The Life of Margaret Laurence
Page 43
24 “naked and slippery”: Dance, 143.
25 “Fortunately”: 8 June 1953. MS: York.
26 “It happened”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 27 November 1953. MS: York.
27 “When Mum went back”: Dance, 109.
28 “You are the only person”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 16 January 1953 [really 1954]. MS: York.
29 “I am doing”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 16 January 1953 [really 1954]. MS: York. An earlier letter to Adele Wiseman of 27 November 1953 (MS: York) confirms this, showing that ML’s third, unpublished novel was told, like This Side Jordan, from two perspectives, one black, the other white: “It’s got two parts, really and within those parts it’s made up of related but separated episodes—I don’t know whether that’s a bad thing or not, but I don’t think it can be helped, because it takes place in two worlds, so to speak, the Somali and the European. I had hoped to have the first draft done by the time we go home on leave, but I won’t even have part one done.”
30 “Yet there was a weariness”: Dance, 110.
31 “Now for the big news”: MS: York.
32 Jack Laurence: Interview with him, December 1994.
33 “I suppose having”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 10 March 1954. MS: York.
34 “Sometimes, I feel”; “Don’t bother”: Dance, 145–6.
35 “Well, sometimes”: Dance, 147.
36 “I thought”: Dance, 145.
37 “an African midwife”: Dance, 151.
38 “When the final stage”: Dance, 148–9.
39 “No, I want”: Dance, 149–50.
40 “I began writing”: Dance, 152.
41 writing of This Side Jordan. See ML to Adele Wiseman, 3 April 1956. MS: York.
42 “dark, dusty”: Dance, 111.
43 “couldn’t understand”: Dance, 111.
44 “Just before the taxi”: Dance, 112.
45 “I scribbled”: Dance, 152.
46 “An odd thing”; “an intellectual desert”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 3 April 1956. MS: York.
47 “There were times”: Dance, 153.
48 Ofosu: I have not been able to uncover more documentary information about him than that given above. Ofosu is, however, “Mensah” in the essay “The Very Best Intentions,” first published in 1964 and then reprinted in Heart of a Stranger (33–43), where ML provided an introduction to the piece: “This was the first article I ever had published. It appeared in 1964. I was nervous about it because the friend I was describing was still living in Ghana, a known opponent to the Nkrumah regime. I took pains to conceal his identity—his name isn’t Mensah and he isn’t a lawyer. He subsequently got out of Ghana, with his family, and lived in America for some years. After the fall of Nkrumah, he was able to return home.” (33).
49 ML and Ofosu: Heart of a Stranger, 34ff.
50 “fairly intense”: Interview with Cay, August 1995.
51 “except for Jack”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 10 March 1954. MS: York.
52 “I can’t talk”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 23 July 1956. MS: York.
53 “I’ve finished”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 28 May 1956. MS: York.
54 “Did you feel”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 10 July 1956. MS: York.
55 “—Oh, River”: This Side Jordan, 270.
56 an African voice: “Voice” and the appropriation of it are central issues in critical discussions of ML’s African fiction. W.H. New in “The Other and I: Laurence’s African Stories,” in A Place to Stand On: Essays by and about Margaret Laurence, 113–34, maintains that the stories told by an African storyteller are flawed because ML does not sufficiently understand the perspective of such narrators. ML, however, was sympathetic to such figures, whereas she later felt that she had been much too distant and critical of Miranda’s point of view in This Side Jordan. Chinua Achebe, in Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays (London: Heinemann, 1975), 12, maintains that ML had an excellent understanding of the writings discussed in Long Drums and Cannons; there can be no doubt that such a sensibility and sympathy can be found in the West African stories and This Side Jordan.
57 “Just before”: Dance, 112.
58 “My aunt”: MS: York.
CHAPTER NINE
1 “Great Air Disasters”: Heart of a Stranger, 134.
2 “You’re young”: Dance, 113.
3 “I often felt”: Dance, 113.
4 “She not only”: Dance, 114–5.
5 “I have a room”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 18 February 1957. MS: York.
6 “Every day”; “I decided”: Dance, 115.
7 “I think”: Dance, 116.
8 “Dear, I think”: Dance, 117.
9 “Honestly”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 1 December 1957. MS: York.
10 “Despite the fact”: Dance, 117.
11 “I picture”; “because you”; “an overpowering urge”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 17 March 1957. MS: York.
12 “it was a stinking place”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 17 February 1958. MS: York.
13 “The nurses tied”: Dance, 119.
14 “had turned very dark”: Dance, 120.
15 “I’ve never liked”: Dance, 120.
16 “God, please”: ML Journal, 2 December 1986. MS: McMaster.
17 “good for laughs”; “When I saw”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 12 June 1957. MS: York.
18 “When you have”: MS: York.
19 “Now, Adele”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 17 February 1958. MS: York.
20 “country people”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 14 August 1958. MS: York.
21 “I am not much”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 22 December 1958. MS: York.
22 “I really don’t care”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 May 1959. MS: York.
23 “however you cut”; “veritable babe”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 28 February 1959. MS: York.
24 “Both, in their widely”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 28 February 1959. MS: York.
25 “I have been hearing”: Gordon Elliott to Jack McClelland, 1 March 1959. MS: McClelland & Stewart Archive, McMaster.
26 “I very much appreciate”: Jack McClelland to Gordon Elliott, 5 March 1989. MS: McClelland & Stewart Archive, McMaster.
27 “purple prose”: ML to Janis Rapoport, 5 February 1968; Wainwright, 156.
28 “Hurrah!”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 1 December 1959. MS: York.
29 “Without periodic”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 May 1959. MS: York.
30 “puerile outpourings”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 15 May 1959. MS: York.
31 “if we did not”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 21 July 1960. MS: York.
32 “bawled like”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 6 May 1960. MS: York.
33 “Whoever heard”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 16 January 1960. MS: York.
34 “It was fairly primitive”: Dance, 157.
35 “everybody and his dog”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 6 May 1960. MS: York.
36 “bashing away”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 15 May 1959. MS: York.
37 “quite a number”; “about a dwarf”; “about an Italian-American”; “a man’s reach”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 30 October 1959. MS: York.
38 “She is so terrific”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 June 1962. MS: York. characterization of Nathaniel and Miranda: The West African stories and, in particular, This Side Jordan—in which a direct contrast/comparison between the white heroine and the black schoolmaster is the basis of the plot action—is in part indebted to ML’s reading of Pamela Powesland’s 1956 translation of O. Mannoni’s Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, published in French in 1950. On 10 January 1971, ML told Margaret Atwood: “The whole colonial situation, of course (i.e. the woman as black) I not unnaturally figured out years ago when living in Africa, helped somewhat by the French psychologist Mannoni, whose book … for a time was my bible.” Wainwright, 2.
39 “I could have wept”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 May 1959. MS: York. The best general treatment of ML’s West African stories, This Side Jordan and Long Drums and Cannons can be found in Fiona Sparrow’s excellent book, Into Africa with Margaret Laurence (Toronto: ECW Press, 19
92). See also the helpful, discerning introduction by Donez Xiques to the 1993 edition of A Tree for Poverty, (Toronto: ECW Press and McMaster University Library Press, 1993), 7–17.
40 “I reviewed my life”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 21 July 1960. MS: York.
41 “I presume”; “This particular”: MS: McClelland and Stewart Archive. McMaster.
42 “I have just returned”: Jack McClelland to Ian MacKenzie, 28 November 1960. MS: McClelland & Stewart Archive. McMaster.
43 “I’ve had”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 3 December 1960. MS: York.
44 “I enclose”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 September 1961. MS: York.
45 “I always felt”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 September 1961. MS: York.
46 “Jack McC”: MS: York.
47 “planned in rough”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 29 October 1960. MS: York.
48 “Right now”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 29 October 1960. MS: York.
49 “over, and I”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 22 January 1961. MS: York.
50 “I’ve changed my name”: MS: York.
CHAPTER TEN
1 “sick of Africa”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 22 January 1961. MS: York.
2 “know enough”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 22 January 1961. MS: York.
3 “Re: your suggestion”: ML to Jack McClelland, 22 January 1961. MS: McMaster.
4 “My view hasn’t changed”: Jack McClelland to ML, 26 January 1961. MS copy: McMaster.
5 “were so permeated”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 29 March 1961. MS: York.
6 “he is one”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 29 March 1961. MS: York.
7 “Probably the publishers”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 September 1961. MS: York.
8 “What amuses me”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 September 1961. MS: York.
9 “we don’t seem”: MS: York.
10 “You’re the first woman”: Interview with June and Fred Schulhof, May 1995.
11 Girl Guide cookies: Interview with Gordon Elliott, December 1994.
12 Lino Magagna: Interview with him, October 1995.
13 Mona and Jack: Interview with Mona Meredith, May 1995.
14 the Laurence marriage: Interview with Nadine Jones, May 1995.
15 “the fact that I once”: ML to Al Purdy, 2 July 1968. MS: Queen’s.
16 “you said that it seemed”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 12 March 1965. MS: Gordon Elliott.
17 Alice recalled: Wainwright, 142.
18 “I didn’t so much mind”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 September 1961. MS: York.
19 “I wrote to Mr. Buchholzer’s publishers”: 24 July 1962. MS: Macmillan Archive, Basingstoke.
20 “I wrote it”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 8 October 1961. MS: York.
21 “I wrote The Stone Angel“: ML Journal, 30 August 1986. MS: McMaster.
22 John Simpson and Hagar: Interview with Budge Wilson, April 1995.
23 Buckler: ML told Ernest Buckler on 30 August 1974 (Wainwright, 26): “My first novel had recently come out, and I was beginning to think seriously about how I could return … to the background which was truly my own. Your novel both scared and heartened me—the power and scope of it.”
24 Hagar and her father: In The Crafting of Chaos (Rodopi: Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1994), Hildegard Kuester argues: “In The Stone Angel male identity is synonymous with strength, whereas female identity embodies weakness. Since Hagar defines herself as strong and independent, the gap between her own ideas of herself and her female role seems to be insurmountable. Her difficulty in finding a fully fledged identity originates in a manifest imbalance between traditionally male and female values” (43).
25 “I used to wonder”; “I can’t”: The Stone Angel, 59, 25.
26 “My feeling”: Rosemary Sullivan, “An Interview with Margaret Laurence,” A Place to Stand On, 68, 69.
27 “terrible mess”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 17 March 1962. MS: York.
28 “the old-lady novel”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 June 1962. MS: York.
29 “I often feel”; “kind of screen”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 August 1962. MS: York.
30 “I always had the feeling”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 January 1962. MS: York.
31 “How much of yourself”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 June 1962. MS: York.
32 “I have far too much respect”: MS: York.
33 “When I wrote”: Dance, 158.
34 ML as essentially a short story writer: See ML to Adele Wiseman, 11 December 1962. MS: York.
35 “How can I”: The Fire-Dwellers, 123.
36 “I am taking”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 June 1962. MS: York.
37 “I am back”: MS: McMaster.
38 “abroad again”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 13 January 1962. MS: York.
39 “Jack and I have been trying”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 17 August [1962]. MS: McMaster.
40 “It is still not quite certain”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 29 August 1962. MS: York.
41 “I met the other day”: MS: York.
42 ML’s affair with Lamming: When I met with George Lamming in Barbados in June 1996, he told me he had met ML at a party given by Binky Marks, the proprietor of The Co-Op Bookstore on Pender Street, in Vancouver; he thought they had perhaps seen one another one further time. Their conversations had been political in nature, centring on their mutual interest in Ghana, which he had visited. He did not recall that their relationship had ever become intimate, but when I asked him to deny statements by ML to the contrary, he refused to do so on the grounds that it was not his “style” to comment on such matters. I pressed him on this point several times, since, I pointed out, it should be relatively easy—despite his “style”—to state something that had not occurred had indeed not occurred. He refused to make any further statement. ML alleged to many women friends that she had slept with Lamming; shortly before she died, she mentioned her affair with Lamming to her daughter and named him as her lover.
43 “When I first found out”: ML to Don Bailey, 12 February 1972. MS: University of Toronto.
44 “was a crucial”: ML Journal, 27 October 1986. MS: McMaster.
45 “very revolutionary”; “although Jack”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 August 1962. MS: York.
46 “I suppose I should say”: Dance, 158.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1 “My real concern”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 5 August 1962. MS: York.
2 Mona and ML’s affair: Interview with Mona Meredith, May 1995.
3 “Well, to begin”: ML to Adele Wiseman, undated. MS: York.
4 “When I first came”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 16 January 1969. MS: York.
5 “I almost seemed”: Dance, 159–60.
6 “She told me”: Dance, 129.
7 “We have landed”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 28 October 1962. MS: York.
8 “I have just been”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 29 October 1962. MS: York.
9 “Right now”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 1 November 1962. MS: McMaster.
10 “initial elation”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 25 November 1962. MS: York.
11 “It may not be everybody’s”; “yours truly quaffed:” ML to Adele Wiseman, 11 December 1962. MS: York.
12 “Sex”: ML to Al Purdy, 2 July 1968. MS: Queen’s.
13 “lower than a snake’s belly”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 11 February 1963. MS: York.
14 “I think this is because”; “everything must be”; “Also, as with suicide”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 11 February 1963. MS: York.
15 “But I knew”: Dance, 162.
16 “I don’t think I ever”: ML to Al Purdy, 27 April 1967. Lennox, 21–22.
17 “I mourned her”: ML to Ernest Buckler, 30 August 1974. Wainwright, 28.
18 “Probably they won’t”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 1 November 1962. MS: McMaster.
19 “I am sure”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 10 March 1963. MS: McMaster.
20 “I do not feel”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 29 April 1963. MS: McMaster.
21 “man in a million”; “sweated blood”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 12 June 1963. MS: York.
22 “skidding”:
ML to Adele Wiseman, 18 February 1963. MS: York.
23 “unexpectedly appealing”; “Later, Alan”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 18 February 1963. MS: York.
24 “Re: my story”: 2 December 1964. MS: Macmillan Archive, Basingstoke. This story was published in Chatelaine in 1967.
25 “At the moment”: ML to Jack McClelland, 17 January 1963. MS: McMaster.
26 Alan Maclean and Hagar: ML to Adele Wiseman, 14 February 1963. MS: York.
27 “Then I feel like”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 18 February 1963. MS: York.
28 “father-type husband”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 8 March 1965. MS: York.
29 “P.S. I apologize”: ML to Gordon Elliott, 29 April 1963. MS: McMaster.
30 “Can you bear”: ML to Adele Wiseman, 17 August 1963. MS: York.
31 “It seems to me”: ML to Jack McClelland, 29 June 1963. MS: McMaster.
32 “in advance”: Alfred A. Knopf to Jack McClelland, 3 July 1963. MS: McMaster.
33 “While I could not”: Jack McClelland to Alfred A. Knopf, 5 July 1963. MS: Knopf Archive, University of Texas.
34 “This is simply”: Jack McClelland to Herbert Weinstock, 10 April 1959. MS: McClelland & Stewart Archive, McMaster.
35 “whoever takes her up”: Alfred Knopf to Jack McClelland, 3 July 1963. MS: McClelland & Stewart Archive, McMaster.
36 “More often than not”: Jack McClelland to ML, 5 July 1963. MS copy: McMaster.
37 “I am sorry to be nasty”: ML to Jack McClelland, 8 July 1963. MS: McMaster.
38 Blanche Knopf: Blanche Knopf to Josephine Rogers (Willis Wing Agency), 19 February 1963. MS: Texas. Patrick Gregory’s comments are included in a letter from Alfred Knopf to Jack McClelland, 11 June 1963; MS: Texas.
39 Reports on ML: All these reports are in the Margaret Laurence folder in the Knopf Archive at the University of Texas.
40 “Well, we are taking”: Alfred A. Knopf to Jack McClelland, 15 August 1963. MS: Texas.
41 Alfred Knopf and the geography of The Stone Angel: MS: Texas.
42 “I don’t think”: Jack McClelland to Alfred A. Knopf, 21 August 1963. MS: McMaster.
43 “This title”: ML to Jack McClelland, 26 August 1963. MS: McMaster. dispute over title: See ML to Jack McClelland, 27 September 1963. MS: McMaster.