The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates

by Joyce Carol Oates

  April 12, 1974.…Visited Kalamazoo College. Conrad Hilberry & Herb Bogard, and others; extremely congenial, pleasant.

  May 15, 1974.…Met Philip Roth. Went to his apartment, then out to lunch. Attractive, funny, warm, gracious: a completely likeable person. We talked about books, movies, other writers, New York City, Philip’s fame (and its amusing consequences), his experiences in Czechoslovakia meeting with writers. Ray and I liked him very much. His apartment on 81st St. is large and attractive, near the Met. Art gallery. He has another house (and another life, one gathers) in Connecticut. My Life as a Man: irresistibly engaging.‡ But one wonders at Philip’s pretense that it isn’t autobiographical….

  May 20, 1974.…Fake suicide note from A.K.; caused me a few minutes’ upset before Ray discerned it was fictitious. A pathetic hoax…. Still, it might mean he’s decided to leave me alone. The suicide note blamed me for his death, then went on to berate me for not having written a review of his book, etc., etc. I wrote back to him saying I was sorry, very sorry, but couldn’t he leave me alone—couldn’t the two of us forget about each other? Don’t expect any reply.

  Why would a homosexual care so much about a woman?—his homosexuality is so brazen, so self-congratulatory. Perhaps he dreads being a latent heterosexual….

  May 23, 1974.…Anniversary; wine & cheese party at school; pleasant conversation with the usual people: Gene Mc. N., Al MacL., Colin A., etc.* I live in an easygoing masculine world at the University. My closest friends are men and have been for the past fourteen years, with the exception of Liz Graham and Kay Smith, whom I like very much;† but they’re not “colleagues.”

  “Suicide hoax” in “Paradise: A Post-Love Story.” Also, the general emotional field of the proposed novel, Death-Festival.‡ (The sense that someone wants me dead…fantasizes my death. Chilling. Crazy.)

  May 28, 1974. Death-Festival taking form slowly; people emerging. Yvonne changes shape & character. Hugh the surprising one. Stephen still shadowy. Andrew becoming more and more witty, amusing.§

  Read Bell’s Virginia Woolf.¶ Fine book.

  How fortunate for Virginia that she had Leonard—! Without him, who knows?

  […]

  July 7, 1974.…Out West to Aspen, Colorado, to the Humanities Institute. 8000' above sea level. Many fascinating people; music festival; mountain climbers; physicists. I think this will be my last public reading since it went so well: I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

  August 7, 1974.…Death-Festival now called The Assassins. Gradually taking shape. A small mountain of notes…. Hugh Petrie, cruel at first then, gradually, sympathetic. I hadn’t wished to put so much of myself into him.

  Synthesis of realism, symbolism; the mas. & the fem; Marxist-socialist-protest critique & depth psychology. Experience of art as religious revelation. Otherwise of no interest.

  Art as the highest activity of the Soul.

  September 15, 1974. School year, as always, tumultuous. Conrad—Lawrence—Faulkner seminar looks challenging. (Too many students, however.)

  First issue of Ontario Review out soon. Ray has worked very, very hard.

  An avalanche of work: people: impressions: stimuli. Day following day, blending dizzily into a kind of seamless expansion of time. Timelessness? Immersed in life, one simply loses track of details.

  October 15, 1974. Returned from two days at Yale. “Visiting Writer.” Guest of Calhoun College—R. and I in rooms above the Master’s residence—in signing the guest-book, were impressed (as one must be) by previous guests: W. H. Auden, Stanley Kunitz, Northrop Frye, Norman Mailer, acquaintance Tony Tanner of Cambridge; and others. What was not impressive was the place itself—the incessant banging overhead, noise on the stairs and in the courtyard—endearingly drunken undergraduates—phonographs turned up high (classical music, at least, but militaristic and thumping). Is this the reward of a kind of fame? And how did Auden like staying here?

  Moved to the Sheraton-Hilton after a miserable, sleepless night. I, who feel uneasy with luxury, who prefer “simple” surroundings, am continually moving to a Sheraton-Hilton, moving out of guest accommodations and the presumably simple surroundings others like. Would have felt apologetic about it, but why?

  Though we live in jest, we die in earnest.

  A year ago, R. and I drove to Washington, D. C., to participate in a conference sponsored by the Kennedy Foundation. Stayed at the Sheraton-Hilton. Many floors up, but still noisy. Washington itself far more attractive than we had dared hope. Nixon in the White House then: but the “White House” of tourist experience is just a museum crammed with odds and ends, some very bad art, a few surprises (a Monet above a fireplace, John F. Kennedy’s gift to the White House). In a VIP group, taken for an endless tour by an automaton-like guide, smiling and chattery. I could have endured it, but R. gave out suddenly; insisted that we slip beneath one of the velvet ropes and escape, which we did. The joys of sudden liberation…. Suddenly, unexpectedly, to slip free of a tedious obligation, to hurry out into the (autumnal) sunlight, hand in hand…. Romantic lovers fleeing legitimate pain, the real thing, are not so joyfully liberated as R. and I are commonly, one might almost say daily.

  Eunice and Sargent Shriver were our hosts, the conference itself quite interesting, though the panel—eight or nine “experts”—was too large. Had the good fortune to meet Robert Coles, however.* Marvelous man. The trip to Washington was not a loss. We were gathered together to discuss the ethics of government interference with private life (attempting to control population growth among the poor or retarded), one of the very few points at which orthodox Catholicism might touch upon the standard issues of civil liberties. Discuss it we did, some of us sympathetic with the poor and deprived; others (awkwardly, they tended to be those who dealt with the poor and deprived!) more sympathetic with the welfare institutions and workers, whose problems are evidently insurmountable. Eunice Kennedy harassed but friendly; gave me a quick galloping tour about the Kennedy Center, like the White Queen pulling Alice around, hair flying. At this time, in fact this very night, Ted Kennedy’s son was hospitalized and his leg amputated; so the “promise” of our group meeting the Senator could not be fulfilled. How strange the experience was…. Politicians might be fascinating; politics never. Or is it the other way around? One conservative economist from MIT […] gave a bullying passionate speech in favor of government controls rather like those Hitler might have liked. The poor? But one must have television sets; one must have material goods. The poor can only be given what’s left over, [he] said.

  November 13, 1974. Teaching all day—first-year class at eleven—student-writers and others in for conferences in the afternoon—brief visit from a professor of religious studies (who, attending a conference recently in Washington, D.C., was astounded at the references made to my work by American professors of religion and theology!—as I am also astounded)—my writing seminar from four to six—nighttime suddenly upon us. The satisfactions of teaching once one is beyond being judged—in this era of unemployment, especially—once one can express oneself openly, honestly—but does anyone do so??? Long-distance call from the producer of William Buckley’s show—inviting me to Florida for one of their shows, this weekend—rather short notice?—unfortunately unable to accept. Have not been on television for years, for many years—no interest in it—though perhaps my disinterest is no virtue.

  There is a certain kind of woman—a certain kind of man also?—who attempts to create virtue out of a disinterest in the energies of vice. I am guilty of no vices, but certainly guilty of having explored no vices. As for sinning, my characters can do that for me—! They plunge in, they suffer, occasionally they learn, occasionally they survive. Their methods of salvation are largely their own choice, despite my obvious “omnipotence.” The reader of a novel cannot guess the extent to which the novelist is also a reader…a reader first, and then a recorder. The art-work labors to create itself; one must only not interfere. The first rule of medicine: Do no harm. But if one must harm, then
do so with grace…!

  The spirit moves where it will. Boredom is not possible, but the absence of “spirit” is. Difficult to speak of such things, especially to people who are embarrassed at the very terms—spirit, soul, psyche. Mind they will allow (imagining one is speaking daintily of “brain”), but the other terms are confusing. And yet—there are people near me, students more than others, stricken by the approach of “spiritual” contents far more than I: the difference between us being that I am not frightened of such contents, but in fact thrive on them, while they are intimidated, alarmed, baffled. Of course I too have been frightened in the past…and will probably be frightened again…there is the danger of complacency, of forgetting the immediate, overwhelming nature of the psychic contents. “Dreams,” people say, thereby attempting to dismiss these visions; but the word “dreams” is not appropriate when one suffers a sudden visitation from the unconscious…. But the Spirit moves where it will. Biblical wisdom, commonsense psychology. One cannot force oneself to write: and I haven’t written a poem or a story for weeks. Nor do I miss this kind of writing. All my energies go into the novel, and there are none left over. Is this conscious choice? No. One could speak of it as a choice—emphasizing the fact that the novel is “more interesting” at this point in my life—but that is ego-rationalizing, not convincing. The Spirit moveth where it listeth…. We fall in love, we fall out of love: the experience of “love” overtakes us, conquers us, and occasionally (though not always) drifts away. It can’t be retained, called back. It may come back of its own accord—but it cannot be called back, certainly not forced back. Emphasis upon the will, upon the activities of the ego, is misplaced in things of the spirit, though probably relevant in life. I don’t “believe” in my own “beliefs”—does anyone?

  November 15, 1974. Lunch at a local pub-restaurant with R. and friends—members of the department—following a departmental meeting. Ungodly boredom of the meeting—yet fascinating, that others should be so absorbed, so vitally connected. Thirty or more intelligent men and women—seated in a windowless room—fluorescent lighting—curriculum report dutifully presented—one’s mind tempted to wander, to flee—and yet the presence of others (seated beside my friend C.) argues that one could take these things seriously. But—at what price?

  Do I differ from my colleagues at all? But how? In degree? In kind? Am I simply more scrupulous, or less?

  Jammed together at lunch. Not a drinker, nevertheless I experience a distinct alteration of consciousness in the presence of others—socially, but even in the classroom or seminar—a heightening, livening, intensifying sensation—a kind of euphoria. (Would the drinkers attain the same heights, without drinking? But they never make the experiment.) The process is deceptive: one feels oneself fulfilled, with these shreds and bits of other people, but at the same time one is being drained.

  The temptations of the world: to go on forever out there.

  Recognition of excellence in a young student—twenty-three-year-old from the East—pleasure, awe, some little envy for his material (ah, what I could do with it!—but it isn’t mine). For some writers, mere existence—survival—will assure them success of a kind. They are born writers, they cannot miss. For others, “success” must be forced—each story or poem or novel worked at—worried and teased into being—for they sense, quite correctly, that they have no natural destiny, they will have to create it…. Joy certainly belongs to the former; they have merely to live their art. The latter—? Joy may be forced, perhaps. I wouldn’t know.

  In offering all of oneself, one of course disappears. The perfect disguise: transparency. In clumsier terms, promiscuity of a physical sort allows anonymity, refuge, a possible sanctity. But it is undiscriminating: therefore unintelligent. One chooses, chooses constantly, one is always choosing, one cannot not choose, for the pose of helplessness, of inertia, is also a choice. My “choice” is the transparency of an “I” predictable in the social context in which it is found—therefore disguised, camouflaged against the landscape. People call this “the personality”—but of course it is a form of behavior, conscious in some, in others unconscious. Most people indulge in apotropaic ritual-behavior: this, they call socializing. And imagine it is only a habit, a way of passing time—when in fact it is time itself. Nor are we generally out of it.

  Returned from the University in the late afternoon, exhausted. Already it is winter—the roses in our back garden covered with snow—everything harsh, dripping, unfamiliar. Only mid-November…. To fight fatigue, went to work on my novel at once: but little progress. The narrator, who must die, does not want to die—keeps talking, dancing about, begging for life—but who will win? But I have already won. I have won innumerable times. The struggle should get easier, but in fact it gets more difficult: my characters too have grown, are more sophisticated, more cunning and inventive. They do not always want to be folded into an art-work, into a tapestry. They want their individual lives. And yet—without the tapestry to present them, to define them, they would not exist at all. The crucial fact of art.

  November 15, 1974. A Friday, a single class at eleven—fifty intense minutes circling about Kafka’s “The Hunter Gracchus” and our views generally of death—then lunch in Detroit, introduced to Elizabeth Janeway* by my friend Kay Smith. A dismally cold, wintry, windy day—Detroit at its worst—luncheon on the twenty-sixth floor of a downtown building—my astonishment as always upon meeting someone whose work I have read: we are all so different from our prose….

  Misrepresented? No. Not represented at all.

  Elizabeth Janeway warm, articulate, efficient; accustomed to travel, television shows, panels, public speaking. Promoting a recent book. A brief lunch, much to say, little time in which to say it—then Kay and Elizabeth left, Kay to drive her to the airport, I sitting on alone for ten minutes, drinking tea, staring at the snowstorm outside. Sense of envy, for lives or ways of life—living—inaccessible to me; but inaccessible, after all, because I have chosen my own life and of necessity cannot choose another.

  Balance between private, personal fulfillment (marriage, friendship, work at the University) and “public” life, the commitment to writing. The artist must find an environment, a pattern of living, that will protect his or her energies: the art must be cultivated, must be given priority.

  Live like a bourgeois, according to Flaubert. Don’t we all? Most of us, at least? Survivors.

  Unwritten, untouched: the temptations of teaching, of giving oneself so completely to the vital immediacies of the classroom that nothing else remains. Commonplace but misleading, the skeptical attitude toward teaching. I can’t understand it. From the first, at the University of Detroit—eleven years ago!—the temptation was to lose myself in the teaching, in the fascinating complexities of the students, in the oddly jovial, frantic social context of the college. Very real temptations, these, because the rewards are so immediate—so emotional. After a long exhausting day—at the University from ten until after six—little spirit left for what is private (my own writing), yet much left for a continuation of the same bright rapid flow of consciousness. Euphoric, could teach hour after hour. And—?

  Goethe: “People go on shooting at me when I am already miles out of range.”

  Some of us are never in range: never totally represented by any work of art. By the time of publication, already detached—absorbed in something else—a “stranger”—vulnerable to personal hurt but not to artistic censure.

  Is this a strategy? No. One does not choose one’s nature, though perhaps the habits, the adaptations of one’s nature are freely chosen….

  Destiny casts a shadow backward, even upon our anatomy: upon the images we have developed of our own “anatomy.” The feminine as a habit, an illusion, a lazy means of adaptation…to protect one’s vitality, to withdraw from a tedious surface immediacy (departmental meetings) in order to meditate upon something permanent (the novel I am struggling with right now): how best to be protected from that surface immediacy? Withdraw
ing behind the image, behind the mask of the feminine. Of course it helps to have those inclinations: to actually be fairly quiet, soft-spoken, unaggressive, unambitious, undominant….

  Lawrence says the artist is a liar. Very well. Perhaps. But if we lie, it is out of politeness—or unconsciousness. Who would lie when he could tell the truth? But the truth is so rarely accessible….

  November 17, 1974. Sunny, briskly mild, like a day in late March. Many birds, primarily juncos, feeding on our terrace. A rabbit appears—and then disappears. The river is placid and very blue.

  Unless one makes a conscious effort—almost, an effort of the muscles, the muscular cords that control the eyes—very little of the physical world is allowed into one’s written recording of a life. Why is this?—that the interior world, the preoccupations of one aspect of consciousness, should crowd the exterior world out?—when in fact (as we all know, Samuel Beckett no less than Arnold Bennett) the world that surrounds us most immediately is the world we look to, and which shapes our imaginative worlds to a far greater degree than we might admit. […] Life here in Windsor, on the banks of the Detroit River, in relatively tranquil surroundings—though a short fifteen-minute ride from the University—has allowed me to develop aspects of myself that would not have been activated back in Detroit: absolutely futile to deny this. There, our house was broken into one day when we were gone, we returned to a mess—bureau drawers yanked out, clothing tossed onto the floor—my modest jewelry strewn about (and very little taken: the thief’s shrewd judgment), curious bloodstains on the parquet floor of the dining room. The psychological shock of having one’s house burglarized…of seeing one’s possessions and intimate things thrown about…a very real experience, unforgettable, yet I’ve only approached it in a poem so far. Perhaps it is, or was, too powerful…? Then there was the riot of 1967—the riots—fires a few blocks away on Livernois, looting and general panic, and National Guardsmen stationed nearby: valuable to have experienced, no doubt, and yet hardly the sort of thing one would want to re-experience. Worse, we were in New York City when it began, and heard rumors that the mayor and the governor had been killed, and that Detroit was going up in flames…. So we returned as quickly as possible, felt the need to return, and drove east into the city along Seven Mile Road, astonished at the familiarity of it all—the placidity—the sunshine—the neat trim green sprinkled lawns of northwest Detroit—only when we approached Livernois did things seem more grim, more sensational. Home owners, we felt the riots as threats, necessarily; but the rioters themselves must have felt a marvelous exhilaration, a sense of sudden, absolute, unguessed-at freedom—the freedom to destroy, which is usually the privilege of the ruling classes. Had I been “Jules” of them, would I have behaved as “Jules” did…?* The answer is: Of course. So would everyone. But we are not “Jules,” and cannot judge.