Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  Work finished for today and the Hamiltons are in. I do hope they are well in. I’ve worked long today but happily. And now Elaine and I are going to Macy’s to look at some grass rugs.

  February 21 [WEDNESDAY]

  This morning I am remiss, Pat, and for no reason that I can see. Went to bed early, slept well—overslept in fact—feel fine but I find myself dawdling about going to work. I will do it of course. This afternoon I have to make a tape for the Voice of America concerning art under dictatorship. I don’t know much about it, never having performed any art under a dictatorship, but I have read some things and I have been in dictatorship countries. Of course I feel that any imposed [institution?], even conditioned, is bad and not conducive to the development of the two great foundations of art and science: curiosity and criticism. If you stifle these two, how can any art emerge? And of course the proof is that none does. But I have not much time for such things.

  Now you are going out to the west coast. And I hope you have fun. You haven’t had a trip for a long time. I well remember one of the first times I met you. You had a black Borsolino hat and a brown brief case and you stayed at the Sir Francis Drake. I remember you coming through the lobby and paying your bill. That’s a long time ago and you don’t look much different now. And I remember other things about that trip which I suppose it would be better to forget. Better for you I mean. There I guess I have dawdled from work all I can for one day and I will go to work.

  Well, I finished, Pat, and finished the first chapter. And now I go to the second chapter which is very different as you will see. It concerns the Trasks whereas the first chapter is about the Hamiltons.

  February 22 [THURSDAY]

  Today is Washington’s Birthday, Pat, and I am not going to have much time to visit with you. Has it struck you that this is a crazy kind of thing? Writing you what amounts to a letter which you won’t even see in under a year. It’s fun in a way too. In a year many things will happen and I writing here today don’t know what they are. But you, when you read this—if you read it—will know what is going to happen because it will have happened. I think that is almost magic. You know on my left hand on the pad just below the little finger, I have a dark brown spot. And on my left foot in a corresponding place I have another one almost the same. One time a Chinese, seeing the spot on my hand, became very much excited and when I told him about the one on my foot he was keenly interested. He said that in Chinese palmistry the hand spot was a sign of the greatest possible good luck and the one on my foot doubled it. These spots are nothing but a dark pigmentation. I’ve had them from birth. Indeed, they are what is known as birthmarks. But the reason I brought it up is this. For the last year and a half, they have been getting darker. And if I am to believe in my spots, this must mean that the luck is getting better. And sure enough I have Elaine and what better luck could there be. But the spots continue to darken and maybe that means that I am going to have a book too. And that would be great good luck too. And you see, in spite of what I said about having no time, I go right on with my letters.

  These Trasks now. They fascinate me. I know them so thoroughly and I have gone into their ancestry. I know their moods and their impulses perhaps better than I know my own—surely better than my own. It is probable that my own would be a mystery to me if I inspected them at all. About the natures of the Trasks and about their symbol meanings I leave you to find out for yourself. There is a key and there are many leads. I think you will discover the story rather quickly for all of its innocent sound on these pages. Now the innocent sound and the slight concealment are not done as tricks but simply so that a man can take from this book as much as he can bring to it. It would not be well to confuse an illiterate man with the statement of a rather profound philosophy. On the other hand, such a man might take pleasure in the surface story and even understand the other things in his unconscious. On the third hand—and I have three—your literate and understanding man will take joy of finding the secrets hidden in this book almost as though he searched for treasure, but we must never tell anyone they are here. Let them be found by accident. I have made the mistake of telling my readers before and I will never make that mistake again. You will notice my methods of trying to create the illusion of something that really happened —in this Look. I think it can properly be called not a novel but an history. And while its form is very tight, it is my intention to make it seem to have the formlessness of history. History actually is not formless but a long [view?] and a philosophic turn of mind are necessary to see its pattern. And I would like this book to have that quality.

  February 23 [FRIDAY]

  This is a sad day at the beginning. There is no telling what kind of a day it will end up. A sadness I can’t write down although I know what it comes from. It is Friday. You know I had planned to take Saturdays and Sundays away from manuscript. But I don’t know. Maybe it would be good to do a part of a day’s work on Saturday. We’ll just have to see. Maybe two days off would lose the work rhythm. It is surely something to think about. And the book is really beginning to get and keep its own rhythm. This is good because once all the form of a book gets in your bones, then you can only work on the story and the rest comes right. Don’t you think that is so?

  Today I am going for a haircut. I can hear you gasp. It is nearly two months since I have had one and I think it is about time. I have a mane growing down over my shoulders.

  You know I always smoke a pipe when I work—at least I used to and now I have taken it up again. It is strange—as soon as a pipe begins to taste good, cigarettes become tasteless. I find I smoke fewer and fewer cigarettes. Maybe I can cut them out entirely for a while. This would be a very good thing. Even with this little change, my deep-seated and perennial cigarette cough is going away. A few months without that would be a real relief.

  Still my pictures and books have not come from Pacific Grove. They have been over a month on the way. I would be glad if they would arrive. Now the sadness is going away. It was like the little gauzy mists which hang close down to the water in the spring. And when they rise, you hardly know they are gone. Now I have forgotten what the sadness was although I remember the form and feeling of it. How odd—that sadness can turn to gold. Can it be that it is a pleasurable feeling? It might well be.

  I must go and have my eyes tested. I am not sure I need a change but it might be. And I sit many hours over this book. It would be just as well if I did it under the best circumstances. Don’t you think this? Now to work. It is time and I am getting an early start for I got up early.

  Now it is much later in the day. And my work was the longest so far. It is moving at a very rapid pace but everything about it indicates to me that it is going to be a very long book indeed. I know that because every facet I open leads down a long road of character and its effect. Lord this is a complicated book. I hope I can keep all the reins in my hands and at the same time make it sound as though the book were almost accidental. That is going to be hard to do but it must be done. Also I’ll have to lead into the story so gradually that my reader will not know what is happening to him until he is caught. That is the reason for the casual—even almost flippant—sound, Pat. It’s like a man setting a trap for a fox and pretending with pantomime that he doesn’t know there is a fox or a trap in the country. I went to work so early this morning that it is still early. And I could go on and do some more work. But I think the energy core is kind of worn down. I think, since I have done so much so far, that I will let it go for the day. I don’t want to get too tired. I want to take enough time so that I will avoid the rather terrible exhaustion of the Grapes of Wrath. I’ll tell you one thing though—although this book is more subtle and perhaps less emotional in an obvious way, it is going to be more peopled than the Grapes. We are going to meet—try to know and move on from—one hell of a lot of people. Since in these work notes I am putting down everything freely, I can give you an example of what I mean when I say the book is really beginning to move and breathe and have a
life of its own. I had thought to set Carl Trask4 and his wife in perhaps three paragraphs. But then I got fascinated with him, not only as a character but with his character as a mover and shaper even if in reverse so that his effect comes moving down the generations. I thought he was going to have only one wife and I find he has two. I thought he was an only child and he has a half brother. I thought to bring him right into the Salinas Valley and now I doubt whether he will get there in under twenty-five pages. I guess that’s what I mean by the book taking its own pace and almost thinking for itself.

  Now I get the old-old fear and rush—I hope I may live to finish this book. And that will be a long enough life for me. Now that I am in it I cannot see beyond it and increasingly it becomes difficult for me to see out of it. That is the ideal I guess but it doesn’t leave much room for thinking for and about one’s self. And maybe that is good or maybe it is bad. And now I am going to stop for the day.

  February 26 [MONDAY]

  Well, there was a party Saturday night and I had a good time. Sorry to break the writing rhythm but I must take some time off or I would soon poison on the script. I know you understand this. I am not too bright this morning but I will start the week just the same. I don’t suppose writing consists in anything more than doing it. I am breaking pencil points today-over-vehemence. This is usually the thing that happens at first before a connection establishes. But there isn’t any doubt that I will get my day’s work done. I am sure of that whether or not it be good. This is not a morning of great joy for some reason or other. I don’t understand why some days are wide open and others closed off, some days smile and others have thin slitted eyes and others still are days which worry. And it does not seem to be me but the day itself. It has a nature of its own quite separate from all other days. And this is one of mild worry—not about anything. It goes casting about for something for worry. It can always settle on money and usually does. It is a little difficult this morning. The plumber is here. Doorbell ringing, Louise not here yet and Elaine still asleep. I hate to wake her up because she may have read late but on the other hand if this goes on too long I shall certainly awaken her. I don’t like to tramp up and down the steps so often. I have so many little things in my mind this morning. I guess this is one of the difficulties with losing the two week-end days. At first anyway, the concentration goes. I hope to pick it up. And I will. Today am going on with Carl Trask. His life and experience are pretty interesting to me. And surely he is not any different from many people I know. I wonder whether this quick treatment of people is good. Well, it just has to be because this is the way I am going to do it willy or nilly.

  You should be glad, for the book now is the important thing. The story stays in back of everything else. No matter what I do, the story is always there—waiting and working kind of like a fermenting mash out of which whiskey will be made eventually but meanwhile the mass bubbles and works and makes foam. And it is very interesting but the product that is wished for—devoutly to be wished for—is the whiskey. All the turmoil and boiling is of no interest to anyone.

  From now on, since finally mss. pages are jumping ahead, I will put this work letter opposite the day’s work opening.

  Now I have done part of this day’s work. And the speed of composition increases; I have no idea of the quality. But one thing I must say to you. As I go on, my happiness increases. That is a very odd thing to say but it is true. A kind of joy comes over me. The work I am doing now is observational and evaluative. It may be dull. I need it for my theme and for my story. This is an old-fashioned novel, Pat. It will achieve any effect it has by accumulation rather than by quick and flashing periods. And don’t forget that it is going on for hundreds of pages. I only hope it is not dull. But if it should happen to be, then that is the way it is too. Because as I have said before, this book is going to take its own pace. I am going to direct it but not push it about. This is my big novel. I’m going to use every bit of technique I have learned consciously and I am also going to let it go unconsciously—you will see if there is anything to see.

  Now this day’s work is done. You are going to California tomorrow. That will be so long ago when you read this. And you are coming for coffee this afternoon. Well, we will see. All I know is that little by little it will mount and grow slowly until finally it is a house and then it will either be a good house and will stand or a bad house and then it will fall of its own weight. This is always true both of books and houses. And so the end of today’s work. I always am a little sad when a day’s work is done.

  February 27 [TUESDAY]

  This is my birthday. I had intended to work but some things very important came up and I did not. But in the evening went to see Gielgud and Pamela Brown in The Lady’s Not for Burning. We found it delightful and delightfully acted. I don’t know what the play is about. I suspect nothing but it sounds so pretty.[...] Last night I thought of the possibility of getting the boys and I could not sleep. So now I have had about two hours’ sleep in two nights and I must say, it doesn’t seem to hurt me at all. It’s so funny.

  February 28 [WEDNESDAY]

  Got up early, still without much if any sleep. I haven’t time to sleep. Too many things are happening inside me and outside me. And I just haven’t the time. Today I have to go to a stock-holders meeting of the ill-fated World Video at 2 P.M. So I am up early to do my work before that time.[...] And now to work. It is the boyhood of Adam.

  March 1 [THURSDAY]

  And snowing heavily. This is a lion March. Yesterday I did not get much done. I guess my brain was as exhausted as the rest of me. But last night I went to bed early and slept long and feel refreshed today. Tomorrow Tom and John are coming over to spend the night. I haven’t seen them for a very long time. And I would like to. Also I will get to know them quite a bit better.[...] A card from you today, Pat, in flight toward San Francisco. I hope you are having a good time. Now the time has come to go to work. After the little layoff, it is hard.

  Now I have finished that day’s work. And now I’ll make a bookcase.

  March 2, Friday

  Quite early to work today, Pat. The reason is not far to find. I am going over to get the boys this afternoon and they are going to spend the night with us. And I want to get in a day’s work first or a reasonable compromise with a day’s work. It is a brilliant sunny day. Really a spring day. But I have to get the work in. I think I know exactly what my scenes are now so there’s no point in worrying about time. Waverly5 overslept this morning. But fortunately I am developing a good working habit. I awakened her to go to school. I don’t know whether you will like any of the work I am now doing. The things are so tenuous as to be barely apparent and yet so powerful that their effects can last over three generations or perhaps into infinity of time. But the point is that I don’t know whether I am making that clear. They are so very delicate. Today is one of excitements. The red rug came for our library. Then it will really be a room. When the chairs and the couch come it will be a room fit for such a king as I. Such excitement as a red rug can cause in a house you wouldn’t believe. And now it is really time to go to work.

  March 5, Monday

  Got up at an early hour today but very sluggish because I seem to have had too much sleep. Almost drugged with it. I guess I just can’t take too much sleep. The week end pleasant but I missed the good feeling of work. Last week was not very productive in length but I think all right in quality. I seem to be a little over-vehement with the pencils this morning. Wrote a card to you, Pat, in Hollywood. Seemed strange to be addressing you there. You won’t like it much. I am assailed with virtue—a feeling toward virtue but without virtue’s self. Define virtuel It is that quality of character which is pleasant and desirable to its owner and which makes him perform acts of which he can be proud and with which he can be pleased. I seem to boil up or fulminate very slowly and it is a shame. I should react with great speed. And perhaps I will one day although by now I don’t expect it anymore.

  It is always amazi
ng to me how we forget our failures. I guess if we didn’t, we could not survive. But perhaps it is no bad thing to take a little time to go back over failures, not to glory in them but just to remind ourselves. In the forgetting it is not vainglory that bothers me but simply that things neglected as not done well slip away as though they never had happened. Last night I turned up so many of them hiding in the brush of my background. It seemed to me that if one kept one’s self aware of them, they might possibly never be repeated. I think this is vain thinking but I did it anyway. Now a new week opens. And I am going to attack a weighty problem. It is this way. You establish a diet and you lose a certain amount of weight and then you stop. You are on a plateau. It requires violence to break through it. And there is where I am now. So I will smash it in about four days of very little food and then I can go down a few pounds again until I reach another plateau—then violence again. But I believe it is good to stay on the plateaus for a while to get the system strong for the new attack. Now it is time to go to work again.