Well now—that’s a perfectly good progression for a novel. Why am I stuck in it?
Because I can’t make up my mind how the story should be told.
Should it be told by Stephen in the first person?
Perhaps yes. But there are difficulties.
If in the first person, what is the viewpoint in time? Is Stephen telling us all this from the viewpoint of 1950, looking back to 1941? If so, I fear the necessarily indulgent tone, the wise smile over the mistakes of the past.
Is Stephen telling us this from day to day—i.e. in a diary? This seems too contrived. Why should he be taking all this trouble to present his experiences, to make them into an aesthetic performance, if he is really suffering?
But suppose Stephen is in the third person? What do we lose? Some sense of immediacy. Yes. But we gain advantages.
What matters so supremely is the style of the narration. Somehow, I see, or hear, a very simple tone of voice. Something inside me keeps saying Candide. I hardly know what I mean by this. Maybe just that it has to be straightforward. When we look inside Stephen’s head, the thoughts we overhear must be very direct, immediate and, in a sense, naive. When I want him to be articulate, analytical, he must express himself in conversation. Ditto when he tells anything about the past. But when we’re listening to his mind, we should really only get his feelings. Very important, this.
January 5. [Wallace] Bobo took Howard [Kelley] a sweater to wear in jail.42 Howard spent a whole afternoon, with another prisoner, cleaning it by picking off hairs from the three cats. Howard was able to identify each separate hair. They put them into three separate piles and put each into a separate matchbox.
January 23. Aldous says: “Cynicism is contrition without repentance.”
A lady in the stationer’s this morning, buying a box of pale blue notepaper with a white border: “I know I’ve enjoyed mine, and it makes such a nice little present.”
Salka’s story of E. von M.43 When E. was married to the actor R.F.,44 she started taking a lot of heroin. R.F. in despair, called Salka—wouldn’t she come around to the Garden of Allah, where they were staying, and persuade E. to enter a nursing home to be cured? When Salka arrived, E. was in the kitchen, doped up to the eyes, preparing borscht soup. She was putting everything into it—including whole steaks. She wore a wonderful lace dress, enormously valuable. Salka set the table, and E. swept in, carrying the soup in a tureen. Just before she reached the table, she stumbled, spilled all of the soup on to the floor, swept the train of her dress through it, and set down the empty tureen, quite unconscious that anything was wrong. To humor her, Salka and R.F. pretended to ladle out and eat the soup. Then E. fell under the table. But before they could call an ambulance, she had revived again, taken another shot, and was as lively as a monkey. She refused absolutely to leave.
Bill Harris had two great-uncles named Reservéd and Resolvéd. They made garden furniture. Never married.
A neighbor of Iris Tree brought her the manuscript of his novel, very big.
“What is it about, Mr. Jones?” Iris asked.
“Germany.”
“But—have you ever been to Germany?”
“Oh no. Germany has always interested me, though.”
Irish never read it. Months later, Mr. Jones appeared: “How did you like my novel?”
“Well,” said Iris, desperately, eyeing the bulky manuscript. “I think—yes—I think it needs condensing.”
Mr. Jones went off, apparently satisfied. Some time after this, Iris met him in the street. Guilt prompted her to ask: “How’s your novel, Mr. Jones?”
“Oh,” said Mr. Jones, very casually, “I sold that one to the movies. Now I’m working on another.”
April 24. Three or four weeks ago, I hit upon what I believe is the correct method of narration for The School of Tragedy. It is a kind of unwritten or mental diary—that is, a diary without dates, and without asides such as, “I am writing this in the garden before breakfast,” etc. Instantaneous reportage of thought is allowed—I mean, I can say just what I am feeling, thinking, observing at that very moment, provided I could, conceivably, have a pen in my hand. So, for example, I can report what I’m thinking on a plane or in bed, but not what I’m thinking on a motorcycle or during a sex act.
Time lapses will be marked by new sections, but not dated.
I am allowed to say: “Yesterday morning, I went to see J. …” or “I walk into the house without knocking. J. is sitting as usual before the fire …” or “Tomorrow, as usual, I shall go down to J.’s house …” or “At J.’s house last night. Talk, as usual, about K. and L. …”
John Huston’s story of Hemingway out in a boat off the coast of Cuba. They saw an iguana on the rocks by the shore. Hemingway fired and hit it. It was wounded. When they got on shore, they found a trail of blood, but no iguana. Hemingway, although tired and sick, spent four hours hunting for it, among the rocks, in the blazing sun, because he said it was unsportsmanlike to leave wounded game to die. Finally, he found it.
Hemingway is proud of his son’s marksmanship. He wouldn’t let his son take part in a shooting match in Sun Valley, because there were two contestants who were very good, and he feared his son might lose.
James Joyce, says Aldous, hated flowers, liked only white wine, cared only for operas which had tenor parts with very high notes (being himself a singer). He delighted in fantastically far-fetched medieval etymology. For example, he explained to Aldous that Odysseus is derived from οδεις and Zeus—God and nothing.45
May 13. Thirteenth anniversary of Heinz’s arrest—or rather, of our parting, in Luxembourg.46
Overheard on beach: “Do you know the sequel to My Foolish Heart? My Silly Liver.”47
June 29. “From now on, I’ll try to write every day. It will be a discipline—and these messages from the doomed ship may even be of some value, to somebody, later.”
It’s nearly twelve years since I wrote those words, on August 20, 1938. And again I find myself having to declare my own private State of Emergency in order to be able to adjust to this Korean crisis.48
The Los Angeles Times this morning carries an obviously press-agented account of how the veteran diva, General MacArthur, flew to the South Korean war front in an unarmed transport. “The general summoned the newsmen to his office and told them his plans secretly last night. He said he did not know the war situation clearly and wanted a personal glimpse. Talking seriously and eagerly, he said the trip might be risky. ‘It will be an unarmed plane and we are not sure of getting fighter cover, not sure where we will land.’ He added: ‘If you are not at the airport I will know you have other commitments.’ One correspondent said, ‘There’s no doubt we’ll be there.’ MacArthur grinned and replied, ‘I have no doubt of your courage. I just wanted to give your judgment a chance to work.’”
The great effort I must make is to realize that this fighting is actually taking place, that people are being killed, that the fighting may spread into a general war, that many people I know, including Bill [Caskey], may be drafted,49 even that Los Angeles and other cities may be bombed—perhaps with atom bombs. It is very hard to realize the horror of all this—precisely because I have already spent most of one war right here in this city and so the prospect seems deceptively familiar and scarcely more than depressing. The danger of taking the war unseriously is a truly hideous spiritual danger. If I give way to it, I shall relapse into the smugness of the middle aged, who have nothing much to fear because they won’t be drafted, or the animal imbecility of queens who look forward to an increase in the number of sailors around town.
To see Jo and Ben Masselink this morning. Both are worried, because now it seems that Washington will have to send troops to Korea as well as guns and planes, and they rightly see this as an added risk. Told Ben how much I liked his travel-book manuscript, which delighted Jo; she embraced me several times. In this time of anxiety, one sees how motherly she is. Her baby may be taken away from her. And this is really heartbr
eaking, because they so deserve to be happy. They have built up such a charming yet modest life together. Jo is so industrious, and clever, making swimming suits for her customers. Ben works so hard at his writing. They are gay and bright eyed and grateful for every instant of pleasure, and yet they demand so little in order to enjoy it.
With their example, I ought to be unfailingly kind and thoughtful in my dealings with Billy. How can I ever be otherwise? Especially at a time like this.
Talked to John van Druten on the phone. He’s enthusiastic about the writings of Vivekananda.
A copy of Gandhi’s letters arrived this morning from the publisher.
Smog early, but it’s sunny now.
Another day is going to be wasted. I have to review Lowell Naeve’s A Field of Broken Stones. And get on with my novel.
Evelyn Caldwell came by for a drink. Both Jim [Charlton] and Bill liked her; in fact everybody liked everybody. Later we had supper with Bill Kennedy at Holiday House—Neutra-by-the-sea.50 Both got drunk—Kennedy isn’t allowed to—and Bill [Caskey] denounced Kennedy for belonging to the entrepreneur class, staying at the Miramar, etc. We parted late.
June 30. Troops have been sent to Korea.
Failure to finish the Naeve review. Acute spinal headache and angst-gut ache. Drove to Malibu pier with Kennedy in the afternoon. Long talk about Billy’s accusations. Kennedy had been much hurt, had even considered leaving this morning. He is full of guilt and self-depreciation and takes us all far too seriously. Billy doesn’t like him. I don’t feel much either way. But his proposals for me to work on the magazine Tomorrow may open a way out of this whole movie mess into a more serious literary life.
Party at Salka’s for two Peruvian dancers and a guitarist—Yma Sumac, her husband and a cousin. Their bird cries and slight, arresting, mock serious gestures. As a group, they were incredibly beautiful. The slant-eyed Yma and her cousin, balancing so lightly on their little feet, and uttering sudden wails of mimic despair. And the boy behind them, very close, and thrusting forward with his guitar; so that they seemed to be continually advancing upon us with the compactness and drive of a little military formation. The boy had a soft waxy skin and wet-black eyes that had the quality of introversion; they didn’t bulge or roll. The dances had an airy uncanny birdlike authority: you got the feeling of the uncanny jungle and the discontinuous, abrupt movements of the birds. And also the sense of tradition. They appeared to listen for it, pick it up like a wavelength and then relay it, quite impersonally, without comment.
Chaplin, Oona, Iris Tree in a converted sari, Friedrich Ledebur with a bored, tennis-playing maharajah, Hedy Lamarr very pretty and ungrand, John Huston, Ivan Moffat serious, or rather poker-faced, appalled by all the imitations he would have to give, Natasha51 verging on insanity, very beautiful, John Houseman, Ella Winter52 etc. etc. etc.
I have written all this and said nothing, really. But I must go on writing this record. Things will emerge.
July 7. Missed some days. Never mind. All that has happened so far is still preliminary—the Yanks falling back, and more and more North Korean troops (which may include lots of Chinese and some Russians) being poured into the battle.
What matters is that I should work, constantly, every instant. There is so endlessly much to do. For instance:
The novel. Get on with it—never mind how, as long as I make a draft.
This reviewing for Tomorrow. Choose a book. Start thinking what you’ll say about it.
Patanjali. More aphorisms for the next number of the magazine.
And then there’s the question of working with Frank Taylor and/or [Howard] Griffin on either The Journeying Boy or The Vacant Room.
Come on, now. Let’s see what you’re made of.
July 9. Yesterday, Billy and I drove to Sequoia with Igor and Vera Stravinsky and Bob Craft. Igor doesn’t think there’ll be World War III, but an indefinitely prolonged border struggle between the two empires. Bob is worried because he’s still draft age—but he’s a vet, so won’t be called right now.
On the way across the San Fernando Valley I had some valuable ideas for my novel—probably because Igor was in deep meditation on his opera.53
I described how, when you approach Sequoia, everything seems out of proportion, because surrounded by little trees, you look up and see huge trees on the skyline, thousands of feet above. Igor said: “Just like Shostakovich in the Hollywood Bowl.” When he saw the General Sherman tree, he said, “That’s very serious.”
We ate on the side of the path leading to Moro Rock. Plodding climbers covered us with dust. Igor said that Derain had told him that a mountain is the most difficult object, technically, to paint.
Bob felt wonderful, because the air was so dry, and drove all the way home.
Igor has a huge appetite and suffers if meals are late. He has a very trim well-knit figure, due to exercising.
Moro Rock was terrific, and the view was clear. Unlike that time, five years ago, when Bill danced about all over it in the fog and refused to believe there was a precipice below. Before leaving, we drove down into King’s Canyon which I’ve never seen before. It’s one of the best I’ve seen, anywhere.
Home at 2:00 a.m.—quite silly with exhaustion.
This kind of naked mountain scenery makes you see the earth in relation to other planets, as a planet. There is no disguise. No cozy illusion that this particular planet is “the world.” This is the naked geological, astronomical fact. The very old sunlight on the upper limbs of the forest. Life is seen in its unimaginable slowness.
August 5. Woke, saying: “It was a dark wormy morning.”
August 13. Two days ago, on August 11th, Peggy Kiskadden, her little three-year-old Bull [Kiskadden] and I started at 5:00 a.m. from Los Angeles, drove via Blyth, Prescott, to Oak Creek Canyon, stayed the night with Jimmy Charlton and his friends the Kittredges, then drove on yesterday via Flagstaff, Gallup, Albuquerque and Santa Fe to stay with Georgia O’Keeffe at her house at Abiquiu. We got there late last night, and we plan to be here most of this week.
I found Jim going through a sort of monastic phase—a secular monastic phase, of course. He works every day with Bob Kittredge on the house he has designed. They are building it with their own hands—plumbing, carpentering and all. Jim lost no time in telling me that he misses nothing and nobody in Santa Monica, is perfectly happy here, and looks forward to staying through the winter. (Just the same, he was obviously very pleased to see me, and had even bought a special bottle of rum for us to drink after we went to bed at night in the house where he sleeps. The Kittredges have several houses on their property, and plan to rent them for an income.) I think the actual situation is that Jim is afraid of being upset in his new life by outside criticism. He particularly feared mine; and I believe and hope I relieved this fear to some extent by approving (quite sincerely) of his life, the Kittredges, their house, kids, animals, etc. etc. Jim is now drinking very little, having no sex, making no trips to Flagstaff, even. In the most practical and manual way he is exercising his art, leading a healthy outdoor life and gratifying his need for affection as an adopted member of the Kittredge family. This is excellent—ten million times better, certainly, than loneliness at the apartment on Santa Monica beach, evenings at bars, and no work. I have no right to feel hurt or slighted, and I really don’t. I shall keep his friendship if I endorse this venture, wherever it may lead him.
Peggy was pained by the untidiness in which the Kittredges live. To get to their house you actually have to ford the stream which runs down through the canyon. There is only one bathroom, and meals are vague. Mary Kittredge, Peggy pointed out, is a typical slovenly Southerner, and, said Peggy, there is a far wider gap between New Englanders and Southerners than between New Englanders and British. As for the Kittredges, I think they liked Peggy very much. Bob Kittredge, especially, because he found that he and Peggy are distant cousins. I had told Bob how much I long to see Monument Valley, and immediately this created a situation, because Bob wanted to c
lose the house and leave next morning on a three-day trip. Peggy was greatly alarmed. She wanted to get on to Georgia’s, she dislikes haphazard camping, she was somehow jealous of the Kittredges’ Arizona as against Georgia’s New Mexico. So of course I backed down. Jim wants me to go there on the way back and make the trip then. Maybe I will.
Actually, I found the Kittredges charming. They are sort of nature saints. They make long pack trips up on to the plateau above the canyon, where few white men have ever been, and there are huge mountain lions and moose and deer. (They gave us venison for dinner. Peggy heroically ate some.) They have two sons, one of them adopted, who seem unusually sweet, simple and natural, and who were extremely kind to Bull. They have the only good-natured collie and Siamese cat I have ever met. It seems that their house is really full of peace. It was built twenty years ago, by Bob Kittredge—and all the woodwork is most attractively warped and weathered; it is as easy as an old shoe. I don’t care much for the location, because I hate being in a hole, and this is right at the bottom of the creek, amidst Douglas firs and yellow pines. But you can see the great ramparts of the canyon above you, golden in the evening light when the bottom of the canyon is already dark. Further down, the canyon has wonderfully architectured blood-crimson towers and organ pipes and spires.
Peggy says Bob Kittredge is the type of Easterner who was born one hundred years too late. He should have been an Indian guide; and now, though he comes out to the West and learns all about camping and hunting and wild life, he is really lost and isolated in the middle of the twentieth century.
Peggy’s guilt at having been allowed to get her own way (and I see she will get nothing else throughout this trip) occupied us with the most elaborate self-justifications and generalizations during most of yesterday’s drive. But I didn’t really care. I was—and still am—in a fairly well-balanced mood of happiness-unhappiness. I keep thinking of the misery of the mess at Rustic Road—what in the world is to happen when I return—and of the slowly maturing war situation; and at the same time, I was happy to be out on the endless blue levels of the plateau, with the strange flat-topped truncated mesa shapes which are like ominous, primitive forts. (How ominous they must have seemed to covered wagon parties watching always for the smoke puffs which signalled the encircling Indians!)
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 66