The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Man: the creature who deludes himself in regard to nature. He imagines he likes it, even loves it. But he loves only a relationship with nature—a benign one—a relationship with nature in which he has control. Otherwise, the storm would be a catastrophe; we would share the fate of the stray, evidently abandoned cat; we would do far worse than the cat, in fact. Rejecting certain illusions, penetrating certain delusions, one is free then to enjoy the true circumstances of his existence: relationships, only relationships, no entities, no absolutes. We are what we experience.

  Working with Part II of the novel. A huge manila folder, of notes—tentative scenes—character sketches, descriptions—interiors—stray thoughts written in great intensity, months ago—some of them on the stationery at the motel in Aspen—the intensity mysterious now, and how to recover it?—that self?—how, really, to remember that past certainty? But if one cannot remember one can invent. The work that goes into a novel, the conscious work, is beyond estimation; the novelist should assume that, should not be immodest enough to claim he has actually worked hard. That has always struck me as self-pitying, childish, a coy plea for sympathy and praise…. Or am I wrong, have I always been wrong, should I perhaps have said nothing at all rather than give the impression that writing is “easy”? For in a sense it is easy, it is utterly natural. When it isn’t easy, it probably isn’t much good. At the same time it is not easy at all, because it requires constant thinking, worrying, puzzling, arranging and rearranging. The organization of mountains of material. I must have 500 pages for Part II alone; which must be drastically condensed; and who is going to do this, except “I,” in the most conscious, calculating sense of that word? One part of the personality has had its freedom, its flowing sprinting exhilarating freedom, and now another, more somber consciousness must take over…. But I’ve circumnavigated this task for days, while thinking miserably and guiltily of the fact that it must be done: and who will do it?

  Writing Do With Me What You Will, in England, on that dining room table in our Mayfair flat: the first draft going rather well until I hit a snag, in Part II. The momentum of a novel’s first section is always a joy, and then the second section must, in a sense, begin again—return to a kind of emotional zero—if one is to be true to the characters involved. How easy, to write a novel about one person only—one pinpoint of consciousness enough to deal with the complexities of any event, however simple. Never snow in London, that year, but constant rain, constant rain-clouds, the sun either hidden all day or shining for a few minutes and then setting rather abruptly at about four o’clock. Not a climate for me. A place to write, perhaps, to get a great deal of writing accomplished, but not a place to live—for me. The savage contrasts of North American weather—the Midwest—extraordinary heat and extraordinary cold—lots of snow—lots of sun—far more congenial to me. Anatomy may not be destiny, after all, but one’s birthplace probably is: destiny of a minor sort. Were I transported to the tropics, or exiled to Alberta or the Yukon, I would either lose this personality and evolve into another one altogether, a stranger to myself (and no doubt to writing), or die.

  The immodesty of “confessing” one has worked hard, at anything.

  The bullying—arrogance—shamelessness.

  The desire for approval; the demand (implicit) that everyone applaud, that the audience cheer the hardworking suffering artist simply because he has suffered, or so he says. If it took me twelve years to write a book, I would not admit it. “It took me three days to prepare this dinner for you,” someone said. “It took me all day to scrub these floors, and now look!—you don’t appreciate me!” The writer who speaks candidly of his suffering is really begging for love. He is blackmailing the rest of us. Love, acclaim, success. Blackmail.

  Though I struggled with the organization of that novel, at least one critic—for one of the better magazines—spoke of it as formless, sheer flux or energy. Formless. And to feel the need, in this case, to say nothing, not to bother to respond—frustrating—saddening—for one’s fate is evidently to be misunderstood practically all the time, unless one makes a conscious effort to direct critical assumptions—as Mailer does, or tries to do—and is that morally valid?—not to mention its being a time-consuming effort. Conrad in his Prefaces defeating the very mystery and complexity of his novels, by speaking at great and fond lengths of the “originals” of his characters. He felt he must do that—but why? To prove to his readers that he was “one of them,” not fabricating very much and therefore to be trusted? But to me a preface is part of a work of art; imaginative, fictitious, playful, possibly true and possibly para-truth. Conrad, one believes sadly, believed he was telling the truth.

  After several hours the new cat is perfectly at home. Abandoned by its owners?—they haven’t reported it lost. Nothing in the paper, no notice at the Humane Society. The stranger, the intruder, far more comfortable here than our two cats—whose territory has been challenged—who slink about big-eyed, tremulous, ready for melodrama. The antics of cats mimicking the antics of people. Their simpler thoughts on the surface of their bodies—in their muscles, actually. Actors. Immediately gripped by instincts, as we are so easily gripped by “emotions.”

  A university department as the microcosm of any organization, whether intellectual or military or for sports or financial gain. And “social” also, in a fascinating way. The “social” bonds that can be established within the pressure of the organization are considerable—leave an imprint on one that will remain for years—not exactly “friendship” in most cases but rather more interesting than friendship. Political skirmishes, close calls and victories, endless conversations, discussions, debates—everyone so very, very sincere when it comes to professional matters (because they are tied up with the ego, in most men anyway)—as no one is necessarily sincere in social life. One may be sincere, but it isn’t necessary. Other traits are more desirable.

  The springing-to-life of liaisons when outside “enemies” appear—the cementing of bonds—new and surprising allies: one must experience these things to really appreciate them. Writ small, this is the political history of the world. It is not a game, it is hardly cynical, it is a part of life itself—these semi-conscious bonds and alliances and sheer irrepressible joy.

  Not to have worked, never to have experienced this sort of thing—what a loss!

  December 2, 1974. Snowbound—great drifts of snow everywhere—the streets practically closed—police suggesting everyone stay home—the University and public schools shut down, and what curious disappointment—a Monday morning that is not a Monday morning, but sheer colorless limbo. Preparing for my classes yesterday, in a kind of slantwise manner, I could not have guessed how very much I was looking forward to actually meeting them—the continuing surprise of teaching being that meeting, in the flesh, the coming-together of minds, no way of predicting exactly what will happen. Now it is eleven o’clock when I would be meeting my first-year class, and instead I am sitting at my desk—outside the window the berry bushes practically collapsed with snow—no birds in sight—the sky over Belle Isle glowing and glaring, but dark elsewhere. Last night, flashes of lightning from time to time—most unusual, for this time of year, for a snowstorm. Without a television set, without much interest in finding a helpful radio station, Ray and I are actually timeless today—this is the first snowfall, the first day of a purely white world, trackless, no way of guessing where sidewalks or paths might be, and everything uncannily stilled, muffled. A few gulls above the broken ice at shore, the only living things in sight; must be fishing…? A solitary mallard paddling, bound for nowhere in particular. And I cannot even use the experience of this storm to write a story, because I did that very thing a year ago—probably a year ago, exactly—when we suffered an equivalent storm, but many of us were caught down at the University and found it difficult to get home. (“The Snowstorm,” which was published in Mademoiselle in July, of all months, when the eerie chaotic truths I tried to deal with could seem only metaphor, reduced to metap
hor.)

  Reading the first Lady Chatterley*—which becomes far too didactic in the second half—a pity, since its momentum, its life, seems to me superior to the version Lawrence finally published. Pointless, to keep rewriting, revising, the life of a work would gradually be extinguished, as it is in James much of the time—whether he actually revised or not. James: dissatisfaction with the form of the short story. Now I understand him, now I am beginning to feel the same way, for if a few characters come to life and deserve their life and make claims upon my life, how can I erase them after a mere fifteen or twenty pages…? For they continue to live, many of them. It simply isn’t true that one creates, develops, and then extinguishes “fictional” characters. There are many, many who deserve more life…larger forms…the novella of which James spoke so warmly, the blessed nouvelle, which seeks its own organic shape. A disturbing truth, however: every short story, no matter how abbreviated, could really be a novel—an epic! But we don’t dare admit this. Life is simply too short. The difficulty in choosing, in selecting…more of a problem each year, far easier when I first began to write, because then it seemed I hadn’t so much latitude, didn’t know so much, hadn’t so much experience or awareness of others. The development of a kind of “anecdotal” short story, lighthearted surrealism of the kind Barthelme writes, made to fit the contours of magazines that publish little fiction and then only rather short fiction—when one has written a story like this, what satisfaction is there? It fades, evaporates, it is only a tissue of words, connected by the intensity, the feverish intensity, of the writer’s will (as opposed to his imagination), a tour de force of the will, no feeling to it. Short fiction moving toward poetry, toward the tissue-of-words of a certain kind of poetry…. The danger of cleverness rather than intellectual depth; bloodlessness, sterility, the idea of coolness rather than warmth, fear of being exposed at the basis of this literature—fear of being embarrassed, being made a fool of in public, etc. Very little risk to it, but little reward.

  …Writing of death, writing of the effect of a violent death upon others, survivors, upon the brothers and the widow of the “assassinated” one…an unnerving experience in ways I had not anticipated…sunk deep in sympathy for the brother who attempts suicide, the caricaturist whom I had wanted to caricature, gently, irreparably, still demanding his own half-life, his twisted aborted semi-living life…and now the wife, the widow, coming to consciousness…appearing in a dream of mine last night, which I can’t recall. For months now dreams have not seemed important to me; I can’t remember them, and have been making little effort; the riddle of the dream is simply beyond me, I can’t begin to get even a vague poetic truth from that aspect of my personality…though a year or so ago, around New Year’s of 1972, several vivid dream-experiences made their mark upon me…which I remember quite well, but it all seems to have happened to another person. What overwhelming dreams! I wrote them all down elsewhere, but to read them now is an effort, I can barely force myself to read of them, it all seems so distant, so uncanny, so other. Obviously we go through various phases in our lives: now attuned to the exterior world, now attuned to the inner world; now given energy by way of deliberate consciousness, now given energy by way of the evocation of the unconscious. For quite a while now I have been in consciousness—rather social, lively, ironic, curious about the world (though not very curious about the silly maya of the “news”), writing lots of letters, even answering my telephone at the University (though God only knows who might be calling!—it’s a risk, not knowing if a typically disturbed person from Waco, Texas, will be at the other end, or a courteous and friendly-seeming chairman of an English Department—Northwestern, it was most recently—offering me a teaching position)—and in this phase of personality I frankly find it difficult to sympathize with, to remember, the other phase. My earlier journal, written in longhand*—typically!—could be by another person, it’s so thoughtful, solemn, even a little pious, and extraordinarily idealistic—yet very sincere, I suppose. That other self of mine!—and yet I know very well that I will become that “self” again, when the unconscious so wills…for consciousness has very little control over itself, very little. A single lucid or numinous dream can totally unsettle one’s conceptions of the world and self: I must remember that, must not be surprised if it happens again, or when it happens.

  Jung: the psyche is a self-regulating function. If this is true, and probably it is true since homeostasis is the survival function of any organic being, then one has powerful and suggestive dreams only when he requires them, and the rest of the time the dream-life is irrelevant. Hence my difficult times—A.K. threatening my life or pretending to threaten it (which is worse?)—and writing Wonderland—and of course enduring those two deaths which were the kernel of Wonderland, its emotional genesis—the dream-world came to my rescue, it seems. And in London, in our Mayfair flat, overlooking eternally busy Park Lane—exciting at first, and then depressing, that eternal impersonal flux of taxicabs and double-decker buses—tourists, sightseers, spectators, people with money, parodies of ourselves—what a damnation, tourism!—and gradually our becoming aware of the vagrants, the old men and women, alcoholics, dying creatures wrapped in rags, carrying shapeless bundles, half-human, muttering to themselves or snarling in the underground subway—partly collapsed on the park benches, oblivious to the wealthy people trudging past on their way to the Inn on the Park, or the Hilton, or L’Epée d’Or, where we had so many dinners—these old, sick, dying human beings gradually becoming the foreground, and the rest of us the background—these people the permanent residents of the park and the subways—the others mere tourists, hurrying past, inconsequential.

  More than mere images or metaphors: real people!…And yet not very “real” to themselves. We began to notice them all the time, could see through the huge Sunday morning crowds over at Speakers’ Corner, there they were, a fairly recognizable group of six or eight old men (or were they really old? old-seeming)…drinking from bottles hidden in paper bags…occasionally singing and even dancing a few steps…but most of the time on the park benches, on certain park benches where tourists didn’t pass near, on a traffic island right below our French windows and our slender balconies…. One must become oblivious to the misery of others, or be destroyed by it; or do something about it! But when all alternatives, all courses of action, are impossible? What good is knowledge, without power? Can we put on “power” with “knowledge,” to reverse Yeats’ question? We have a great deal of knowledge, many of us—and so what? The impotence of the intellectual translates itself into fashionable irony, chic irony, which is deathly—true obscenity, in fact. Knowledge should not lead to that kind of death of the spirit. And yet—hasn’t this been the special lesson of our time, haven’t the Left’s intellectuals learned that very well, that any proposals they make, any candidates they espouse, will surely be rejected by the majority of voters? So much for the alliance of the masses and the intellectuals! But there are other connections, other pathways; and the external world, which is called “history,” is probably not the world.

  No, at these crucial times, the dream-life did help me; it certainly helped me in England. Meeting John and Joan Gardner, Bob and Pili Coover, Stanley Elkin and his long-suffering wife,* whom I did not get to know very well: at the very nadir of my psychological life, the closest to depression I have ever been, damaged by the deaths back home (one in July, and we left for England about six weeks later…) which I had no idea how to deal with, how to mourn, and then the astonishing trouble with A.K. (who demanded I write a favorable review of his pathetic novel, and send it to John Leonard at the New York Times Book Review!), who was living right in London at that time, and evidently far more emotionally disturbed than Ray and I had had the imagination to know…and the uprootedness, the bustle and noises and apparent pointlessness of all that activity on Oxford Street and Park Lane…not to mention the frankly stupid materialism of Mayfair, the ugly moronic trash for sale on Curzon Street and in the Audley Street ga
lleries, golden bathtubs, marble bathtubs, statues, vases, candlesticks, overpriced gourmet food, trash trash expensive trash!—and more of it, everywhere, in that part of London—no matter that elsewhere people are starving, elsewhere meaning not India or Africa but in the very doorways of the elegant shops and boutiques, the vagrants with their pathetic bundles and paper bags hiding wine bottles…. We didn’t know at the time how very much we disliked Mayfair, and what a strain it was to always seem so admiring of this part of England, so courteous, well-mannered, determined not to be critical or boorish Americans…the relief, then, of moving to Kings Road and a corner of Belgravia bordering on Chelsea, still expensive but at least human, and the life there of another quality altogether…. The dreams I had then were helpful, in some way I didn’t know; I couldn’t remember them when I woke except to sense that they were restorative, therapeutic, restful—a balance to the strain of consciousness, so very necessary. So the psyche is its own therapist. To a certain extent. They say that beyond a point of endurance the psyche will break down, and dreams will mirror daylight reality—no escape from it, then, no distancing—and one is liable to terrible psychological trouble, the sluggishness of depression being the least of it. In such troughs of the spirit one commits suicide, I suppose. So if drugs or alcohol damage sleep, thereby damaging dreams, they guide the helpless individual toward death—toward his own suicide—if his conscious life is disturbing…. People don’t know this, or don’t care?…or are most people quietly suicidal, without admitting it?