not too much of one thing
or the other.
Am I at home or in exile?
Would I give up all of my wild scratchings
to find a real peace,
to touch another real person?
YES.
But, even as I write this, I know
there is no danger in my decision.
There will never be a real peace,
only false moments.
I will never know another being intimately,
maybe his body, his bookshelves, the
role he has chosen to play for me,
but never him.
So on and on
on and on and on,
scratching and intimating, expounding
& philosophizing, digging & rending.
It is a little diabolic, the thought of it
(the treadmill in Mme. T.’s horror chamber).
But it is all I have and I cling to
the reality of these forty or fifty more
years with a ferocity bordering on insanity.
Fantasies. Coming across a small
bookstore that hadn’t been there
before. Walking alone at night
in a strange city with the smell
of the sea. Seeing a face, touching
at first and not being disappointed.
Yet all this happened. It was
not fantasy.
Ah, what now?
I have a feeling of being not here & not there.
Where are all my wonderful people that I
dream about?
What happened to Blowing Rock? Chapel
Hill in the spring? And certain days in
Copenhagen before Niels wore off. And in
Las Palmas.
Now Nat King Cole brings back Ambrose.
I think I shall have Tina say:
“Whenever you’re on a dance floor, stay all
by yourself. That’s the way to get boys
to ask you to dance.”
Part 1: the funeral . . . flashback . . . after the funeral.
What am I going to do with Ben?
The Raleigh program: John Barbour,
“Dancing in the Dark”—
“And the cares that infest the day
Will fold their tents like Arabs
& silently steal away . . .”296
The whole teenage world—
late-night necking sessions when
your date tastes of cheeseburger, down by
the lake, groping, caring, loving to
the tune of some sad song by Johnny
Mathis or Nat King Cole.
It’s just my book & it doesn’t
have to have the problems
of the whole world in it.
Part ten
RESOLUTION
Green Street and back to Old Church Street
MARCH 26–JUNE 22, 1963
On April 17, Doreen, Gail’s supervisor and sometimes confidante, questions Gail’s integrity. It seems Gail’s writer’s distance—or is it something else, her need to conform at times?—has disturbed Doreen, who has her own self-images to tender.
Gail treats Doreen’s question seriously. First, it’s a matter of terminology. What is “integrity”? In her journal, Gail affirms that integrity does not mean one-dimensionality. On May 17 she writes, “One must learn how to measure his own dimensions,” and then considers the way that people with a lot of integrity (perhaps because of one-dimensionality) subvert her sense of her self.
It’s a natural defense. Gail knows her own goodness. (“In spite of people like Doreen, etc., I believe that I am potentially and innately a good person,” she writes on June 22, at the beginning of the next journal part.) People with a striking semblance of integ
rity may be presenting only a dramatic mask, usually intimidating to a person who considers the human personality an uneasy hybrid.
Robin Challis, a good pal, comes into full flower in this journal part. Fearful of both failure and success, he puts his angst on display, dressed as generosity of spirit. When this admirable quality brings him no return, he grows sour. He is the perfect character for a journal part that dwells on integrity and that needs to present a foil to Gail’s new leading man, Gordon.
“I met another one at the party in Lee’s Court,” Gail jots down on April 7, referring to her latest Mr. Right, at-ease-in-the-world Gordon. Signing of in her journal that night, she wails, “Oh God, I can’t stand it. Another god to build up in the absence of anything better to do.”
Among the contending selves that Gail directs within herself, two major ones were the woman looking for the man to offer her security, love, and intellectual stimulation (a god), and the writer answering to a calling (God). Many times, the answer seemed to be getting both at once.
In this journal part, though Gordon remains a strong presence, we see the shift toward the lonely calling. Eventually, with the help of a letter sent her by her former priest in Asheville—Father Gale Webbe—she looks ahead to what Webbe calls her “vision .”
“You forsake your vision at the peril of your soul,” Father Webbe wrote.
The sacrifice in choosing “the search” involves not only making romance and marriage lower priorities, but also splitting one’s personality further—into one self that engages passionately with life and another that observes it dispassionately. What is missing in Doreen’s view of Gail’s integrity is knowledge of her destiny as a writer, since the duality of experience and analysis is integral to being a writer.
The results of Gail’s clarity and resolution follow immediately. By the second half of this journal part, Gail Godwin is recording more stories— pure documentation of the life around her—than she had previously. The culmination is the story about the Wests’ emblematic pet turtle, Mr. Bedford, which, we know, will inspire and supply her classic novella about her London boardinghouse experience.
[NO DATE]
Fallacies of relevance:
Their premises are logically irrelevant to their conclusions, therefore incapable of establishing the truth of those conclusions.
They may be psychologically relevant, evoking attitudes, fear, pity, reverence, disapproval, enthusiasm.
MARCH 26, 1963
I hit bottom again. Anyway, the result was to feel that there was nothing at all to continue for—yet to be apathetic about doing anything about ending existence. I am the type that will never commit suicide.297
I need resolutions to keep me from becoming all squishy.
No alcohol.
Be cool to Doreen.
Get finances worked out the best possible.
Do all the unpleasant things that need being done & I have been putting off.
A temporary regaining of faith. “Ambrose” is worth it. Now do the entire background up to the present—then the funeral—then bring Ben back in just long enough to show that life goes on.
Ben wanted to make her into an image.
“I guess I’m not your Pygmalion.”
MARCH 29
Friday—uninspired. I must wait. I have had an intimation. Loss of faith in some higher being, in some ultimate unifying purpose →loss of faith in oneself → loss of oneself.
I told Jim Jensen298 in the pub last night: “You will leave to go to your lecture. I will panic. Then I’ll walk home & gradually recover pieces of myself. Then I’ll get home & crawl in bed, unable to do anything. Then the next morning, I’ll wake up & curse myself for not doing anything. I’ll get up, full of resolution, thinking it very likely that I will do everything I failed to do last evening this evening.”
I can’t see where I’m going now. But I must go on because there’s nowhere else to go.
MARCH 31
—3: 10 a.m., now that summer time is on & the time moves one hour ahead. Soon it will be morning, with eggs, coffee, and the newspapers. I went to see A Taste of Honey. Walked out of Oklahoma. It was just too canned. I kept looking at the ceiling, thinking of Marty.299 I really loved him. I can’t think of anyone I have ever loved like that. It’s all in the time and place.
The kinks have come out of “Ambrose” miraculously. I thought I hadn’t done any work, but I counted the sheets of yellow paper & somebody did six thousand words while I was in despair.
THIS IS A DIFFICULT BOOK
BECAUSE ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE
THEMSELVES—OR TRYING TO BE
It works itself out in the telling.
SCENE: a pub.300 Like the Barley Mow.301 Music playing in the background. A fireplace. Copper pots hanging from rafters.
CHARACTERS: the barman, other pub characters, a girl, a boy.
60 minutes
Act I (30 minutes)
The inside monologue
Act II (30 minutes)
The outside monologue
In the first act, the characters talk but they say only what they think — thus the dialogue sometimes appears to be nothing but a crisscross. However, from their actions (he takes her hand, etc.), you are aware of a conventional progression.
In the second act, the characters talk—the way people usually talk.
—just write it—
As the characters get drunker, the lighting changes.
The music takes on a different effect.
The play will have to be written backwards—that is, the conventional first.
There are other characters who add to the picture. They behave exactly the same in both acts.
APRIL 3
Ruislip302 medical ordeal undergone (my legs ache as well as my sinuses). The story of Griffith & the drab life unfolds.303 “Listen . . . tell me, have you ever felt this?” Hate organization-land more every day. “Now if you’ll just go down that corridor.” Met a physicist in the office & engineered it so we went to The Physicists by Dürrenmatt.304 He was a good boy. Nice to talk into someone for a change instead of at. The money problem is critical as hell, but I will not despair. I can live in less luxurious surroundings for a while. It’s been a long time since I’ve ached like this.
APRIL 7
It seems that there are more & more mornings when I wake up with a hangover. And not only that: I met another one at the party in Lee’s Court.305 We did so much talking & I remember so little of it due to my usual tippling. I know his name is Gordon & his great-uncle started Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. His father lives in Trinidad, his mother in Scotland. He is a research engineer for a spark plug manufacturer. At the beginning he said, “You’re very interesting to talk to,” & then I got sidetracked. Finally, we circled the same orbit again & I made a statement about going. He said, “You’re not leaving, are you?” And I said, “No, not yet. Let’s dance.” It was present with us. I can still feel his back through his shirt. Then I got dizzy (sometime during the evening he said, “This is very nice,” or something to that effect). We stood in a window & discussed camping outdoors. Then I had to go. He took me home & gave me Alka-Seltzer & coffee, which he boiled on the stove. Then we sat on the bed, me leaning back in his arms, & talked. I can’t remember this either. He is twenty-five (twenty-eight).306 I told him I was & he said, “Oh, good.” I don’t know why. His best friend married yesterday & from what he says, he himself is looking around. Is it because of my present black mood or am I entangled again? He left at two, saying, “Are you on the phone?” And I said no. My office is at USTS, but you’d forget anyway. And he said, “I guess you’re right.” And that’s that.
What he had: an inner calm. An outer calm. Alive eyes. Perception. Height & manliness.
Five hours of the St. Matthew Passion. I got to where I dreaded the italics—that meant the verse was sung twice, thrice, etc. Stella in top form pursuing her vision. I think I resent it because she’d kept Lenten resolution re alcohol. I have failed miser
ably in both of mine. So now I wait for the unknowable, scribbling away in this journal to keep myself under control. What to do for five days & four nights with Henry in Paris?307 If only he were more adventurous, would not think himself so sound. How sick I am of this monastic life. Why can’t I learn to live alone & like it? To exist in my own resources, extend my own extensions. But I keep reaching for— Maybe it is because I am a woman & it will always be this way. I have changed my mind fifty-six times about this flat. Some of the things I’ve seen are so horrible.
Is it the spring?
Is it my black mood
snatching at anything?
It’s happened before.
Why do I have to like men so much?
Why can’t I take them or leave them?
Oh God, I can’t stand it. Another god to build up in the absence of anything better to do.308
APRIL 9
Here are the things I must do to respect myself:
Go to Paris & be nice to Henry. Enjoy it to the fullest. It is not everyone who goes to Paris for Easter. Don’t mope or wish for impossibilities.