Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  Last week there was complete exhaustion and very near collapse. I guess to anyone who has not worked in this way it would be hard to conceive this kind of slow accumulated weariness. I don’t know any other work that requires month after month of emotional as well as intellectual concentration, although there may be some. I’m glad I took three days off. I slept a drugged sleep most of the time, and one without drugs. Wouldn’t say I am much rested but I think I have the energy to finish at least.

  You must be no less frightened than I because you don’t know what is going to happen and all I don’t know is whether I can make it happen. So in a way I am better off than you are. It is too bad we have not more humor about this. After all it is only a book and no worlds are made or destroyed by it. But it becomes important out of all proportion to its importance. And I suppose that is essential. The dunghill beetle must be convinced of the essential quality in rolling his ball of dung, and a golfer will not be any good at it unless striking a little ball is the most important thing in the world. So I must be convinced that this book is a pretty rare event and I must have little humor about it. Can’t afford to have. The story has to move on and on and on. It is like a machine now—set to do certain things. And it is about to clank to its end.

  And I might just as well get to it because putting it off isn’t going to help a bit.

  Later. Well—there’s the first day of it. And now that I am into it, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible. But also I don’t know how long it will be. It will have to take its own course. But I do know this. There will be no more days off until it is done.

  October 23, Tuesday

  The plodding goes on into the final process. And with this long a book strange things happen on the fringes. The callus on my knuckle is huge and very hard but there is a callus also large on my little finger simply from moving over the paper.

  Now—yesterday’s work was rather unexpected, or rather a little more developed than I had thought. There will be one change necessary. When we first see Nesbitt he will be chief deputy. He served from ‘03 to ’19. I remember him well. He lived just around the corner from us. I’m at work early today and will probably have to work late but it doesn’t matter. The scene today is a strange one—full of suggestions. It is the kind you will understand better when you come back to it. It will have things in it you won’t recognize until the second time around. This is a kind of writing I like and like to do. So I think I am going to enjoy doing it. There is no harm in liking what you are doing I think. Time is moving up on me. I thought surely I would be finished this week but now I am not sure. All I know is this—I shall take no more days off until I am finished. And now is time!

  October 24, Wednesday

  This is going to be a hard and ferocious day and for two reasons. I have to make some tape for the Voice of America this afternoon and rewrite the material first. And that’s always a hazard. Second, a very curious thing happened last night. I have been working so close to this story and last night I had a dream about the part to be written today, so complicated, so foreign and strange that I have great difficulty in shaking it off. The dream and the reality won’t seem to separate. I’m afraid I’m going to have great difficulty with that. It is very hard. Maybe I am not really enough awake yet. Too bad. The damned dream was so convincing but it just didn’t belong to this book. Isn’t that crazy.

  Yesterday I bought a raincoat to use in Europe so I’ll only have to take one coat. Also bought wood for the library doors which I will make myself. Two-inch-thick clear pine and each plank 21 inches wide. Beautiful wood. It will take me a long time to surface them and make them beautiful but I will fit and put them up very soon. Also found great brass hinges to support them. They will be a joy, and do you know, that is all the library needs. Then that room will be done. Oh! I must rebuild one part of the bookcases, but that isn’t hard at all. That is a lovely room I think.

  Elaine worked until midnight on manuscript and discovered that you are still sitting on the whole last part of the original. I must call you today and get that straight or she will run out of work. She is going today for shots to try to help her neck. I hope to goodness it works for the bad neck has nearly driven her crazy.

  What I am trying to do is to lose that dream and I think I am about rid of it. Now I have had some more coffee and I think I am about ready to go to work. I hope I have cleared that dusty dream away. It was a bad one. I hope I don’t have any more of them. So I will try.

  Well there it is and I hope you will like that part. But you will tell me. And I know you can feel how the book is drawing together toward a close. One more scene here, then a kind of lyric transition and then the end.

  October 25, Thursday

  What a day. So beautiful and so clear and cool. But I’ll sit in and do my work like a good kid. And that’s not going to be finished Friday. I think perhaps Sunday—maybe Sunday but I’m not even sure of that—not even that. I’ve taken such care I’m not going to skimp it now. The shots of iodine have had an immediate good effect on Elaine’s bad neck. I hope to goodness it works. She has not been without pain for about four years. And that can wear you down as I well know. I have my window open and the air is like cold silk—sleek and sharp and good. It chills me a little and that I like, I like very much.

  Today I need do nothing but write. Yesterday I had to write that speech and go over and record it in addition to my work. You know confusion tires me much more than work ever does. But still I think the work was good. Elaine says it was. She corrected mss. until 2 last night while I cleaned my room, really deeply cleaned it and found things that had been lost for a very long time. It was such a mess it took all evening. If my door wood comes today I may shop for brass hinges for it. There’s a place on Third Avenue which might have them. But I feel pretty good and free today and even though I won’t be getting finished as soon as I thought. I think I have four more days counting today. Maybe a little less—but not much. There’s just too much to put down and that can’t be left out. Elaine complains that Carson McCullers always gets tired and tries to resolve a book in a page.

  But I’m in such a doodling mood today, so foolish. I’ll never get through this way. Just playing with wood. And I can’t so I might just as well give that up. Now to work

  October 27 [SATURDAY]

  I feel weak and miserable today as though the sky were falling on me. And maybe it is. Weariness is on me, really creeping in, and I can’t give in to it. I know that sounds strange. Rest is always supposed to be good. But it would take too long and it would be too hard to get back. So—I’m going to try to go on. Sometimes I think I’m a little nuts and sometimes worse than that. I’ll shake this off as soon as I can. Sounds almost as though I were sorry for myself and I really am not. Yesterday’s work was no good. I had to throw it out. I made a bad mistake in saying when I would be finished and now I find myself trying to make it when I said I would. I’ll have to stop that —stop it cold. The book is more important than the finish. I’ll try to re-establish in my mind the fact that the book is never going to be done. That way it will move smoothly to the finish. God knows how to do this. But yesterday’s work was way off.

  October 29, Monday

  I am not finished and I have no time limit now. I may go on all year. That time limit was the bad thing. A number of things have happened but I’m not going into that now. I’ll tell you about it at some future time. Now my job is just to get as much done every day as I can and maybe in the fullness of time the book will be done.

  Later. Well—there’s that day. There’s that day.

  October 30, Tuesday

  It looks now as though Nov. 1 was a good guess in the first place. Now Aron is dead and the story can draw to its close. I have two or maybe three more days to go. It seems to keep ahead. I’ll probably know more tomorrow about that—tomorrow at the end of the day.

  The time seems endless and yet I can’t see what I can leave out of this without there being holes. But it seems endle
ss to me. I wish I were finished and at the same time I am afraid to be finished. I wonder whether you know how that could be. Anyway that’s the way it is. I’m trying to keep some kind of discipline together—as much as I can anyway. Today I have probably the hardest work in the whole book. And now I go to it.

  October 31, Wednesday

  The days stretch on and on. I think finally I can see the end but I am afraid to say it any more. And so I will not say. The work yesterday was good I think. The work today is going to be harsh, a good part of it. Some has to be.

  Today is Halloween. I must get presents for the boys and take them up. [...] I am beginning to have some plan of action which I must think out very carefully.

  At work early. We are putting the wallpaper in the dining room after work. I will not increase my work by one single word. So far I have kept my wordage down and I think it has a good deal to do with the pace of the book.

  Now I think to work.

  November 1, Thursday

  Today I should be pretty close to finishing.[...]

  You can see it is going to be a tough day. But I’ll do the best I can. [...]

  Original Draft for

  the Dedication of East of Eden

  To Pascal Covici

  Dear Pat.

  I have decided for this, my book, East of Eden, to write dedication, prologue, argument, apology, epilogue and perhaps epitaph all in one.

  The dedication is to you with all the admiration and affection that have been distilled from our singularly blessed association of many years. This book is inscribed to you because you have been part of its birth and growth.

  As you know, a prologue is written last but placed first to explain the book’s shortcomings and to ask the reader to be kind. But a prologue is also a note of farewell from the writer to his book. For years the writer and his book have been together —friends or bitter enemies but very close as only love and fighting can accomplish.

  Then suddenly the book is done. It is a kind of death. This is the requiem.

  Miguel Cervantes invented the modem novel and with his Don Quijote set a mark high and bright. In his prologue, he said best what writers feel—The gladness and The terror.

  “Idling reader” Cervantes wrote, “you may believe me when I tell you that I should have liked this book, which is the child of my brain, to be The fairest. The sprightliest and The cleverest that could be imagined, but I have not been able to contravene the law of nature which would have it that like begets like—”

  And so it is with me, Pat. Although some times I have felt that I held fire in my hands and spread a page with shining—I have never lost the weight of clumsiness, of ignorance, of aching inability.

  A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

  Well—then the book is done. It has no virtue any more. The writer wants to cry out—“Bring it back! Let me rewrite it or better—Let me burn it. Don’t let it out in the unfriendly cold in that condition.”

  As you know better than most, Pat, the book does not go from writer to reader. It goes first to the lions—editors, publishers, critics, copy readers, sales department. It is kicked and slashed and gouged. And its bloodied father stands attorney.

  EDITOR

  The book is out of balance. The reader expects one thing and you give him something else. You have written two books and stuck them together. The reader will not understand.

  WRITER

  No, sir. It goes together. I have written about one family and used stories about another family as well as counterpoint, as rest, as contrast in pace and color.

  EDITOR

  The reader won’t understand. What you call counterpoint only slows the book.

  WRITER

  It has to be slowed—else how would you know when it goes fast.

  EDITOR

  You have stopped the book and gone into discussions of God knows what.

  WRITER

  Yes, I have. I don’t know why. Just wanted to. Perhaps I was wrong.

  EDITOR

  Right in the middle you throw in a story about your mother and an airplane. The reader wants to know where it ties in and, by God, it doesn’t tie in at all. That disappoints a reader.

  WRITER

  Yes, sir. I guess you’re right. Shall I cut out the story of my mother and the airplane?

  EDITOR

  That’s entirely up to you.

  SALES DEPARTMENT

  The book’s too long. Costs are up. We’ll have to charge five dollars for it. People won’t pay five dollars. They won’t buy it.

  WRITER

  My last book was short. You said then that people won’t buy a short book.

  PROOFREADER

  The chronology is full of holes. The grammar has no relation to English. On page so-and-so you have a man look in the World Almanac for steamship rates. They aren’t there. I checked. You’ve got Chinese New Year wrong. The characters aren’t consistent. You describe Liza Hamilton one way and then have her act a different way.

  EDITOR

  You make Cathy too black. The reader won’t believe her. You make Sam Hamilton too white. The reader won’t believe him. No Irishman ever talked like that.

  WRITER

  My grandfather did.

  EDITOR

  Who’ll believe it.

  SECOND EDITOR

  No children ever talked like that.

  WRITER

  (losing temper as a refuge from despair)

  God dam it. This is my book. I’ll make the children talk any way I want. My book is about good and evil. Maybe the theme got into the execution. Do you want to publish it or not?

  EDITORS

  Let’s see if we can’t fix it up. It won’t be much work. You want it to be good, don’t you? For instance the ending. The reader won’t understand it.

  WRITER

  Do you?

  EDITOR

  Yes, but the reader won’t.

  PROOFREADER

  My god, how you do dangle a participle. Turn to page so-and-so.

  There you are, Pat. You came in with a box of glory and there you stand with an armful of damp garbage.

  And from this meeting a new character has emerged. He is called the Reader.

  THE READER

  He is so stupid you can’t trust him with an idea.

  He is so clever he will catch you in the least error.

  He will not buy short books.

  He will not buy long books.

  He is part moron, part genius and part ogre.

  There is some doubt as to whether he can read.

  Well, by God, Pat, he’s just like me, no stranger at all. He’ll take from my book what he can bring to it. The dull witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn’t know were there.

  And just as he is like me, I hope my book is enough like him so that he may find in it interest and recognition and some beauty as one finds in a friend.

  Cervantes ends his prologue with a lovely line. I want to use it, Pat, and then I will have done. He says to the reader:

  “May God give you health—and may He be not unmindful of me, as well.”

  JOHN STEINBECK

  New York 1952

  1 Although Steinbeck’s spelling in general was exceptionally good, he consistently spelled the word “rhythm” without the first “h”; usually inserted an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun “its” while omitting it from the contraction “it’s”; omitted the apostrophe from “the day’s work” and the like; tended to make two words of such compounds as “background” and wrote “of course” as if it were one. Only changes of this very minor order have been made here. The datelines have been made uniform in style, except that when Steinbeck wrote the wrong day or date, or omitted it, the correct one has been sup
plied in brackets.

  2 The first page of the novel faced the first page of this letter, which ended here in the manuscript. It was headed: THE SALINAS VALLEY, and began: “Dear Tom and John.” The opening paragraphs, and other letters addressed to the boys, persisted through the first draft but were later omitted. The plan to make the chapters alternate rigidly between the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and to address all the Hamilton chapters to the boys, was abandoned earlier.

  3 His sons were living with their mother, Gwyndolen Conger, Steinbeck’s second wife.

  4 Charles Trask in the novel. See page 27.

  5 Waverly Scott, aged fifteen, Elaine’s daughter by her previous marriage, who lived with the Steinbecks.

  6 Chapter 4.

  7 One of Steinbeck’s nieces.

  8 Burgess Meredith, the actor and director.

  9 At the end of Chapter 4 in the novel.

  10 Mrs. Nathaniel Benchley.

  11 Son of Steinbeck’s marine-biologist friend in Pacific Grove, California, “Doc” in Cannery Row. Steinbeck and Ricketts Senior had gone on an expedition together in the Gulf of California which resulted in their collaboration on Sea of Cortez (1941).

  12 Steinbeck had been commissioned to write a film script on the life of Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionist. Annie Laurie Williams, associated with McIntosh and Otis, was his agent for film and stage rights on all his work.

  13 Mrs. Pascal Covici.