Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  Now let’s stop this and get to the story. It has progressed pretty well this week. What seems kind of accidental is not. I don’t think there is a single sentence in this whole book that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background. I think that is so but I’ll have to see when I am done. I don’t want a wandering book and I think this one does not. My god, it can’t. There isn’t time. And I’d better stop wandering too.

  August 30, Thursday

  Here we go again and I feel somewhat easier than I did. I got your letter with the enclosures yesterday. The British didn’t like Burning Bright61 any more than the Americans did. I guess I was wrong but I’m still glad I did it.

  Another white night last night and that’s two in a row. But the next section is so intricate that I get to thinking about it at night. It is not only complex psychologically but also in a story sense. And I must sort it out and make it seem very simple. We have two weeks from Sunday and I am going to try to get a full week’s work done each week.

  Now I think I had better get to work. And in this next every line is important.

  August 30 [31], Friday

  Another week and really we moved on this week even if it did not seem to. Now only two more weeks of work before we go back to New York. We were talking this morning about the summer. We have been out only about two times not counting the times when you were here and you know what that was. We have made a custom of having a couple of drinks before dinner which is good for me. It relaxes and soothes. I have been fairly nervous several times and always due to the same thing—a tearing or splitting of thought. I simple can’t do two things at once and an attempt at it makes me very nervous. But the work has got done whether good or bad. And none of us know that and won’t for some time. I’m glad you like the things about the children. I have always felt that, except for Hughes,62 children were badly written. They have been underwritten.

  I will not finish any sequence today. There is much too much of it and it seems to me to be very important. And so I must take it slowly and I must do it very well. I must admit that I am becoming a little timid as the book progresses. It is fear that I am not accomplishing what I want to. I guess that is inevitable. I’ll have to take stock now pretty soon and that is difficult with all the mix-up of closing out the summer, but there it is to do. And I will do it too—believe me. I will draw on some reservoir of will and get it done. Always do—always. And that’s one of the worst lies I ever told. It’s a strange world I am making but one I think is true and beyond that I cannot go.

  I will be glad to be back in New York. I seem to have more time there. Isn’t that strange? But it is because I feel a responsibility to be with my boys as much as I can. Tom has had another flare-up but I think it will very quickly get solved. We know now when they come even if we do not know entirely why.

  September 3, Monday

  I think it is time for me to get on with my work now.

  Labor Day today and for me the term could be used in its most strenuous and biologic sense. This is a blue day full of fears and little weeping clouds. Writing is a very silly business at best. There is a certain ridiculousness about putting down a picture of life. And to add to the joke—one must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture. And third one must distort one’s own way of life in order in some sense to simulate the normal in other lives. Having gone through all this nonsense, what emerges may well be the palest of reflections. Oh! it’s a real horse’s ass business. The mountain labors and groans and strains and the tiniest of rodents comes out. And the greatest foolishness of all lies in the fact that to do it at all, the writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. If he does not, the work is not worth even what it might otherwise have been. As it says in The King and I —“Is a mystery!”63

  All this is a preface to the fear and uncertainties which clamber over a man so that in his silly work he thinks he must be crazy because he is so alone. If what he is doing is worth doing—why don’t more people do it? Such questions. But it does seem a desperately futile business and one which must be very humorous to watch. Intelligent people live their lives as nearly on a level as possible—try to be good, don’t worry if they aren’t, hold to such opinions as are comforting and reassuring and throw out those which are not. And in the fullness of their days they die with none of the tearing pain of failure because having tried nothing they have not failed. These people are much more intelligent than the fools who rip themselves to pieces on nonsense. And with that I will go to work. Two more weeks of it before I go into New York. Twenty more pages and I will be at my own writing board. And I will be glad to be there.

  September 4, Tuesday

  Yesterday was very bad as I guess the notes will indicate. I had a vision of human personality as a kind of foetid jungle

  September 5 [WEDNESDAY]

  A very late start but I have it very well thought out today. Weather is superb, really lovely but no longer summer weather. It is definitely fall. And it feels good to the skin. People are herding off the island going back to their jobs and we still have a week and a half. It will I hope be a productive week for me.

  The scene I am on is of utmost importance. In it you see a man growing up and a woman growing old. And I hope I am getting it over. The best thing for me to do would be to get it written and then discuss it and so I will.

  September 6, Thursday

  Only ten more days here, or rather only nine. It is nearly over and the usual story of ups and downs with many more ups than down. At least I believe that to be true. I guess the most important thing to you and to a large extent to me is the fact that the work has not stopped except for the week when I wanted it to stop. To a very great extent that is Elaine’s doing since she took over and handled the things which might have interfered and did it so well that I could give much of my thought to the writing. I will admit that the boys and especially Tom’s trouble have been a difficulty to me and a haunting thing which has bothered me particularly because I can’t do anything much about it. But I am surely going to try.

  As to the work itself, only time will show whether it has been good. Sometimes it seems to me actually to have the high purpose I set for it, and at other times it seems pedestrian and trite. I know how much work must go into it after it is done but I have plenty of time for that and I am quite willing to do it. This is the Book still as far as I am concerned and I think it will continue to be until it is finally in your hands. Then of course there will be another book or a funeral. I think if I were forbidden by some force to work, I should last a very short time. And I don’t say that morbidly at all. I think perhaps I am one of those lucky mortals whose work and whose life are the same thing. It is rare and fortunate.

  I got the return card yesterday so I know that last week’s mss. got through to your manger Labor Day. I hope you liked it. I am pretty sure that you will like this week’s work. I feel that it is subtle and good, and also, the threads begin to draw in like the first tug on the guide lines of a purse seine to bring all the fish gradually in together. But, Pat, there’s so much to come—so very much.

  And I must get to work now. The children are unusually noisy today and I haven’t the heart to make them stop. There is a little boy next door who is the noisiest of all. But he goes home tomorrow, thank God. Waverly is being wonderful not only in the house but in her relationship with the kids. She is really taking hold as the older sister which is all the more remarkable because she has no training at it.

  Finally in my dawdle period—the scene for today. I think it may make your flesh crawl a little. But it is part of the inevitable development.

  And now I will get to it.

  September 7, Friday

  Now another week and they seem to pop up like ducks in a shooting gallery. There is one more week of work after today. I’ll pack in the evenings and on Saturday. I will
be glad to get home. It has been a real fine summer.

  There isn’t any point in going over details. So I will go directly into work notes.

  This week has been a hard one. I have put the forces of evil against a potential good. Yesterday I wrote the outward thing of what happened. Today I have to show what came of it. This is quite different from the modern hard-boiled school. I think I must set it down. And I will. The spots of gold on this page are the splatterings from beautiful thoughts.

  Well, Pat, there is the end of this week’s work. I hope you will like it. I believe that the beginning of disintegration is logical and sound. I only hope it is effective.

  Next week will be a crucial week in the story. And I will send it or bring it in with me. I don’t know which. Anyway, I’m a little tired. The week has wearied me a great deal. And there have been other things, which I will tell you when I see you. So long for now.

  September 10, Monday

  Now into the last week. It is not strange that my sense of time has been lifted out of weeks and months and days and is now felt in units of ten pages of mss. If I can send you on Friday page 40 of this series, I shall be glad. I was interested in your letter about the interview between Cal and Lee. You must never quite believe that I am putting myself down on paper or if you do so believe, you must never say so. There are many things which must not be said but which must be translated into symbols. Robinson Jeffers once said that he wrote witches and devils outside the house in order to prevent their getting in the house. Maybe everyone does that to a certain extent. But again we must not mistake mouse mutterings for earthquakes. That would be a bad mistake.

  Elizabeth Otis writes that perhaps this book has grown in conception since I started it. And I wonder whether that is so. I planned it as a huge thing. I have been afraid that it narrowed down from the big thing rather than expanded. As a matter of fact I’ve wondered whether it was not becoming little. I want it large. What I would like would be for it to read little but to leave a vast feeling. And about that I can’t tell. It is only what I hope.

  Now I must get to it. The episodes of this week stem from the other things of the last two weeks. And my hope is that I can conceal my symbol until the very last and make it only come flashing in when the whole episode is over. We will see whether or not I can do that. The next two weeks contain some of the most important work to be done.

  September 11, Tuesday

  A brilliant beautiful day and I am so nervous I can’t sit still. I can’t imagine why. Maybe a weariness but more likely complications of moving, all kinds of side issues and trying to keep work going too. I get confused. And that is probably it. I can’t imagine what else.

  Louise goes back to New York tonight to open and clean the house. And I will be very glad to have that done even though it means we do all the work here the rest of the week. I’ll do the packing at night. It’s quite a job to move a whole family. Of course Elaine does the great part of it, the planning, etc. But I’ll be glad when it is done.

  My work today is interesting to me. It sounds simple but it isn’t. And I think I will get to it now.

  There, Pat, that part is done. And do you think it is good? Can you see its motivation? And don’t think I’m making this up. This is exactly how it was done.

  September 12, Wednesday

  Three more days of work here. And very important days too. The move and one of the major climaxes of the book come at the same time. But this is not abnormal. Things always happen like that. It is a real tough piece of work to come. This is a most complicated climax because it is a quadruple climax—most difficult because it must be very clear and clean. Also it is a climax not only of event but of emotion. Out of it two lives are lost and two changed, maybe more than this, so you can see that I am approaching this with trepidation and I wish I didn’t have moving to think about, but in the long run I don’t think it makes very much difference. One works. That is a verity. One does work.

  When I get home I am going to put new blotters on my writing table and sharpen absolutely new pencils and open a new case of paper and I’ll be going into the last part of the book. And God knows how long that will take. I just really don’t know in spite of my brave words about Oct. first. I just don’t know. It stretches on and on and I hope it is still interesting. That I do hope. I have wondered whether these people could become tiresome. But I think they have enough versatility not to be repetitive or tedious. Well I guess I have taken up as much time as possible.

  Now it is time to get to it.

  September 13, Thursday

  Great weariness is in me, so thoroughly mixed as to be almost imperceptible but I am honeycombed with it. I must ignore it.

  The book draws into its last part now and I suppose it is only sporting to rattle a little. I shall welcome criticism of method or technique but this book is no more a collaboration than any of the others have been. The morals, ideas, philosophies are my own and are not offered for correction or revision. That is no change. It is just a restatement to save time.

  I have only today’s work and tomorrow’s before I go home. And I think I won’t write any more notes today. There’s a towering black cloud with thunder in it.

  September 24, Monday

  Now—back to work after a week off. More than that—a week and a day. I didn’t realize how tired I had got but I know it now by contrast. I am all rested now. The week did fine things for me and I am full of piss and vinegar again.

  This is not to say it is going to be easy. It will be hard to go to work today—hard to get back the rhythm and drive and direction—but at least I will have the energy for it. And I am looking forward to it very much. I can’t work all the time but I should. The conditioned animal again. Always the conditioned animal.

  The pagination of this manuscript is strange. I am going to start at #1 again and this time I hope it will go on through to the end. If it ever gets done, and I have no idea that it ever will, I will be just lucky.

  In the country I always tried to get finished so I could play with the boys. Now I can take my time in finishing and as a change I like that.

  Very hard to start—very hard—perhaps impossible.

  September 25 [TUESDAY]

  As you will very well see, I didn’t finish my full day of work yesterday. I told you on the phone it was hard getting started again, not for what to say but to re-establish the rhythm. But I don’t worry. It will go on in spite of my derelict qualities. In this book I am a bystander and I know it. The book goes on. I do hope you like the account of how war came to Salinas. It is true.

  Story: A friend has just sent me a book he wrote asking for a quote. I gave it to Elaine and last night she told me about it and read me some of it. And it is very bad. Can’t write, can’t think and has nothing to say. I’m sorry and perhaps it is mean but I feel better about my own book. I was in a slump but my book is better than that one on all counts.

  Rainy day today and the sky dark. To me a pleasant kind of day. My mood is not dour but I love the weeping sky. I seem also to be very corny today. Hope it doesn’t get into my work. Real cliché-rid today. Well must stop it. But I think I will have only four days’ work this week and I don’t even care about that. What rebellion is here. What courage, what originality. And now I am going to get to it.

  Now, my work is done for today and it is a full day’s work. I think you can see what I am preparing and also I am about ready to go into Abra. And I feel very good about the whole thing because now it is going to move toward its next climax. And I am shivery about that. Well, we’ll see what tomorrow will bring.

  September 26, Wednesday

  Well here we go again. The week is very busy and I am not at ease with it but will make it all right I’m pretty sure. Change of tempo has something to do with it I guess. Bound to. Play64 opening tonight downtown. All of these things impinge a little but I’ll get through o.k. But I do feel strange—almost unearthy. I’ll never get quite used to being alive. It’s a mystery. Alwa
ys startled to find I have survived.

  The beautiful cool fall weather which I adore going on right outside my window. I don’t feel lazy at all. It’s just fine. What a busy place New York is. I must get a new desk blotter. This has a crease in the middle which bothers me.

  Stalling—stalling over the bounding main. I haven’t the proper face for glasses. They never quite fit. I think I will have to remake some so they do. Always slipping off. Now I should be ready. I’ve left Abra in the kitchen with Lee and we’ll have to go back there and find them. It is quiet but an important day in the mss. I want to take a good deal of time with it. And then I have another scene before climax for this section. But all in good time. It all takes time. I need so much time to waste also. Seem to require about 4 to 1 of waste over work.

  September 27, Thursday

  Last night we saw the good production of Burning Bright which seemed better for its poverty. I enjoyed it but I think my weariness came from confusion. I seem capable of great effort in one direction but given a confusion of ends, I collapse. And today time is a wasting and I must go to work.

  September 28, Friday

  This is a beat-up week. And I hope there aren’t more like it. Split interests have destroyed me. Ideally, I should have finished my book in the country and come in only to correct. But it didn’t work that way. And it couldn’t. This week I have begun to work toward a climax of this part and next week I hope to get past that climax. But next week will not have a play in it. I didn’t really get going this week. You will find only four days of work if that.