Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  Anyway, we will try it.

  There it’s done. And very unconventional. I’ll wonder whether you like it. It tells an awful lot about Tom.

  August 16, Thursday

  This follows the longest layoff since I started the book. And I am very glad I took it for a number of reasons. First, I was tired. Second, I had finished a time, a mood and a section. And third, I needed a freshness for the last.

  Now I go into the final book. And because it is an entirely new book, I am going to number the pages from # 1 but this is only for myself because it will give me a sense of newness and freshness. I know it may be harder on the copyist but it will be easier on me.

  The birthday was fine and I think my dear Elaine enjoyed it and surely you, Pat and Dorothy, contributed to it very largely. Geva is going home today. We have only one more guest and that is Liz59 for a week end. I have one more month only. And I shall not be sad to go back to New York. I like my house and my tools. And in a month we will have had enough of this. It has been good, but good things should not last too long or they cease to be good things.

  The boys have had a good summer. I really think Tom has improved some. I know what you mean about him. I feel his sadness too. And there is a double thing which I will one day discuss with you. I feel that the pattern of the last few years is nearly over for all of us. [...] Its course is about run. And maybe we will do better in the next frame.

  My health is good and a letter from Dr. Negrin tells me yours is too and that you have a very definite improvement—this gratuitously in a letter about other things. So—we go into the last phase with no health hazards.

  The state of mind is good too, I think. It is not set in any direction at all, it is not bored nor anxious and particularly is it not in any hurry to be done. All this is of course a kind of evaluation before going into the final section. I feel able to go into it. And I am now ready to discuss it in notes. It amounts to a whole novel in subject matter. I think it will be in the neighborhood of 80,000 words. Maybe a few less. It has three preceding books to fulfill and resolve. It will continue and carry out the design of the earlier two books. I know most of its incidents. I think it will have power and development. Aron will develop to a certain extent but the powerful new people are Cal and Abra and a new Adam. And it is going to concentrate on them. The book has scattered a good deal. Now I feel that it must pull in tightly as it goes. All of the principles have been laid down except the principle of Abra. She is new to the book, the strong female principle of good as opposed to Cathy. Her strength will not be soft. Abra is a fighter and an effective human being. She will take active part in the battle. So—now we are about ready to go. We have a new kind of a world in the Salinas Valley and our timeless principles must face a new set of facts and react to them. Are you interested to see what happens? I am.

  And now to go. And I don’t know that any will go down today and I don’t care.

  August 20, Monday

  Well I did what I intended. I took the whole week off and I succeeded for a couple of days in putting the whole book out of my mind. I don’t know whether or not I was right. Only the next few weeks will tell. But it seemed to me that I needed it and so I took it. Now I am ready to go on with the last book and the only break will be the time when we move back to New York. And since that will be on a Sunday, it is probable that I may not lose any working time at all. Our reservation on the boat is for the morning of Sept. 16. And I have several weeks before then.

  I still think it good to treat this last book as a unit even to pagination. However, we will have to see about that. The book will take its own pace, as I have said so often. We will see.

  Naturally, having lost the rhythmic discipline, I shall be in trouble for the first day or two but that will be all right too. How the mind rebels against work, but once working, it rebels just as harshly against stopping. I don’t know why this should be. It’s a dumb brute, the human mind. And it has really brutish tendencies.

  I am going to open this book with a kind of a refrain. You will recognize it with the second line I think. And I know it is proper for design. It is the recapitulation of intention. And I do know that just before your final stream—one should pause to re-establish what the pattern was in the mind of the reader. And this is what I intend to do or try to.

  My mind is letting in all kinds of side things from the world of my life. That is how quickly discipline is lost. It happens very soon. And I must shake my spirit like a rag. And I will.

  I am thinking about Tom. We, and particularly Elaine, have done good things for him this summer but there is much more to do—much more. And we will try our best to work out what we can.

  Now—I am going to wipe out the world of my life and get into the opening of the last of the book. And for this purpose I am going to start on a fresh, free page.

  There I have finished the opening of Book 4. And it is a refrain of the opening of the century. And I have ranged the changeable with the continuing. Also I have set down some things which I believe and some things which have not been said for a long time and which should be said and must be said, particularly since they are true.

  August 21, Tuesday

  Well, I opened Book 4 yesterday with general statement and also with specific statement which can only be known when one finishes the book. I think when Harold says the book is ambitious he doesn’t know how ambitious it is. Only you and I and Elaine know that. And maybe we are the only ones who will ever know it. It has things in it which will probably never come out because readers do not inspect very closely and when they do, like as not they find things which aren’t there. The hell with it. I’ll just do my work and forget everything else.

  Less than a month now. Our reservation on the boat is for the morning of the 16th which is Sunday, a bad day to travel but the only reservation we could get around that time. It means we move on a week end again so I will not lose much if any time from work. We think we will send Louise in a couple of days ahead of us on the train so she can get the house in running order and have it clean and lived-in looking and feeling.

  Waverly is supposed to arrive the 26th. I hope this is so but nothing planned there is dependable. But it would be good if she could come and have a few weeks with us.

  My mind is wandery this morning. I know what I am going to write and why I am going to write it in this place but you don’t. I think you will be pleased though. And I’m glad you found the Tom and Dessie part effective. I don’t want this book to have an overtone of sorrow any more than it exists in the world itself. I want Sam Hamilton to be remembered with pleasure, not thought of sadly. And the opening of Book 4 is not light and airy. The balance of everything has to be maintained. And so I am going to begin Book 4 with Lee. I think that will please you but that is not why I am doing it. It pleases my sense of design and proportion. And so I will get to it.

  August 22, Wednesday

  A damp, windy, sticky really nasty day—perhaps the worst we have had. Clothes are clammy and have an odor. Kids are irritable. I hope it breaks tonight. Also I think it is only bad in Nantucket terms. It would be fine and pleasant in New York. And as I said that, the sun broke through. Isn’t that nice? I can do my work today with the forecast that it will be sunny. I hope you liked the work yesterday, Lee’s departure and return. Elaine liked it because it made her laugh and cry at the same time. I thought I might go to San Francisco with Lee. But there would be no point in it. This book doesn’t need richness now. It needs tightness, story, character and to a certain extent, speed. I am looking forward to the work today. It will be quite different from anything you have ever read on the subject. And I just hope I can make you believe it. And I think I can. And because this part is a very important part, it is going to be longer because— naive as it may sound—all hell is going to break loose in a character sense and things very very important to the book.

  As Lee said yesterday, I think adults forget about children. They just literally do not remember how it was.
I think I do remember and I am going to try very hard to remember more.

  And now I am about ready to go.

  August 23, Thursday

  Now the book begins to move again. Please watch the development of Aron’s character. It is most important to the story but its development will be very gradual and I hope subtle. Also, please watch Abra. She is terribly important also. God almighty, this is a complicated book. I wonder whether I can do it. I know what you mean about two volumes. I’m on it all the time. But I wouldn’t live any other way. Weather has cleared up now and I hope we will have a few weeks of nice weather. After my week off, I am glad to be back at work. The typescript came and I glanced through it. Pretty good in places, quite good but needs lots of delicate cleaning-up work. Well I will do it.

  You know after the summer and boys and play and the days being too short, I am glad that my last 30,000 words will be done in New York. There won’t be any distractions there. And I’ll want full concentration for my ending. But I seem to be able to concentrate pretty well even here.

  From the number of pages I guess my estimate was pretty accurate—between 240,000 and 250,000 words.

  I do hope you like the return of Lee. I think it is pretty good and short enough. I need Lee, not only as an interpreter but as an active figure. I have a feeling of goodness about the book now but there is so much to come, I don’t for the life of me know how I got in what I have already.

  On an impulse I just went back and read the opening notes addressed to you. I wanted to see whether I had failed in any part to carry out my intention and I do not think I have. The direction has not changed a bit and this book which seems to sprawl actually does not at all. It is almost as tight as a short story. And I am pleased about that.

  Now—I have a little over three weeks left here. Elaine has more mss. here than she can ever get done before we leave. Therefore, I think you should not send any more mss. here, either original or typescript. Keep it there. Of course, as always, I will send you the week’s work as I finish it. And do you realize that after this week, there will only be three more 10’s—40,000 words nearly, counting this week’s work. And about one more month in town will finish it. I really should go to work now but I am putting it off. It is quite early. Elaine is going to take the boys to a movie this afternoon and then they are coming back and we are all going out to dinner. So I have all day at my desk and I like that. I feel so good today—just wonderful. I have a kind of soaring joyousness. And now I would engage your prayers for me because I am going to try to go into the minds of children, but more than that, I am going to try to set those minds down on paper. And these are not children as they are conceived by adults but children as they are to and among themselves. I hope I can do that. Most of what I read about children is crap. Grown people forget. They feel that at a certain age they got insight and awareness and wisdom. And as a rule the opposite is true to a certain extent. And so I will set it down and I think it will be an unique record of the thinking of children. And I think it will be accurate at least of my characters. And children are no more alike than are adults.

  Thursday, August 23, Later

  I got half my day’s work done and the kids off to a movie and then cut my thumb closing a balky knife. My right thumb too, dam it. I bled it and bound it and it will heal in a couple of days but it makes it a little hard to write and maybe it will be hard to read too. I hope not. I’ll be very careful to try to keep it legible.

  Now I will go back to the second half of my day’s work and please believe me that this is not too grown up. It is exactly the way 11-year-olds might talk and act. People just forget.

  August 24, Friday

  Clumsy handwriting again because of the bandage. But this was a deep true cut with a sharp knife and it was a good bleeder. I did not touch any water nor disinfective to it. I let the blood flow for a while and then cinched the edges tight together. Then last night I covered it with penicillin and I think by Monday it will be practically gone. The only trouble now is the clumsiness of the bandage. But I will write slowly and carefully and try to be legible. And I’ll put the first week’s mss. in the mail today. And I hope you will like it. This last part is very important. It may sound like children but it is children who will be adults.

  Why do men do things which seem off pattern? I don’t think they do. I think if you look back in a man’s life you will find both a cause and a parallel. People do not change very much. Now in the whole of this book Aron is not as important as Cal but he is surely as important in the sense that he is a catalyst of Cal. And so we must know about the nature of the catalyst. And that is what I am more or less working on today. I think you know Cal so far better than you know Aron. And I am going to try to remedy that. And now

  August 24, Friday, continued

  There’s the first week of the last book done. Careful as it is, I’m afraid it might seem disappointing to you. The end of the last book was a series of crises, stimulating and violent. And now I have to go back and build again. And your taste for violence might possibly be aroused so that it will sound dull. But there must be lulls and this must be built again from the ground up. Well, you’ll just have to take it. Let me hear from you. Suddenly I feel lonely in a curious kind of way. I guess I am afraid. That always comes near the end of a book—the fear that you have not accomplished what you started to do. That is as natural as breathing, and so—the week.

  August 27, Monday

  Here goes the summer. Waverly arrived yesterday and very tired and glad to be here. I have to get back to my job now and I am sadly confused. This is my own fault. I have slipped some way through tiredness or because perhaps old wounds broke open. I guess things never heal completely. Well, the job is to get back on some kind of an even keel and finish out the summer. I have exactly three weeks more here. And I would like to have thirty more pages to show for it. I probably will have, too, but the quality—that must stay up. This is the time in a book when worry sets in. There should be no objective attack on the book yet. It must keep striking out from the inside until the last word is written. So I am cheating now by evaluating. We have had our last guest now and our last party gone too and I feel really beaten to a pulp. But I’ll come back quickly I think. I always have. I suppose there will come a time when I do not. This would be a bad time for that. Such a strange way to live. But then I guess there is no way that is not strange. It is very odd, almost what the French call a crise de nerfs. I’m crawling with them today. Well, I’ll fight that off. Have to.

  In the book I have reached a place of great difficulty. You see I want to make a lunge forward in time for the sake of design and still I want to maintain an even steady flow. These two don’t go together very well. I’ll have to work it out. And I will of course. Perhaps the best way is the most direct way. And you know, all this might well be a deep psychic cry of laziness finding channels of escape from work. I think I will go after it on that basis. Heaven knows I’ve got plenty of it. My brain just doesn’t want to tackle it today and if I let it get away with it, tomorrow it will have another excuse. My brain is very treacherous and I do not dare to give it any freedom to wander.

  Now the time is coming for the test—whether I will be able to master it or whether it will win over me. Well just have to see and I think I will start now and see who wins.

  Later. Well there you have it. It is the change in Adam. I hope it isn’t dull. You must know that refrigeration was the reason for the great change in the Valley. And out of that Valley came a large part of the pioneering which has changed the food supply of the world. And the crazy thing is that the men who worked at it first all failed. But there’s the beginning of it.

  August 28, Tuesday

  Yesterday was a very bad day as you may have noticed and yet what I put in was necessary. I do not want Adam to be merely an onlooker at his time, to prop him up in front of a deck of years. He has to have a part in its development. It is a difficult section for me, so I will get to it very soon. Yest
erday we caught a bucket of crabs. Very good. We will go after some more today I think. Now if the book can only go as well as the summer.

  The Log60 came and it is a very good-looking book. It would not seem to me that it would sell very well but these are curious times. I think it will in Europe. And it is barely possible that it might catch on a little here. When, I wonder, does it come out? It is a curious time for books. People do seem to like thoughtfulness—or do they? Maybe they only want reassurance or sensation.

  Now to work.

  August 29, Wednesday

  There’s a real feeling of finality in the air here. We have two weeks and a half more so it is not as near as I seem to indicate but the fall is surely coming. And I have an autumn feeling in me. This is one of the best feelings I know. I have always loved the fall. No reason. It is filled with a warm sweet sadness which is close relative to pleasure and not very far removed. We have had a good and productive summer. The boys have made a great jump I think. It is hard to see if you are with them every day but I am sure it is so.

  I have dawdled away a good part of my free time now carving vaguely on a scrap of mahogany, but I guess I have been thinking too. Who knows. I sit here in a kind of a stupor and call it thought.