Journal of a Novel
Page 5
I feel a little slump today. But I should not mind. There have been precious few of those in this book. I have been very lucky in this book in having so few. Very lucky. I must expect many more but I am so happy that the work doesn’t seem to be such a struggle.
I think you will recognise that the Hamilton sections are much more difficult than the Trask sections. For the Trask chapters flow along in chronological story while the Hamilton chapters which play counterpoint are put together with millions of little pieces, matched and discarded. Also I am playing all around in time with the Hamilton sections. By this method I hope to get over a kind of veracity which would be impossible with straight-line narrative. But oh! Jesus am I going to catch critical hell for it. My carefully worked out method will be jumped on by the not too careful critic as slipshod. For it is not an easy form to come on quickly nor to understand immediately. As I have said before, this is not a new nor an old-fashioned book but my culling of all books plus my own invention. Now for some white-magical reason, my slump is gone—
History—a new department, daily to synchronize the writing of this book with the other world which sometimes becomes a little unreal. The Kefauver Committee has been hearing witnesses regarding govt. and crime. Showing on television and very popular. Yesterday ex-mayor, now Ambassador O’Dwyer testified. The whole thing a kind of fairy dance. Everybody lying and everybody knowing everyone is lying. A few minor officials will be hurt. This morning the Schuman Plan started its route for signature. This, I think is the beginning of the pattern of the future—the opening of the supra-state. Our businessmen in particular and people in general are very much in fear of communism. Now mark my prophecy —The so-called communist system will break up and destroy itself in horrible civil wars because it is not a permanent workable system. It will fly apart from its own flaws. On the other hand the Schuman Plan is a workable system. The businessmen so anxious about the status quo have little to fear from communism. The Schuman Plan is the thing that will change the world. I do not believe that America can compete with this new form of sponsored and controlled cartel. We will be forced either to fight it or to join it, and if we join it world govt. will be established. If we fight it, we will lose. It has always been my contention that political world govt. will only follow economic world govt. and that laggingly. The United Nations tries to reverse the process and I do not believe that is possible. (End of prediction.) Next—There are indications that the Soviet state and its satellites are having some kind of internal trouble. This should be the time when we should help out with that by making or pretending to make deals with dissidents. Here, Pat, is I think our one danger of war. If the Soviet Union is in reasonably good shape, she will not go to war now and will try to avoid it always. But if the regime in the Kremlin is in danger it might well enter a war to preserve itself even though that process might be its destruction. And that should hold you for a while. Of time and space and the eye to see and the ear to hear and also of the tongue to speak. And what is that—a person set off, set aside and up or down.
March 21, Wednesday
Dear Pat: It is the first day of spring and you aren’t back yet. At least you haven’t phoned. Today is packing day for Way.15 She goes out tonight to California. I hope to get a lot done on my book. But I can truthfully say that I am satisfied with the progress of the book in the time I have been working. I do from five to seven typed pages a day and there are few days when I have missed. I want it to be this slow. I want it to take a year to write. I noticed an announcement that Viking hoped to get it in the fall. This is not going to happen. There is too much of it. I have 35 handwritten pages, probably 90 typed pages. And I will surely cross the first hundred pages this week. But this means nothing to a book that is going to be six or seven hundred pages long. It is the very bare beginning. Jean Ainsworth is going to start typing next week on draft. Now that is another reason the book is going to take long: it is going to be much more carefully rewritten than anything I have ever done. This book is very important to me. I am going to do no going back until the whole is completed but then it is going to be overhauled very very deeply. I shall insist on that. This is my big book. And it has to be a big book, and because it is new in form although old in pace it has to be excellent in every detail. And I don’t care how long it takes to make it that way and I mean this. You can’t train for something all your life and then have it fall short because you are hurrying to get it finished. So there. Meanwhile you had better be shopping around for another book for me to write in because this one is only going to last about two more months due to the fact that I only use every other page. I judge that this book will have in it roughly 110 thousand words of book or perhaps half of the book. That is my idea of it anyway. With slips that will take about sixty working days and of course there are bound to be days lost besides the week ends. So I rather think, barring accidents, by the first of July I shall have half the book done. It is strange to talk in these figures. I myself don’t care when I get half the book done. I am just telling it to you as the present rate of progress. That may speed or slow. I don’t know which. But by the first of July, you’d better have a new book for me. You must think I waste an awful lot of time on these notes to you but actually it is the warm-up period. It is the time of drawing thoughts together and I don’t resent it one bit. I apparently have to dawdle a certain amount before I go to work. Also if I keep the dawdling in this form I never leave my story. If I wrote my dawdles some other way I would be thinking all over the map. My mind is very restless and it leaps like a grasshopper. And so I keep it that way. A good part of my day’s work is laid out. And it goes in my boys’ chapter and it refers to the ending of the century and the coming into the new. It is a thing I have thought a great deal about and I am going to try to put it down as a mood more than any other way. I think it should have its own chapter but since I want to keep the alternate qualities I think I will make it a subhead chapter under III. That way I will keep the things well separated.
And now it is time for me to get to it. I called your office and you have not come back yet. Where the hell are you?
Still March 21, Wednesday
Well that was a tough one. I hope it is good. I really do. God knows it is different. And it is concentrated. I said I was going to plant it with emotion. I don’t know whether or not I have. How can I know. I haven’t read it to anyone yet. Maybe tomorrow I will read it to Elaine. She will know. I’m trying to implant a counterpoint of poetry just before the harsh prose that has to follow. I want always balances in this book—must have them. And that is all for this day.
March 22, Thursday
Well you are home on the same day that I start on my chapter four.16 And you say that you are coming over this afternoon. That is good. I’ll be very glad to see you. Last night I read the Hamilton chapter and the transition b and c to Elaine and she said she liked them very well. I hope you will. They are odd and maybe a little indigestible maybe to some but it has to be that way. Just has to. And now, Pat, I am going into the fourth chapter. You know, I just looked up and saw how different my handwriting is from day to day. I think I am writing much faster today than I did yesterday. That gives a sharpness to the letter. And also I have found a new kind of pencil—the best I have ever had. Of course it costs three times as much too but it is black and soft but doesn’t break off. I think I will always use these. They are called Black-wings and they really glide over the paper. And brother, they have some gliding to do before I am finished. Now to the work.
In Chapter IV I go back to Connecticut and the Trasks. It is a very long chapter—like most of them almost a novelette. And it has in it a number of facets and a great many images. Roughly, here is what happens. Adam goes home. His father has died at exactly the time he was demobilised. The father has left money, $20,000, and there was no way for him to have got the money. With $10,000 apiece the brothers are rich for those days. Charles is married by this time to a girl named Amy. Then we have the episode of the gir
l coming to the house at night. Adam falls in love with her in spite of every warning including her own. He simply does not listen. He asks her to marry him. Charles warns him and, when he insists, offers to buy his part of the farm. Adam refuses and we have the frightfulness of Adam being driven out. And that is the way he is started on his way to California. You will notice also the change from large chunks of time to minute treatments. I may have to find divisions within chapters to take the place of time and scene changes, but there are simple mechanical things which are not hard to do or to imagine. But now to the work and we will see how it goes.
March 23, Good Friday
You are coming over today to watch us dye Easter eggs. It is a funny business, yesterday I felt the work was going to be very easy. And do you know, it was six thirty in the evening before I had done what I wanted. The fact of the matter is that you just cannot tell how anything is going to work or how hard or easy it will be. It always fools you. Today I am under a sense of some rush. Going to quit early and go up to get the boys. And I hate to rush except that I have to. Going to Long Island tomorrow to stay the night. But I’ll take this book along just in case.
I hope the incident of the scarred forehead does not throw you. It is going to be a kind of a recurring symbol in various forms. And what does it mean? Oh I could tell you, the maimed, the marked, the guilty—all such things, the imperfect. It is a haunting thing. But there are a great many haunting things in this book. Today I want to get Adam home if I can, and I can.
You know I am really stupid. For years I have looked for the perfect pencil. I have found very good ones but never the perfect one. And all the time it was not the pencils but me. A pencil that is all right some days is no good another day. For example, yesterday, I used a special pencil soft and fine and it floated over the paper just wonderfully. So this morning I try the same kind. And they crack on me. Points break and all hell is let loose. This is the day when I am stabbing the paper. So today I need a harder pencil at least for a while. I am using some that are numbered 2⅜. I have my plastic tray you know and in it three kinds of pencils for hard writing days and soft writing days. Only sometimes it changes in the middle of the day, but at least I am equipped for it. I have also some super soft pencils which I do not use very often because I must feel as delicate as a rose petal to use them. And I am not often that way. But when I do have such moments I am prepared. It is always well to be prepared. Pencils are a great expense to me and I hope you know it. I buy them four dozen at a time. When in my normal writing position the metal of the pencil eraser touches my hand, I retire that pencil. Then Tom and Catbird get them. And they need pencils. They need lots of pencils. Then I have this kind of pencil and it is too soft.Whenever you see a thing like that, the point broke. I have fine prejudices, lazy ones and enjoyable ones. It occurs to me that everyone likes or wants to be an eccentric and this is my eccentricity, my pencil trifling. It isn’t a very harmful one. Maybe I have others which are more. The electric pencil sharpener may seem a needless expense and yet I have never had anything that I used more and was more help to me. To sharpen the number of pencils I use every day, I don’t know how many but at least sixty, by a hand sharpener would not only take too long but would tire my hand out. I like to sharpen them all at once and then I never have to do it again that day. So, you will say, I have wasted enough time for one day but I have managed to do something else too. I have lost the sense of rush with which I started this and that is exactly what I intended to do.
Still March 23, still Good Friday
I am only going to do one page today. Of course it will be more than the usual in typescript because there is a good deal of dialogue. But I have to go and get the boys now and buy Easter egg dyes and candies to make them sick. As a matter of fact you are coming over this afternoon. I’m not going to read any of this to you but you can look through it all you like. And at any time too. I know it is rough and will need lots of rewriting but I am never shy about it when a professional is doing the reading. But God save me from amateurs. They don’t know what they are reading but it is much more serious than that. They immediately start rewriting. I never knew this to fail. It is invariable. For that matter, I think I dislike amateurs in any field. They have the authority of ignorance and that is something you simply cannot combat. It is just about time for me to discontinue the work for today and I kind of don’t want to because some very exciting things are coming. Maybe I can do some tonight after everyone is gone and the house is quiet.
March 24, Saturday
Well you came here yesterday. As you know, I was determined not to read to you but when I saw you struggling with your magnifying glass, I couldn’t help myself. I did try to read a little. And you said you liked what you heard. Now it is Saturday. Normally I would not work but I got up at 6:30 mainly because I had had enough sleep. Also, yesterday I had to stop in the middle of a scene. I would like to follow through with the relationship of the brothers. And also another discovery. I wonder what the effect of that would be. I’ll have to see. But I really would like to see what will happen if these two young men are confronted with a reversal of everything they believed. It would have a great impact, a frightening impact. However, we will see.
Still March 24, Saturday
Well I got my full quota done. And it’s another change of pace. And I hope you like it and I’ll bet there are some few surprises in it for you, but you’ll find it all planted earlier.
March 26, Monday
New week and I think March is a very long month. This year it seems longer than any I can remember. I wonder why that is. The last couple of days I have gone into a deep slump. Natural I guess. One can’t always be on top of the world. Oddly enough the slump in spirit has not stopped the book at all which by now seems to have an independent existence. Now it is Monday and a new week starting. My slump over this week end was so great that I thought I was sick. But no. Just my manic depressiveness coming out in me. Maybe I will telephone you today. I wonder whether what I read to you stays with you. Elizabeth17 says it does with her. Just talked to you and you say it does also. I hope this continues. I am particularly fascinated with Adam’s reaction to the death and defection of his father. That will go down hard with you and with everyone else. It did at first with me but once you have accepted it, you will see that it is righter than any conventional approach could be. In fact his reaction I think is most profound. And you will be interested to know that Adam made it himself. I did not do it for him. There is nothing unusual in the fact that he who did not like his father nevertheless had faith in him. You and even I must think a good deal about that because in it lies one of the great truths. When you look at it you will see that love is identification and embodies jealousy and suspicion. Think of that. Faith is an entirely different thing. Love can only weaken faith. Consider this in a world spirit. We suspect our own govt., which we love, of every kind of lie and chicanery. On the other hand we as a people find ourselves believing and having faith in everything the Kremlin says. Isn’t that interesting? The propaganda of our enemy always seems much more true than our own.
This is going to be a big week of work. I feel that surely. I have perhaps to get Adam moved to California by the end of the week.
I wonder why, on such a day as this, when the story is particularly clear in my head, I have a kind of virginal reluctance to get to it. I seem to want to think about it and moon about it for a very long time before I actually get down to it. Today, I think I know one of the main reasons. Today’s work is so important that I am afraid of it. It requires the use of the most subtle rhythms both of speech and thought. And I use that last advisedly because thought has its rhythms and qualities just as poetry has. I think that the two are very closely related. Thus after a couple of days off, I think I write in this page almost like a pitcher warming up to pitch—getting my mental arm in shape to pitch a good game. And the pitcher is not a bad symbol since he must have smoothness and coordination and rhythm all together.
March 26, Monday, continued
Well—there I got that premise down in dialogue.18 And since this is one of the very most important things in the book, it is my hope that it comes over clearly. This must be remembered because on this rests a large part of my structure of the book. The relationship between the brothers has now been finally established and established finally, but unless it is clear, it is gibberish. But isn’t it exciting? Aren’t they really living people? This is the time when I am glad I am or try to be a writer—the growth and flowering of something I seem only to plant and nurture for a while. You will wonder what is going to happen next and I am not going to tell you. I’m going to make it a surprise to you. I will tell you this though—After a transitional section a new relationship comes in and it is on the basis of this that Adam goes to California. And I don’t know how long it will be because now I have to build a whole new person right from the ground. This is a woman and you must know her; know her completely because she is a tremendously powerful force in the book. And her name is Catherine or Cathy—Does that give you any clue to her?