March 27, Tuesday
Today I have a transition of the brothers and then I go to Cathy. And Cathy is a hustler, perhaps born, perhaps caused by accident but Cathy is by nature a whore. She also is by profession a whore. Why Adam Trask should have fallen in love with her is anybody’s guess but I think it was because he himself was trained to operate best under a harsh master and simply transferred that to a tough mistress. She is quite a girl and I think I will have to go back and develop her at least a little so that what she does later is believable.
Last night I read the last scene to Elaine and she said she liked it. The love as opposed to faith, she said, was very clearly stated and clear. You see, Pat, I don’t care about being agreed with on this but I do want it to be understood before the suffering happens. Now I wonder whether you have been getting a sense of the men as people in this book. This is rather important, because in this book people dominate the land, gradually. They strip it and rob it. Then they are forced to try to replace what they have taken out. I am going to subscribe to the Salinas paper again. It would be good to start it coming. But I’ve forgotten the man’s name. It is probably in my file. Well I found it and sent off the letter.
Today is a dawdly day. They seem to alternate. I do a whole of a day’s work and then the next day, flushed with triumph, I dawdle. That’s today. The crazy thing is that I get about the same number of words down either way. This morning I am clutching the pencil very tight and this is not a good thing. It means I am not relaxed. And in this book I want to be just as relaxed as possible. Maybe that is another reason I am dawdling. I want that calmness to settle on me that feels so good—almost like a robe of cashmere it feels. And gradually it will come as I write this page. That is what is so wonderful about having all year for this book. If I could not relax today I would not write. I would sit over this book for the usual number of hours but I would not write down any of the story for fear it might carry my own tension.
Today is a day of little interruptions. And I have a theory about this. I think we call such things down on ourselves. Interruptions seem to come only on dawdly days. Then the phone rings and the doorbell and packages arrive. And I can’t hold still when a package is delivered. I have to know what it is. There is no way out of that.
Now I think I am almost ready for the day’s work. Incidentally, your enthusiasm for this book is a great stimulant to me. I know how badly you want it to be good. And you can believe truly that I want it to be good much more than you do. So I will get to it now.
March 27, continued
There I finished that—a message to Tom and John, and to the general reader, which sounds like a small thing and really is a kind of instruction in how to think about this book and in a sense how to think about the life and the people around them. I intended to make it sound guileless and rather sweet but you will see in it the little blades of social criticism without which no book is worth a fart in hell. I think it was a good day’s work. I really do. I am pleased with it in several directions for it does these things or tries to—it seems as a transition from one kind of life to another. It quite honestly tells its purpose and explains the purpose of the new character. And finally it chops off stupid criticism before it can happen. I think it is well said and at the same time disarming. By addressing it to the boys,19 it allows a superficial reader to escape its implications if he wishes. So there it is. And tomorrow I go into a new and to me a fascinating character.
Now—I think I must go for an eye test very soon because it seems to me that I get tired in the whole region about my eyes. And this might be because my eyes are needing an adjustment in glasses. I sit here too long to take the chance. So maybe next week I will go because I want to take Tom with me too and have his eyes tested. If I do it first, it will remove any uneasiness from him. If there is nothing wrong with his eyes it does no harm. But if he does have eye trouble, he would not know it, and a good many things could be attributed to it. Now I am through for the day and I go to my little works about the house. As Louella Parsons says, “That’s all for today. See you tomorrow.”
March 28 [WEDNESDAY]
Today—moved by some purposeless perverseness—I don’t think I will work. Maybe it is a declaration of some kind of freedom if it should be a kind of freedom I don’t want. Now the declaration of freedom is peculiarly pure because it is based neither on laziness nor lack of preparation. I didn’t go to sleep early last night so I worked out the next sequence in great detail. And far from being lazy today, I am filled with energy. And it is not based on wanting to do something else because I don’t. I am just not going to work today with a period on it. It must mean something to me, but what I do not know. I finished my copper table early this morning. And I think it is very fine. One of my things that I invented that works. Not all do but once in a while one does. The design is plain and fine and it goes with the room. Oh! when the library furniture comes I think I will rarely move out of that room. I don’t think I will for that is going to be a balm to my life. My life seems pretty full of balms just now. Say, it’s wonderful to declare holiday for no reason. It feels good. But simple holiday is not enough. I’m going to get a haircut this afternoon—a real genuine haircut. And I might go farther and get a little sweet-smelling tonic rubbed on. This is a real festival day for me with garlands. And you, old word-Scrooge, will curse and mutter because I am wasting time. Well, I defy you.
I’ll get back to the work a little now. At least in this part. I swear I am not going to write one word in the other. Cathy Ames is a monster—don’t think they do not exist. If one can be born with a twisted and deformed face or body, one can surely also come into the world with a malformed soul. All this we will go into in the body of the book. Cathy is important for two reasons. If she were simply a monster, that would not bring her in. But since she had the most powerful impact on Adam and transmitted her blood to her sons and influenced the generations—she certainly belongs in this book and with some time given to her. There is one thing I don’t think any one has ever set down although it is true—to a monster, everyone else is a monster. This I am going into at some length. My god this can be a good book if I can only write it as I can hear it in my mind. This Trask chapter is as dark and dour as a damp tunnel. It has to be. And the next Hamilton chapter is very light and gay. I’ll have my contrasts all right. It will be all contrasts and balances. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Elaine nearly got a cold but penicillin inhalant seems to have stopped it in its tracks. I surely hope so. I am just about to leave all of this and you and this book until tomorrow. Believe me this is so.
March 29, Thursday
Now one of those rare days when the diary is ahead of the work. I think that will be remedied today though, as of today. I must say I enjoyed my day of rebellion and rest very much. I did many things, redesigned a toilet and rebuilt it, fixed my fish bowl. Looked for a dining room table and went to bed and to sleep very early. Got a wonderful night’s sleep. Tonight we go to the opening of the new Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, The King and I. I am sure we will enjoy it although I could wish that these two had more to say and used more. But it will be lovely, I am sure. I put off asking for tickets and only day before yesterday called Morey Jacobs. He is the business manager. He was also Sam Harris’s manager. So I have been on two shows with him. He gave us two on the aisle in the fourth row. What a nice thing to do.
It is amazing how many things there are to do in a house, new house or old house. And for some reason I love to make the little repairs and improvements myself. A curious penuriousness comes out in me about paying a man twenty-five dollars for doing badly what I can do just as badly in less time. Besides I can improvise and most people can’t. Give me a box of odds and ends of metal and wood and I can build dam near anything. But it isn’t only penuriousness either. I love to do it. It gives me some kind of satisfaction. Now I have worked out a way of arranging plants on an old hat rack we bought. I think my method is wonderful but I had to
invent it and I don’t think anyone else would ever have thought of it. This gives me pleasure, believe it or not. And when that is finished I will have something else to work on. Now—I must stop thinking of my inventions and get back to my book. I have Cathy Ames to present. She is at once a complex and a simple character. It is the custom nowadays in writing to tell nothing about a character but to let him emerge gradually through the story and the dialogue. This is what you might even call the modern fashionable method. But I don’t have to do this. Using my method which is neither new nor old-fashioned, I can tell everything I can about a character but not only that, I can analyse and even say what I think about the character. Then if that person also comes through in the action and dialogue, one is pretty far ahead. I am not trying to fool my reader nor to trick him anymore than I would want to fool the little boys to whom this book is ostensibly written. It took three years of puzzled thinking to work out this plan for a book. Believe me, today I am not putting off work. In fact it is nudging me to get to it but I do want to set these things down. In the Bedford Hotel so many centuries [ago] when I was working out the writing plan for this book (remember?) I had thought to restrict my form in an iron cast, to stylize it like an Egyptian wall painting, to give it a language made especially for it and for nothing else. But that was a thousand years and millions of thoughts ago. And finally arrived at the present plan which I am trying to put into effect. Since this book is about everything, it should use every form, every method, every technique. I do not think this will make it obvious because even though I bring most everything to the surface, there will still be the great covered thing. I wonder whether even this far along you have hit on the great covered thing or things. And, Pat, I can’t tell my reader that thing because if he knows that pattern in advance, he will start looking for it and will not absorb it. That is why it is concealed. I even hope reviewers do not find it and splash it all around. And that is all for right now.
March 30, Friday
Well, March is nearly over—the month my mother dreaded so is nearly over. Mother never drew a carefree breath in March. All of her tragedies happened in March. And I have noticed that it is an interminable month. It goes on forever. Well, you came over yesterday and picked up the first section of the book to be typed. I wonder what you will think of it in the cold light of print. Hope it does not disappoint you too much. I have just about forty thousand words down or a little less than one quarter I guess. I judge the book is going something over 200,000 words. I have only been on it two months. I think I started Jan. 29. About 8 months more, with luck, will finish it I guess.
Last night went to see the opening of The King and I. It is a very beautiful show about nearly nothing. It will be a great hit. But it just doesn’t say anything except one spurious thing. It says that if you fool other people into thinking you aren’t afraid then you won’t be. And I don’t believe that at all. I believe you can only be unafraid if you find out what it is you fear and conquer it. All the pretense in the world won’t help you otherwise. At least that’s what I believe. It is a thin show which covers its thinness with luxury.
After the theatre we went to Sardi’s and had dinner and saw many friends. It is so long since we have been out that it was fun, but somewhere I picked up a great sadness. I think it was from John O’Hara. That is the only thing I can think of which could have caused it. And it has persisted all day today. I have not worked today because I was afraid my book would take on the quality of my sadness. So far I have been singularly free of personal feelings and emotions which can so easily taint a book. I’ll work tomorrow and maybe Sunday too so my word rate will keep up. But that is not important.
By the way Cathy had a curious kind of skin—very strange kind of a glow. She is a fascinating and horrible person to me. But there are plenty like her. That I know. Tomorrow I will finish my description of her and get into her terrible story. And it is a terrible story. But there are stories much more terrible and true things more terrible than any story. Now because Cathy’s story is so unusual, I must tell it with the greatest casualness as though there were nothing unusual about it. Once you know that Cathy is a monster then nothing she does can be unusual in a monster. You can’t go into the mind of a monster because what happens there is completely foreign and might be gibberish. It might only confuse because it would not be. rational in an ordinary sense. Cathy has great power over people because she has simplified their weaknesses and has no feeling about their strengths and goodnesses. Don’t you know people like that? I almost hesitate to put her down. But you have to believe her. She is just one of the gallery which will move through this book. Lord, what a book—it really moves. Her skin is oil-soaked of course. That is what gives it the pearly light.
Now—only one more thing. Since I know how difficult it is to read my writing under the best circumstances, I shall make a very hard try to write clearly so that it will not be so difficult. That is the least I can do. I will make the effort anyway.
And that is all for today.
April 2, Monday
A book comes in fits and jerks, Pat. Actual wordage on S.V.20 started Feb. 15. It made very good progress for quite a long time, in fact until last Thursday. Then you came over and took the first part for typing. Now I don’t know whether there is any connection but right then I went into a tail spin. The next three days, through Sunday, I went into a depression that was devastating. I do not think it was because of taking away the mss., but the whole thing is such a delicate matter that I just don’t know. What I do know is that it was very painful, hard on me and perhaps harder on Elaine. Now it is Monday and I am all weak and shaken. I am forced to lift myself out of the despondency by the bootstraps. And I will. There is one other thing. Kazan 21 has found that he cannot make the picture in Mexico. He has gone to Santa Fe to look for locations. It must be made in this country or not at all. Now it also occurs to me that my contract was contingent on this getting the acceptance of the Mexican government. This would void that contract. I don’t think Gadg would have moved without talking to Zanuck so maybe that is taken into consideration. Third, our State Department will not take a good view of a picture made in face of opposition from the Mexican govt. It seems that there is no honesty anywhere. And if New York politics seem crooked, they are nothing compared with the expedient politics of Mexico. We will just have to see what happens. I will probably know today.
I think one of the next things I am going to do is to make a new book to hold my papers of this size so that I can write on a single sheet instead of a book which is clumsy. I think I know how to do it but I will have to see. It would be much easier for me I am sure. Anyway that is my next building project. And I will work it out somehow. Just now I am making a lovely bird cage. My own design. I design many things and some of them work, really do. It would be odd if I became known for my designs more than my writing, wouldn’t it? I am now designing a new back to the house. It would be beautiful if I could work it. And I can. But it will take a lot of building. And I will have to think about it very carefully. And I can do that too. I can see it in my head and from that can work it out. If I can only find some old glass I can do it very well I think. Now I must stop thinking about that entirely. The point is that I like to make the designs. And I really work some of them out too. Now back to the book and this time it is permanent. Cathy is going to start emerging pretty soon now. I hope I can make her believable.
Waverly comes home today from her vacation. The house will stop being quiet now and will start jumping. And that is good. It works out fine. When I am working, Waverly and her friends are at school. They rarely get back before I am finished. And I love to have them around. Now I must get to Cathy. And. Cathy is going to worry a lot of children and a lot of parents about their children but I have been perfectly honest about her and I certainly have her prototype. So here goes.
There—that is the first incident of Cathy’s life. There will be two more before she leaves home and two more before she meets Ada
m. I think she will meet Adam this week. Tomorrow I think I can do both. I went over my day’s average today. I think I may go over it every day this week. I find that after a day or two of slump I usually do more for a few days. And besides I want to catch up and I lost some time last week and I may lose some more this week. Waverly got back and says she is very glad to be back.
April 3, Tuesday
Waverly came home yesterday and we had a pleasant home-coming party. She was very tired so as usual Elaine and I stayed up for her. I guess we just have no sense. But in spite of that I am up early this morning. Feeling fine. Sometimes I get a little panicky—so many things I do not do now that I am writing. I put all the burdens on Elaine, of running the house and doing the many hundreds of things living entails. So far she hasn’t complained. I help with what I can but I am very thoughtless—very. My mind goes mooning away. I never get very far from my book. And this must get pretty tiresome. I’m sure it does. I guess a writer is only half a man as far as a woman is concerned. And Pat, there is so much violence in me. Sometimes I am horrified at the amount of it. It isn’t very well concealed either. It lies very close to the surface.
You know I am really a stupid fool. All of these years I have written in a big book because I love the fine paper with lines. But to get the paper I have to take the covers. And I get my wrist burned and very tired after I pass the middle of the page. The rise of an inch makes a very great difference in tiredness. Now after all of these years, it occurs to me that I can just as well take the pages out and write on each sheet separately. Why never before? In this book, which is going to be rebound anyway, I am only now just learning this. It is really stupid of me. However, that’s the way it is. I am going to try to write more than my quota today. I can take all day at it so it doesn’t matter. I don’t think of anything which can interfere with me. Yesterday I ordered a carpenter’s workbench for my room. I have always wanted one and never in my life had one. It is a very strange half life I had. I haven’t the brains of a mud turtle. And maybe it is a good thing. If I had any brains I would blow them out probably. But I am going to have a little workbench just the same, where I can work with my little tools. I love to do that, I really do. There’s a broken chair right now that I really want to get fixed. I had to work out the technique for fixing it because it is the worst broken-up thing you ever saw. Say, I also have to do some rewiring of fixtures in the house. So many things to do. And my pencils are getting short too, very short. I need four dozen new ones. I should get them today. Isn’t it a strange luxury I allow myself of using long pencils? When they get so short that the metal around the eraser touches my hand, I give them to Tom or distribute them to Elaine and Waverly because they don’t care much about long pencils. On the third finger of my right hand I have a great callus just from using a pencil for so many hours every day. It has become a big lump by now and it doesn’t ever go away. Sometimes it is very rough and other times, as today, it is as shiny as glass. It is peculiar how touchy one can become about little things. Pencils must be round. A hexagonal pencil cuts my fingers after a long day. You see I hold a pencil for about six hours every day. This may seem strange but it is true. I am really a conditioned animal with a conditioned hand. And now it is time for me to go back to Cathy. She is going to have several adventures today.
Journal of a Novel Page 6