As for the likelihood that I won’t attract many Custer “addicts” as readers, you’re probably right, although to tell the truth—even if it sounds like so much crap—I haven’t thought much about readers. I’m 56 and at odd times have thought about the General and the Battle from several points of view—military, literary, artistic, anthropological, and psychological; in them I have found manifestations of most of the things (except feeling) that I have some interest or proficiency in. So the book (if I ever carry it through to completion) will in some senses be a very personal one and so far as I think of it I think of it more in connection with myself than with any set of readers. It could well be such an odd dish that it might not be attractive to any but a few off-beats, and, if so, then that’s the way it has to be, for, even from a practical point of view, I haven’t any chance of success by writing a purely military history of the Battle, or any justification. I have a fair opinion of myself as a (possible) military historian, but I certainly do not put myself in the same league as you and Jim. [. . .]
God Almighty, it is almost five o’clock and time for me to pick up my wife & go home. And I’m tired (even my hand)—I’ve been writing all day. [. . .]
Best to you and Lucille,
Norman
March 23, 1960
Dear Bob,
It sounds splendid, and I hope that you did not altogether waste your time in writing me about the plan of your book and in a sense justifying its reason for being or coming-to-be. It occurred to me after I had asked you for such a letter that I was being somewhat professorial—I guess more of my life than I imagined has been conditioned by doctoral candidates in search of a dissertation so that almost automatically I ask these questions: What’s your problem? Why do you think it is an important one? What do you have to contribute to it that hasn’t already been said?
Well, anyway, you came through your exam with flying colors, and I can justify myself in putting you through it only by assuring you that automatically I ask myself the same questions, even in my daily teaching—although I can’t pretend that I answer my own questions to my own satisfaction as often as I would like. [. . .]
In answer to your question about how my own writing has gone, the answer is not a line since last September. For the punishment I take during the autumn and winter, however, I am getting out of teaching again this spring (although I have to continue my administrative duties). It will take me another two weeks to clean off my desk but I hope by then to start bringing back feebly what I once had in mind and to get to work again.
It might interest you to know that one of the first drafts I wrote last summer was a chapter on the Sioux—from the Battle of the LBH to the present day, all in 20 or 25 pages. I especially dreaded showing you this one, but your letter indirectly takes some of the fear away. [. . .] [Y]ou may feel that the author [i.e., Maclean] did some pretty good guessing, given the fact that one week he was guessing about the Sioux, the next week about the history of advertisement, the next about the history of battlefield painting, etc., etc. Jesus Christ, just to think of last summer amazes me—and depresses me. The part I was working on then—and, alas, haven’t finished—is more than some one of my capacities (and age) should tackle. The part is on the after-life of the Battle and the General, and I can’t know all the things I ought to know to write it. Every chapter—sometimes every section of a chapter—involves an entirely different subject-matter. And if I go on talking this way any longer I’ll never get up courage enough to try to finish the job. And as you well ought to know by now, writing is largely a matter of courage, or not knowing any better.
Good luck,
Norman
Chicago
Aug. 2, ’61
Dear Robert,
I am still hoping to get away to Montana next week, although my wife’s recovery is very slow. In any event, both for your sake and mine, I thought I ought to find time to read your mss. now, and I did, and, Robert, it is beautiful. Also, it is true, my guess is down to the more-or-less last detail and certainly in the general attitude it takes toward the subject.
It is one of the few studies I have read of the struggles between Indian and white that view these struggles as complex and compassionate. I am sick of black-and-white struggles between red-and-white men. Apart from the truth of reality, which is complex as I know it, black-and-white never arouses the moving emotions. I am talking in a sense about the difference between propaganda and poetry. Your account of Wounded Knee, for instance, is a tragedy, not a manifesto, and leaves one thinking about life, not just Indians and cavalry, thinking about the course of events, shaped by a few good guys and a few bad guys but mostly by mixed humanity, good and bad luck, pneumonia, somebody with a big mouth, being crowded too close, having to give up something you can’t, etc. And what I am trying to say about Wounded Knee I mean to say about your view of the whole struggle.
Your writing also is the most mature I have ever seen it. The sentences are clean, swift and sure. I, who am supposed to be noted for comma-picking, have done very little, as you will see. I only wish my own style was as sanitary, or that I enjoyed it as much. I also want to speak of a part of writing that in a way is not verbal—the putting the thing together part by part so that the thing as a whole has a lift. As you have it now, the order and development seem inevitable—as if there were no other way of doing it—and this of course is the right kind of order. [. . .]
If I go to Montana, I’ll stop at the Battlefield for a couple of days to do some checking—chiefly in the Museum. I don’t even know the names of the new Superintendent & Historian. Would you (1) send me these names and (2) write them a brief note, telling them that I’ll be there around the 15th and that I’m more or less on the level.
Best of luck,
Norman
Dec. 20, 1961
Dear Bob,
[. . .] I won’t get a better Xmas present than your kind words about the chapter of my mss you read. I run out of faith in it from time to time, and this autumn I have not been able to make myself work on it at all. It is a very strange and introspective thing to call a history or something of that sort. At times, from its nature I get very involved in it, and then I have long periods when I can’t bear to think of it. Then it seems too personal, too hard to do, and altogether too odd.
Yes, Bob, I shall be glad to send you some of it, and will do so, possibly next week or at least after I get my exams and papers marked, etc. I wouldn’t send any of it to you last year when nothing was so important, so it seemed to me, as for you to finish your own mss [Last Days]. You had it rolling, and you shouldn’t be interrupted by other peoples’ problems, or at least no more than could be helped. But perhaps for the moment you are cooling off between major opuses and would not be prevented from doing something important of your own by looking at a few chapter[s] of my junk. And there’s no one whose judgment I value more. [. . .]
Best wishes to you and Lucille for the coming year and all the years to come.
Norman
Jan. 4, ’62
Dear Bob,
I want very much to take advantage of your offer to put your fishy eye on my mss, for I have lived with it too long alone—or at least long enough. I must confess (I think I’ve already confessed to you) that I regarded an initial stretch of loneliness necessary since this is a pretty introspective study of a battle, one involving a study of topography of certain exposed portions of the surface of the soul (if I may use such a word) more than of the terrain on the eastern bluffs of the LBH 11 miles south of Hardin. But, though introspective in slant, it is naturally supposed to be a slant into reality, and there is always a danger that a certain length of loneliness can turn into an escape from reality. You are one of the few whose judgment I need now before I go on—perhaps before I can go on.
On the other hand, I don’t want my needs to interfere too much [with] your time when you are so productive yourself, and accordingly I am not going to dump the whole mss on you now. I am sending you 5 of the
last 6 chapters—plus a tentative outline of the whole study I made this summer in order that you will get some notion of the whole and the context into which these chapters fit. I wish I could send you one more chapter—the concluding one on the “Shrine to Defeat,” but I was not able to complete it this summer. This is the second time I’ve tried to write this chapter, and ironically I seem to be defeated by Defeat. But I think I explained to you when you were here what I am trying to do in this chapter. Essentially, I am trying to show that our psychological need to deal with defeat is an ultimate common magnetic power that has drawn so many people to this rather small encounter in military history. The chapters I am sending you (which are those that just precede this final chapter) of course have much to do with the last chapter. The four different “plots” analyzed in these chapters become in the last chapter four different psychological ways by which defeat is commonly handled by the generality of mankind. [. . .]
It is probably too early yet for you to have heard from the publisher about the Ghost Dance [Last Days]—but no news from a publisher can be good news, as I certainly hope it turns out to be. Let me know when you know, for I feel almost like a god-father about your book and hope to be one of the first to wish it a long and prosperous life.
Sincerely,
Norman
Feb. 2, 1962
Dear Bob,
I’m delighted to hear that the Ghost Dance, etc., has been accepted by the Yale Press. They’ll do a fine job for you, Bob, first off just as print. Editorially, they will respect your judgment and intention far more than a commercial publishing company would. [. . .]
And thank you in return for your criticisms of my [Custer] mss. I agree with them, almost without exception. As for your major criticism—that I don’t really stand up and announce what I’m doing—I accept that in a way even deeper than you mean it—or, at least, would care to say it to an old friend. I do think I say (perhaps too many times in the total mss) that the Battle is important to me primarily for what it reveals about our psychological terrain—I put you in a real bad spot by asking you to read a series of chapters near the end, and it is in the earlier chapters where I try to make most explicit what the major intentions of the study are. Even so, I am sure I should make the later sign-posts clearer. But my deepest trouble is in trying to find out the underlying psychological significance of the Battle. Alas, I didn’t start writing this thing by knowing ahead of time what I meant to say, except in a very general way. To some one like me, the soul is nothing which is very clear in outline, yet the history, literature and art about the Battle increasingly seemed to me to have more than historical, literary and artistic significance, although I try to start with these. But now, as you know, I believe that in these historical, literary and artistic patterns is revealed something of man’s common mechanisms in dealing with defeat, and the problem of defeat I think is possibly as central in one’s psychological [sic] as sex. I think I’ve already told you that I try to bring the separate insights together in a last chapter called “Shrine to Defeat” and I think I’ve also told you that I’ve tried this summer and last to write this chapter but I can’t complete it. Although I came close to doing it this summer, still I couldn’t finish it and probably nearly all of what I wrote will have to be rewritten—and, worse, still re-thought. I begin to wonder if I’m defeated by defeat, but I keep sticking with it because I know that until I get it out of me there is no use going back and re-working earlier parts.
I’ll enumerate some of the difficulties that are troubling me, if for no other reason than to ask indirectly for your sympathy. (1) I’ve cornered myself into a realm of speculation in which I do not see clearly or move with certainty. Who am I to get involved with the soul? (2) The particular area I have been led to seems especially guarded by secrecy. Defeat, like sex, is hard to think about. It is one of the unmentionables that most people do not like to name. (3) At the other end, the bottom end of the ladder, are the data (historical, literary and artistic) which led to my speculations. But I do not want to see more in the data than are there, and I do not wish to write a personal essay. (4) On the other hand, in this little body of data about this little Battle I do believe there is a body of general significance. I say “body” because I feel they are related to one another, and are not just revealing of this or that individual. Perhaps I could put it this way. Not every thing, God knows, that can be learned about defeat is imbedded in these data, but imbedded in the bones is a body of knowledge, not a monumental work, but a little essay (perhaps somewhat sardonic) on defeat, and until I can write it I am only wasting my time trying to rewrite the chapter that led me there. Pray for my soul, and, in return, I will promise you that if I ever get this thing all written I will thereafter write only when I know and not write in order to try to find out something I want to know.
Perhaps by the middle of April I’ll try once more. Right now, I don’t have the time, energy or fortitude. And thanks again for your time and discernment and care.
Best wishes,
Norman
Jan. 23, 1963
Dear Bob,
Thanks very much for your letter and the copy of the reviews of your last book,16 both of which I am acknowledging immediately but from the hospital where I have been for 3½ weeks, although I am hoping to get out this weekend. Nothing serious, though, I believe. During the last six or seven years I have had attacks of what seems to be dysentery that gets beyond any kind of control—my God, this one started back in November. [. . .]
During the last few days when I have been feeling better I have given a little thought to the remains of Custer that are in my possession. I hardly need tell you that for the last 3 years I have done nothing of importance to add to them. In the last year I have had only 2 or 3 months of good health. The year before my wife was sick all the time and in the hospital for 3 months—and still lives a pretty feeble existence. Then the year before that I was sick so the story of my story of Custer is that for a couple of summers [1959, 1960] I got a lot done—since then it might as well have been his grave-marker. But I am determined in the next month or so to face up to what reality there is, and decide either to go back to work on it or write it off for good. I’m sure I’ve quoted one of Matthew Arnold’s lines to you, since it is such a favorite of mine—“Born between two worlds, one dead and the other powerless to be born.” Well, that’s Custer and me, but I am going to do something about it. The mathematical odds are that I’ll quit it. I don’t know anything about it any more, it doesn’t interest me, I have no one around here to turn to who is interested in it. Even the geography is uncongenial. But if my health comes back and my wife remains reasonably well, who knows? It’s wonderful what foolish and uninteresting things one can do when one is healthy and so is his family.
Well, Bob, I had better put an end to this letter soon or I’ll be having a relapse. But not before telling you again of my admiration for what you have done and my hopes for what you will do.
As ever,
[no signature though the letter is handwritten]
[P.S.] God, Bob, if you lived close I’d even finish that book on Custer. Such is your power over me.
April 5, 1963
Dear Bob,
[. . .] Long ago I told you that I hope for a kind of dual audience for my study—the Custer cultists and a larger audience interested also in larger literary, cultural and psychological problems, so the question I have asked about your study [presumably Custer and the Great Controversy] might throw some light on my problem, for, although I have hoped for a dual audience, I have always known the danger of not hitting one target when aiming at two. To the Custer cultist, the literary, psychological stuff may very well sound like so much bull shit, and to the reader interested in this all the military detail, etc. may be for the birds and the hobbyists and the boys who want to play Indians.
Anyway first day off I also read your letter and comments on the three or four chapters I sent you over a year ago, and I want you to know that
I take them very much to heart. In essence, they said that I wasn’t making clear what I was doing, and I acknowledge the general justness of this criticism. In fact, if I hadn’t come to some such realization myself before you voiced it for me, I probably would have made more progress than I have during the last two summers, when I have written nothing that meets my approval. There are, I suppose, 2 extreme kinds of composition. The first is the kind that you have fairly well worked out in your mind before you write—as Sheridan, who when he was asked how the next comedy was coming, answered, “It’s all finished; all I have to do is write it.” The other extreme form is when something is bothering you and you start writing to find out why. All of us, undoubtedly, have tried our hand at both, but the Custer thing is definitely something that bothered me for a long time and so some years ago I started writing. I think I had to, and I’m sure now that I have to go on, if for no other reason than that I have so much time invested in it (even though often I wish I had never started in this mess). But I’m wised up on a couple of things now. One is that it helped for the first couple of summers to write “just as it came to me,” guided from the outside by nothing much more than a topic outline of the whole, and some of these early parts are, I think, good. I won’t call the last 2 summers [a] waste, although, as I said, what I wrote then is not good. This year I’m not going to write until I can say to myself what I think—what I think the whole is and what are its parts. Be consoling, Bob, and patient. I face one or two tough alternatives. First of all, I don’t have any models for the kind of “history” I am trying to write; I don’t have any models of methodology (at least, none that suit me) and I have no compendium of truths to rely upon, and yetI aspire for something sounder, more objective than “so it seems to me.” I like to think that in a month or so I’ll clarify and systematize my premonitions—and then be able to proceed, not to something as strange and searching as I once hoped it would be, but at least to something unified and of proper size.
The Norman Maclean Reader Page 27
