On the 8th, Don and Aldous and I went down by helicopter from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration office in Santa Monica to the North American plant in Downey, to be told about the moon rocket which they are building there.fn363 Don and I chiefly accepted the invitation for the sake of the helicopter ride, and it was even more exciting than I had expected. The ease and abruptness of the ascent is like flying in dreams. It is as if you merely make an extra effort of the will—symbolized by the roar of the engine—and suddenly the ground tilts away from you and you are soaring. I was also reminded of Rembrandt’s drawing of the angel leaving Manoah.fn364 Several people who happened to be passing watched our ascent into heaven with expressions of pleased amazement.
The city was shocking in its uniformity; all those roofs and little yards and bug-autos and occasional glittering green pools, so much of it, stretching away and away, you never saw the end of it. Only, in the background, the big mountains appearing behind smears of yellow smog.
The eager-beaver executives at North American were intimidated by Huxley’s ghost-pale introspective intensity. He was like a ghost they had raised to speak to them of the future. And they didn’t much like what they heard. Aldous held forth with his usual relish on the probability that the astronauts would bring back some disease which would wipe out the human race. And then he described the coming overpopulation of the earth. You felt that these people had bad consciences. They were making a fortune for their firm because the government will aid and abet them in playing gadgetry. So they keep reminding all who will listen that if they can go faster than the speed of light, and if they can reach an inhabited planet, and if the inhabitants of that planet are ahead of us in technics, and if they are willing and able to communicate to us what they know—why, then we shall be able to make great strides ahead.
The expert from Texas who stumbled over his own technical vocabulary as though he were what he sounded like, an illiterate Bronx truckdriver. (He was much the nicest of them.) We were told how you “abort” the flight if it isn’t going right. How the nose cone will descend on the moon while the other section remains in orbit around it and how then the two will rendezvous. We walked through the plant; very hot. Security posters: a naked baby with his arm raised, saying, “I swear I locked my file!” A framed motto: “Remember: American ends with I Can.” We had to wear name badges in our outside pockets. The office of the director had stars in the ceiling; but on the wall was a collection of antique spurs and bits.
The day before yesterday, I finished the review of Edward’s novel and sent it off. Not good enough but not bad.
The house is nearly finished. The carpet laid, the front bedroom all painted, the studio ready except for the toilet and heater. I won’t say anything about the problems with Don. They are still acute. And my tongue still burns.
I never seem to record anything nowadays about my “spiritual life.” That’s hardly surprising because it has never been less evident. I keep up japam regularly, with very few omissions. But I have no sense of being in contact with whatever is there. Even when I was down at Laguna and got to meditate in the shrine with Prabhavananda and Pavitrananda, which ought to produce a “field” if anything would, I still got no sense of contact. Ought I to worry? I don’t know. On the one hand I’m conscious of my own sloth and slackness, on the other I know that one mustn’t demand sensation—do your duties and have faith that they are producing unfelt results. Just the same—
August 15. Jo, on the phone this morning, told me how depressed Ben is, these days. Everything he writes gets turned down; and even when he has a relative success, like the novel or getting that television job, it never really pays off. He feels he ought to give up writing and get a job. Meanwhile, Jo’s knee, which she injured skating with the Ricky Griggs[es], has swollen, and so she has to go and get sonar treatment and sit with her legs in a bath of whirling water. The girl who had been operating this for her, asked her about her shark’s tooth ornament and this led to descriptions of Tahiti and the revelation that Jo is a designer. And the girl was thrilled. “Those poor girls,” said Jo, “don’t have any glamor in their lives.”
Meanwhile, Don succeeds and succeeds. He even made Merle Oberon clap her hands and call in the servants to admire one of the drawings he did of her today. And this week he has made—I think it’s around five hundred dollars! And he is about to draw Charles Boyer for his play.fn365 On the other hand, deep deep gloom. But I have resolved not to dwell on this, unless it’s something out of the ordinary. This is a bad month, for both of us.
Don’s studio is nearly finished. We are considering going to New Mexico, in order that Don shall draw Igor before they leave. That would mean we’d have to go there this weekend.
I have failed to get on with my work. Stomach flap and depression. Uneasy sleep, in which my dreams consist of rigid objects without any apparent significance, like sticks. This is very disagreeable; it verges on the frightening discomfort of actual delirium, when your thoughts hurt.
A sweet letter and a very warm and understanding review of Down There by Dachine Rainerfn366 for a British magazine called Anarchy.
August 18. Vera Stravinsky put us off going to Santa Fe by telling us how hot it was and how crowded and how she and Igor and Bob were beset by journalists, agents, etc. Evidently she thought we would be a nuisance, but I didn’t resent this, particularly as I didn’t really want to go.
It is warm and beautiful. Today we went on the beach and in the ocean; both are dirty, but we are getting good tans. Don has been to draw Boyer, who was pompous and uncharming and limited him strictly to one hour. So Don didn’t do well. When Boyer was asked to sit again, he made difficulties. However, Don has just reported the whole thing to Janet Adrian, who will report back to Paul Gregory,fn367 who will maybe put the screws on Boyer.
Temporarily, at least, I am down a little below 150 lbs., the first time in ages. I have passed page 50 in The Englishwoman and did a big swatch of the sixteenth chapter of the Ramakrishna book. Also an analysis of all the slips and mistakes on the first page of Bart Johnson’s novel. Nearly three pages of them! I’m afraid he will be shattered. But he shatters rather too easily, anyhow; and sloppiness must be treated drastically if it is ever to be cured. Now my next distasteful task is to tell William Hoopes what I think of his novel.
August 22. This morning the man has come to put in the drapes in the front bedroom and in Don’s studio; and other men are putting mirror into the wall of the dining area. And tonight, Jerry Lawrence, Larry Paxton, Jack Larson, Jim Bridges and Max Schelerfn368 are coming to dinner, and Gavin is coming in later. Gavin leaves in a couple of days for England because he is going to write The Night of the Iguana screenplay. (They have decided to make the picture in England and so they want a writer who has a British passport; this is the reason given for letting me out, and I daresay it is really the true one.) This afternoon, Wyatt Cooper is bringing Gloria Vanderbilt for Don to draw. Wyatt is thought by Don to be scheming to marry her. This means that I may have to keep him entertained while Don is drawing her.
I have said I won’t complain until things become really unbearable. So I won’t complain.
A pair of linked events: after silence from my ex-students all summer, I hear today from Glenn Porter, Frances Yampolsky, Nick Barod. Also, I discover that Glenn and Frank Wiley are both on the Princeton!fn369
Reading Mrs. Dalloway, which is one of the most truly beautiful novels or prose poems or whatever that I have ever read. It is prose written with absolute pitch, a perfect ear. You could perform it with instruments. Could I write a book like that and keep within the nature of my own style? I’d love to try.
A fan in Oregon named Jack Rosen has sent me a hand-drawn birthday card with greetings from the characters in my Berlin novels—“to our ‘Poppa’ …” Of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Harvey Easton definitely has cancer. It is in his liver. He won’t see anyone. His wife June is pregnant.
To live every day
as if this were going to happen to oneself. And yet not to let it happen.
Great satisfaction from working out at the gym; but I’m barely losing weight. I still can’t get down below 150 and stay down. But my hips are much smaller.
August 24. What was wrong with the film John Huston and Wolfgang Reinhardt made about Freud?fn370 (We saw it yesterday evening.) Just exactly what I had expected would be wrong. Freud’s lifework is presented in the pat terms of a neat logical discovery. “If that is that and this is this, then that-this must be—No, that’s wrong.” (Something happens, and the discoverer gets a flash of insight.) “Ah, now I see. The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is—” And the discovery is discovered and remains discovered, forever and forever.… This would be perfectly all right if you were describing the invention of a certain kind of corkscrew. But this method (which has been the method of all Hollywood biographical films dealing with scientists) utterly belittles the greatness of men like Freud, who were not inventors or necessarily discoverers, even, but explorers. They dared—that’s what matters. Scott dared to approach the South Pole. Freud dared to descend into the Inner Night. If they really discovered anything, if they succeeded or if they failed—that’s secondary.
Afterwards, Jack Larson and Jim Bridges took me to supper at Frascati’s. (Don had to go to a party at Romanoff’s, given by Gloria Vanderbilt.) As soon as we sat down, Jack went and telephoned Monty Clift in New York, because he was waiting to hear how he had looked in the film. Jack has to call him after every one of his films. As a matter of fact, Clift didn’t disgrace himself. He had very little to do, except to be seen watching the patient, or asking him, “And then?” or, “Why?” And talking of why, why must non-Jews play Jews nowadays? It is the most bogus kind of liberal nonsense—that we’re all the same really. We fucking well aren’t.
Then Jack Larson talked about Paul Kennedy, whom he’d known quite well, for many years. How Paul was AWOL from the marines for months and how he finally gave himself up and was thrown in the brig. And then his life of poverty in Hollywood, sleeping in all-night movie theaters. I should have asked more, if I hadn’t been sleepy and sluggish. I do like Jack and Jim more and more, the more I get to know them. But chiefly Jack. Jack seems to me a genuine man of goodwill. And he is a great authority on old Hollywood. I wish I could see more of him but there’s never any time, it seems.
Was horrid to Don this morning, blaming him for getting me into the Freud showing and the consequent obligation to write to or telephone John Huston. I told Don that he is the real tyrant, not me. This is the kind of talk which is neither true nor false. We are both tyrants whenever either of us gets the upper hand. No need to get nasty about this.
August 26. My expectation of life is now seventeen years. But how well aware I am that it may end any time now. That aggressive Negro girl I met at the party in New York at Christmas said I would die after writing one more (very successful) book; a year or two after writing it, I think she said.
Am I afraid of death? Yes and no. I am terrified of going over the edge, knowing the illness is terminal, knowing the doctors and nurses have got me in their cruel kingdom of insufficient painkilling. But I have faith, too. I believe that I shall be somehow sustained. If there’s an afterlife at all. And that’s still a little bit of an if for me. Not a big one.
I am not pleased by the way I’m growing old. My face is ugly with tension and resentment and lust. It is not beautiful at all. Old and ugly, and I am plump around the middle, despite all my exercising. I have got to curb my resentment somehow; it is wearing me out.
Do I hate Don? Only the selfish part of me hates him, for rocking the boat. When I can go beyond that, I feel real compassion, because he is suffering terribly. I still don’t know if he really wants to leave me, or what. And I don’t think he knows. Last night, he had a drunken fit of crying, over in the studio, so loud that I could hear him in the house. I went over and he said to leave him alone, he liked to cry. I really felt he was on the edge of a breakdown. But then, this morning, he appeared with birthday presents inscribed in the Dub and Kitty idiom—two shirts, white socks, a watchstrap and a beautiful Japanese model horse, white with trappings of orange, green and gold. Now he has gone off to draw Selznick.
Last night, Hope Lange and Glenn Ford came to supper. I burned the steaks (which were anyway far too small) on the barbecue. It is so symptomatic of the gloom we live in that this accident, which would seem merely funny to happy people, became a disaster like something in an Ibsen play. Hope and Glenn were as constrained as ever, despite their alleged get-together. You felt Hope was his prisoner. So that was depressing, too.
I had looked forward to a day on the beach, to freshen up my tan before I leave for San Francisco on Wednesday. But it’s one of those maddening days of beach fog with blue sky a mile inland.
Have just finished Mrs. Dalloway. It is a marvellous book[.] Woolf’s use of the reverie is quite different from Joyce’s stream of consciousness. Beside her, Joyce seems tricky and vulgar and cheap, as she herself thought. Woolf’s kind of reverie is less “realistic” but far more convincing and moving. It can convey tremendous and varied emotion. Joyce’s emotional range is very small.
Am on page 56 of The Englishwoman, and yesterday I finished the rough draft of chapter 16 of the Ramakrishna book. Now I must write to Olive Mangeot, one of the very few who remembered my birthday. The others: Glade Bachardy, Jerry Lawrence.
This from a Chinese fortune cookie I was given at the House of Lee in Pacific Palisades a couple of nights ago: “Don’t write curt notes to people who have failed you”!
September 10. I had meant to begin a new volume after that last entry and after my trip to San Francisco. But somehow this isn’t the moment to do it. I would like to open on a happier note, or at least on the sensation or illusion of a new start.
Things are bad with Don, but at least we had an air-clearing talk the other day. I ought to go away, of course, for several months and leave him here to find his bearings. Not to do this is to force him to go away, and this is wrong because he is the one who didn’t feel really at home in this house, and now that he has his own studio he should be free to enjoy it.
Then why don’t I go away? Because it is such a lot of fuss and I don’t want to leave my home and above all my books. I want to stay here and get on with my work, in my own tempo. I can leave him alone now, of course, much more easily than before; we have much more privacy. But not enough. Our life together is all off on the wrong foot and I am not at all certain it can get back off it.
Aren’t I bad for him, now, under any circumstances? Probably. He only needs me in his weakness, not his strength; and he hates me for supporting his weakness. But meanwhile I am useful, and the show is beginning at Rex Evans’s gallery a week from today; in fact we are in the midst of an emergency, which makes an excuse for doing nothing till it’s over.
Today he is getting a new car, a Corvair. I am trying to get a Volkswagen as soon as possible.
All this time, my tongue has been burning. Now I’m told by Dr. Allen to see a specialist about the little tumor in my ear. It looks slightly larger to him. So I’m going tomorrow, maybe to have it cut out. Otherwise my health seems good. At the gym I feel very strong, but I still can’t lose weight.
Only yesterday did I make a very faltering restart on the Ramakrishna chapter.
I was in San Francisco from August 30fn371 to September 4. Had meant to write about this today, but Anthony Brownfn372 just called to tell me about his book on the British wartime propaganda newspaper, and now I have to go out.
September 12. About San Francisco first. I really don’t have much that I particularly want to note down. This strange guy […] gave me a sweater which had belonged to John Cowan.fn373 I had a little bit the feeling that, in giving it to me, he was passing on an unlucky object—the way you are supposed to have to get someone to accept the runes which have been cast on you. Anyhow, I left it, unintentionally, in Stanley Miron’s car.
Thom Gunn and his leather jackets and his bar life. He hasn’t written poetry for nearly a year, but he doesn’t seem rattled. There is something very tough in him. There is a bar called the Why Not which has a boot party on Thursdays.
Maybe I’ll think of other things. Not now.…
A beautiful day, and I am so relieved because the specialist—a Minnesotan Swede, I think, with a brutal face and a certain effeminacy of pose—told me the thing in my ear isn’t a tumor at all but an exostosis, and that it won’t have to be operated on unless it interferes with my hearing. The hearing test; sitting with headphones on in a soundproof room. Gradually you hear the delicate tiny fairy jingles. So pretty. You could write music for them.
But Laughton is probably dying. The kidney is too far gone to operate on. I talked to Elsa today and shall most likely go to see him on Friday. And Harvey Easton is certainly dying.
The Sixties Page 31