The pursuit of publicity for Don’s show. Don was saying this morning how revolting this is. He says he’s getting sick of doing portraits. Or rather that he wants to find another way of doing them. “So they’ll look like me instead of looking like the sitters.”
The Cuban crisis is cooking up big.fn374 Don has turned down Anthony Cave Brown’s idea that he should be commissioned by NASA to cover the next American earth orbit at the recovery point in the Pacific. What they needed was a sketch artist, of course.
September 14. Yesterday I reread my novel, the fifty-six pages I’ve written so far. I am discouraged; very little seems to be emerging. Maybe I really have to sit down and plot a bit before I go on. I do not have a plot and I don’t even know what I want to write a novel about.… No, that’s not quite true. I want to write about middle age, and being an alien. And about the Young. And about this woman. The trouble is, I really cannot write entirely by ear; I must do some thinking.
Supper with Tom Wright yesterday. Gavin was there. Tom leaves soon for a two-year stay in Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America. There is something very Beatrix Potter about him. He is like a self-contained eccentric animal, very much alone and quite satisfied to be so. You can imagine him puttering around the rain forest and the Mayan ruins, with his stammer and his stoop and his mild southern amiability, a creature altogether alien and yet quite able to take care of himself, avoid snakes and wild beasts, escape infection by the judicious use of pills, even cope with the most ferocious Indians—the kind who have killed many a trained anthropologist who spoke their language perfectly, knew all about their customs and religion, but didn’t have Tom’s saving, smiling adaptability.
September 16. On the beach today; it was beautiful, though the beach itself is foul with the trash of the untidy summer. Tomorrow is Don’s show, and he is working frantically now trying to do a self-portrait of himself because Rex Evans wants to put one up outside the gallery. Meanwhile I have been writing letters, to Frank Wiley, to consumptive Paul Taylor in London, to Amiya. What a weary labor! And really it is nothing but slamming a ball back across the net. Frank is maybe the only one who deserves a letter because he is stuck out there in the navy; and yet it’s precisely to him that I can’t write the things he’d want to hear, because of this prissy censorship and spying. So I sent a long literary chat about Faulkner and Woolf which I could barely finish for boredom.
Last night, Don went out to dinner with the Claxtons and got drunk and fell on the way back to his car and raised a huge bruise on his thigh which is paining him dreadfully. So that’s one more cross to bear tomorrow. But he has been so sweet, the last few days. All that is such a mix-up. Perhaps I should just offer the whole thing up to God’s will and stop worrying. But I can’t help feeling that refusing to worry is somehow a betrayal of Don. (I’m tired and writing nonsense, I think.)
Elsa still makes excuses for me not to see Charles. She may not even realize what she is doing. And of course I am not madly eager to see him. When I do it will be sad and painful. Japam, japam; there is nothing else to be done about anything.
September 18. Don feels that the opening of his show last night was a great disappointment, because only one portrait was definitely bought—Lotte Lenya, by Gavin Lambert. But Glenn Ford publicly declared that he intended to buy the portrait of me (a strange, rather leering one, which Don finished only about an hour before the show opened!) And today we hear there is a buyer for the Huxley, and a nibbler after the Tennessee Williams.
The party was certainly well-attended, though there were a lot of freeloaders and queen-bums. Gladys Cooper came, and Dorothy Parker, and Shelley Winters, and Glenn and Hope. But that cunt Oberon did not come, after tricking Don into hanging the picture of her that she likes, and Connie Wald didn’t come, because of some mysterious disaster, and Lee Gershwinfn375 and Doris Dowling didn’t come. And that bastard Mike Connollyfn376 didn’t come, although Jerry Lawrence even asked him to dinner to get him. The greatest gaffe of the evening, on my part, was to inscribe a copy of my novel to “Tyler,” because I had gotten Keats Tyler’s name turned around. Don followed my example. So we have decided to send him another copy, properly inscribed. (I had thought of doing this and dismissed the idea, and then Don suggested it, on his own.)
This morning we went on the beach and discussed The Englishwoman, and Don, after hearing all my difficulties with it, made a really brilliant simple suggestion, namely that it ought to be The Englishman—that is, me. This is very far-reaching, but I shan’t go into it here, I’ll write an analysis of the idea within a day or two, in my big flat planning-book.
September 22. The day before yesterday, I got a black Volkswagen sedan, and the day before that Don got a Corvair, very handsome, a kind of wine red, black upholstery with silver buttons. They fill our little carport and Don has to park diagonally because I have the jitters about backing out and have already scraped my whitewall tires and made a tiny dent in the wing. But I am very pleased. The Volkswagen and I understand each other. It reminds me of the Consul, which I used to describe as a very loyal little car. The V.W. has the bouncy loyal eagerness of a small dog. It doesn’t really care how you treat it. It isn’t very bright but it is cheerful and that’s such a relief after the gloomy neurotic moods of the Simca. You never knew how it would be feeling from day to day. It hated me, and I rather hated it for its French sulks. But it was sad to part from the Sunbeam Talbot which had shared so much with us. Those first spins with Don up the coast highway to the beach where we used to be able to swim naked, and the Monument Valley trip, where it figured in several early photographs. And how beautiful it was when it was young and horizon blue!
A few more of Don’s drawings have been sold and Henry J. Seldis wrote a good notice of the show in the Los Angeles Times of yesterday. He said: “It is an impressive appearance by a highly skilled and perceptive draftsman who captures the personality as well as the appearance of his sitters with elegant lines.” So Don feels better. But he is still wrestling with post-exhibition lassitude. He resolves to start going nights to art school at the beginning of next week; also to paint during the day.
And I resolve to get the hell on with the Ramakrishna book and restart my novel. I should never have stopped it; but now that I have this different approach I can’t go on from where I left off.
The Cuba-Berlin crisis continues. And there will be a crisis like this every year until we blow each other up, or the deadlock is broken—by England’s declaration of unilateral disarmament; an act of political genius which is nearly but perhaps not utterly unthinkable, since it would satisfy at least one national appetite, the desire to be nobler than thou.
September 23. This morning we went over to Gavin’s to look at John Hart’sfn377 interview with me on T.V., and instead, although it had been announced in the papers, there was an interview with a Negro comedian named Dick Gregory.fn378 Not one word said about the interviewee for next Sunday.fn379
Last night we went to the theater at the Uplifters—it’s actually a gym with folding metal chairs—to see two plays by John Mortimer, The Lunch Hour and I Spy. Ghastly, and made ghastlier, as usual on such occasions, by Don’s jitters and fury. He can’t help taking such things personally. It is he who has been insulted and injured.fn380 Moyna Macgillfn381 was very good however. And an actor named Ben Wrightfn382 gave the evening an unusual distinction by falling right off the stage during the blackout between the last two scenes. In the darkness, we heard this awful crash and then a great groan. But he had only sprained his wrist. He rather touchingly begged the audience’s pardon as he was helped out.
The weather has much improved. Today, and four times during the past week, we have been on the beach and in the ocean. Blazing hot sun, dirty water. Don has a stomach upset and sore throat. During lunch at Ted’s, we discussed what he should do. Russell McKinnon has hinted to me that he would produce more money for Don to go back to England. But Don says he doesn’t really want to go. He doesn’t want to go to New York either. A
nd he most decidedly doesn’t want to go to Rome or Paris. So then I had to point out to him that the logical alternative remaining is for me to go off somewhere while he stays here and works. I could tell at once that this was what he wanted. But where shall I go? I probably could get enough work in New York; maybe even in San Francisco. But that would mean compulsive drinking and running around. Suppose I went to Trabuco for two months? Hideous boredom and loneliness, but maybe the meditation and lack of liquor would work wonders, and I should get on, faute de mieux, with the Ramakrishna book and maybe also with my novel. (Remember how I had that extraordinary breakthrough with The World in the Evening when I was at Trabuco in January 1953, shortly before my life with Don started.) Well, I’ll give this idea serious consideration.
September 29. I certainly won’t be able to go away in October, because so many things have come up for me to do. Lectures at Riverside, Garden Grove, and UCLA (a discussion with Jerry Lawrence) and another public reading of F6. As far as Don is concerned, I can’t make out how much he minds. He sulks, rushes off and spends the night out, and then is quite nice. He says he is in despair, but this only means what it means for most artists of any kind; he doesn’t know what to do next. I’m sure he must go out much more alone. He says he wants to go out dancing with girls. I say, well how marvellous. And then he says, but I don’t know any girls and I can’t dance any more—seeming to imply that I am stopping him. When, actually, one of the earliest things I urged him to do was take dancing lessons, and he did, but then lost interest.
One thing I realize, I must stop being even in the least bit altruistic; because that is false anyhow. I must not make big gestures; just good-humoredly nudge him into greater freedom.
Harvey Easton is dead. The guy who runs the gymnasium in his place is so sloppy that he still uses the sign Harvey used to use: Harvey will be back at.… And then a clock face, so you can indicate the time. The day after the funeral, the sign said: Harvey will be back at 3:30! This is one of the most striking examples I have ever heard of the startling horror which can be achieved through quite simple normal “harmless” insensitivity.
Akhilananda of Providence and Boston also died a few days ago.fn383 His assistant, Swami Sarvagatananda, is out here now, taking refuge from the madwoman who has dominated the centers for years, and of whom they are all terrified. When I was up at Vedanta Place last Wednesday, a woman named Dorothy Louis (Shraddha) was raving against this woman and also goading Swami Prabhavananda, saying that he was afraid of her, rather in the manner that women in the Icelandic sagas goaded their men on to undertake a killing by jeers at their cowardice. It was viciously ugly and one of the very few times I have seen Prabhavananda really rattled. You realize how a woman like Shraddha could degenerate into just such another domineering madwoman as the Providence one. There are women like that wherever a religious group gathers. The only person who can hold them in check is the priest or minister or swami in charge.fn384
We have had all our planting done now. It was done by Mr. Graef of California Flowerland and two assistants (one called Angel) at the beginning of the week. On the days when all the shrubs have to be watered, it takes more than an hour. But the place is really beautiful now. The hanging boxes of plants give such style to the balcony.
Yesterday I went to the Cedars for the second time to see Laughton. He seemed weaker and he is starting to get hallucinations again. He told me that he believes the doctor is practising witchcraft and is trying to get control of his (Charles’s) mind. “Of course,” said Charles, “he could only have it for very short periods”; and I realized that Charles was mixing up his witchcraft fantasy with show business. This became more evident when he asked me, “How much do you think I’d be paid as a witch?” I told him, a great deal. This seemed to please him.
On September 25, I restarted my novel. I have absolutely no idea how this will go yet. But I feel I am nearer the mark, calling him Williamfn385 and writing in the third person.
October 3. Last night we went to the Ringling Brothers circus, with Barbette. It was in the huge new sports arena, way downtown, and the place was not one quarter filled. It had never struck me before how the Circus is a symbolic play about Life. That sounds heavy and Germanic; what I mean is that the Circus is exactly like Life. The Circus audience is much less attentive, generally speaking, than other audiences. It crunches and munches and slurps soft drinks and talks to itself, and its attention—like the attention of The Others in Life—is only momentarily captured. Indeed, it is made almost impossible for the audience to attend properly, because different things are happening most of the time in the three rings; you cannot concentrate. A sexy girl with long blonde hair is balancing outstretched on something, in a not very difficult pose; but she is watched. In the meanwhile, a dear little Japanese has a billiard cue on his chin, and a chair on top of that, and his wife sitting on the chair (no longer young), and he is twirling colored rings around one arm and juggling flaming torches with the other hand, and keeping a rubber ball balanced on the toe of one foot. It has taken him his whole life to learn to do this, no doubt; and maybe he can do it better than anybody else in the world; and who gives a damn? There was one act in which a young man rushed around setting plates spinning on pointed rods; and when they were all spinning he rushed around catching them before they slowed down and fell off. (One of them did fall, and shattered.) And this was a perfect symbol of the Rat Race, the Age of Anxiety. And then the disorganization and irrelevance, the sheer chaos of Life, expressed by the sudden invasion of the clowns, the frantic hurry in which many of the acts are performed, the meaninglessness of most of the animal acts—why should bears ride bicycles?—and the abrupt exit of even the star performers, walking quietly away, unfollowed by the spotlights, but perfectly visible to the onlookers, who nevertheless don’t applaud, and indeed pretend not to see them. The clowns are a curious mixture; half of them wholesome nursery types, like Popeye the Sailor Man, the other half abominations from the world of nightmare—things with snake-necks and tennis-ball heads, heads which are cut right off, creatures which split into halves and walk off separately. (They would be even more abominable if their designers had had the genius as well as the intention of a Francis Bacon.) And then there are great engines, absurdly imposing when you consider the idiotic tasks for which they are made; the cannon, for example, which shoots two people into a net—why? The animals which seemed best adapted to the mood of the Circus were the elephants—and yet their monumental poses are a kind of parody of all classical sculpture.
As for the trapeze artists, their art is something else again: high camp about Death.
The wire walker who makes fake slips (and some real ones); that’s one approach. His wife was watching, and wincing each time he seemed about to fall. Attendants held a miserably small net underneath him.
The other approach is the classic style and grace of Gerard, the aerialist. He swings by his heels. He wears a magnificent cape, more feminine than masculine in style, which he takes off before going aloft, in tights with a diamond belt, naked to the waist. Barbette introduced us to him. An utter lack of vanity. No noticeable nervousness, although we met him first before the act. A blond, fairly good-looking, unremarkable, muscular boy in his middle twenties, I guess, who had put on a certain amount of fat. His friend Cesar, a Filipino. Cesar was in college when he met Gerard and joined the circus. Gerard taught him to do a low-wire act and to juggle. He is so good that he was featured in Madison Square Garden; there is no room for him on the program here. Cesar is Gerard’s assistant in his act. He has declared that, if Gerard falls, he will throw himself underneath to break the fall as much as possible. They have been together two or three years. (Once, Gerard slipped and only caught the trapeze with one heel and had to swing right back in that position. He thought he would fall, but he recovered himself. He earns $550 dollars a week. Barbette says he is going to teach Gerard some new tricks when they are in Sarasota, Florida, for the winter. He says that the circus is so big t
hat it requires very big showy movements.)
We took Barbette out to supper afterwards at a Mexican restaurant he recommended, the Taxco, on Sunset.
When we were talking the evening over this morning, while having breakfast on the deck, Don said that, if the Circus symbolizes the meaninglessness of Life, then it follows that to have a job in the Circus is the most meaningless work of all.
We watched the unattractive wife of one of the neighbors on Mabery Road go out and look in the mailbox. Don said, “What can she be expecting, except bills?”
October 9. We had a picnic with Gerard (Soule)fn386 and his friend Cesar, and Jack Larson and Jim Bridges and Gavin on the beach yesterday. It wasn’t rewarding. Gerard was remote, and only responded to Jim, who has the unfortunate mannerism of creating “secret” conversations. Speed used to do it; and there’s no doubt, it always indicates a certain amount of bitchery—in this case, bitchery of Jack. You manage to suggest that your talk with the other person is a sort of conspiracy, even if you are discussing the weather. You talk to him in a low voice, so you can’t be heard by anyone else in the group, and if possible you draw him aside, take him for a short walk or retreat into the middle distance, but always (this is most important) remain in full view of the others. (My writing this suggests that I’m beginning not to like Jim. I think this is true.)
As for Gerard, he was passive; he merely let it happen. I found it quite impossible to talk to him without awareness of his predicament—i.e. that he could easily be killed that very day. In other words, I thought of him as someone incurably sick. They were moving the circus to San Bernadino and giving a show that evening.
Cesar has a kind of Asian wriggly femininity, with a cruel little giggling laugh. He giggled scornfully over Barbette’s scheme to found a permanent circus here, with real style and red velvet seats. The circus, he said, is for children, who eat popcorn. Was his bitchery partly jealousy of Barbette, because of Barbette’s influence over Gerard? Probably. Cesar would be jealous like a real Asian wife, who puts poison in the rival’s food.
The Sixties Page 32