Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

by Mason Currey

  371. “Let’s face it”: Interview with Matthiessen and Plimpton.

  372. “I often have”: Interview with James L. W. West III, “A Bibliographer’s Interview with William Styron,” Costerus, 1975, in West, 204.

  373. “certain visionary moments”: Interview with Hilary Mills, “Creators on Creating: William Styron,” Saturday Review, September 1980, in West, 241.

  374. “I think it’s been”: Ibid., 240.

  375. Philip Roth: David Remnick, “Into the Clear,” New Yorker, May 8, 2000, 76–89; George J. Searles, ed., Conversations with Philip Roth (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992).

  376. “Writing isn’t hard”: Quoted in Katharine Weber, “Life, Counterlife,” Connecticut, February 1987, in Searles, 218.

  377. “I write from”: Quoted in Ronald Hayman, “Philip Roth: Should Sane Women Shy Away from Him at Parties?” London Sunday Times Magazine, March 22, 1981, in Searles, 118.

  378. “I live alone”: Quoted in Remnick, 79.

  379. P. G. Wodehouse: Herbert Warren Wind, “Chap with a Good Story to Tell,” New Yorker, May 15, 1971, 43–101; Robert McCrum, Wodehouse: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).

  380. “I seem to”: Quoted in Wind, 45.

  381. “Wodehouse does his”: Wind, 89.

  382. “he might snooze”: McCrum, 405.

  383. Edith Sitwell: Elizabeth Salter, Edith Sitwell (1979; repr. London: Bloomsbury Books, 1988); Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981).

  384. “the only time”: Quoted in Salter, 16.

  385. “All women should”: Quoted ibid., 17.

  386. “I am honestly”: Quoted in Glendinning, 204.

  387. Thomas Hobbes: John Aubrey, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (1949; repr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957); Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers (New York: Vintage Books, 2009).

  388. “threw himself immediately”: Aubrey, 155.

  389. “he did believe”: Ibid.

  390. John Milton: John Aubrey, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (1949; repr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957); Helen Darbishire, ed., The Early Lives of Milton (1932; repr. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965).

  391. “would complain”: John Phillips, “The Life of Mr. John Milton,” in Darbishire, 33.

  392. René Descartes: Jack Rochford Vrooman, René Descartes: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970).

  393. “Here I sleep”: Quoted ibid., 76.

  394. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: David Luke and Robert Pick, eds., Goethe: Conversations and Encounters (London: Oswald Wolff, 1966).

  395. “At one time”: Quoted ibid., 177.

  396. “My advice therefore”: Quoted ibid., 178.

  397. Friedrich Schiller: Heinrich Doering, Friedrich von Schillers Leben, in Thomas Carlyle’s Life of Friedrich Schiller, facsimile ed. (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992); Bernt Von Heiseler, Schiller, trans. John Bednall (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962).

  398. “On his sitting”: Doering, 111.

  399. “We have failed”: Quoted in Von Heiseler, 103.

  400. Franz Schubert: Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends, trans. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1958).

  401. “used to sit down”: Anselm Hüttenbrenner, “Fragments from the Life of the Song Composer Franz Schubert,” 1854, in ibid., 182.

  402. “Schubert never composed”: Ibid., 183.

  403. “Schubert was extraordinarily”: Leopold von Sonnleithner, November 1, 1857, in Deutsch, 109.

  404. Franz Liszt: Adrian Williams, Portrait of Liszt: By Himself and His Contemporaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

  405. “He rose at four”: Quoted ibid., 484.

  406. “To live one’s”: Quoted ibid., 482.

  407. George Sand: George Sand, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand: A Group Translation, ed. Thelma Jurgrau (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991).

  408. “If I did not”: Ibid., 927.

  409. “It is said”: Ibid., 928.

  410. Honoré de Balzac: Herbert J. Hunt, Honoré de Balzac: A Biography (London: University of London, 1957); Graham Robb, Balzac: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).

  411. “orgies of work”: Hunt, 65.

  412. “The days melt”: Quoted in Robb, 164.

  413. Victor Hugo: Graham Robb, Victor Hugo (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).

  414. “these were the days”: Ibid., 404–5.

  415. “As soon as he”: Quoted ibid., 406.

  416. Charles Dickens: Peter Ackroyd, Dickens (New York: HarperCollins, 1990); Jane Smiley, Charles Dickens (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002).

  417. without certain conditions: Ackroyd, 503, 561–2.

  418. Dickens’s working hours: Ibid., 561.

  419. “no city clerk”: Quoted ibid.

  420. “searching for some”: Quoted ibid., 563.

  421. “he looked the”: Smiley, 23.

  422. Charles Darwin: Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1 (New York: Basic Books, 1959); “Charles Darwin,” Encyclopœdia Britannica, 2009, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/151902/Charles-Darwin.

  423. the “extreme edge”: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  424. “like confessing”: Ibid.

  425. a quiet, monkish life: Darwin, 87–136.

  426. “I’ve done a”: Quoted ibid., 91.

  427. “became extremely animated”: Ibid., 101.

  428. “kind of restrained”: Ibid., 121.

  429. Herman Melville: Herman Melville, Correspondence: The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 14, ed. Lynn Horth (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1993).

  430. “I rise at eight”: Herman Melville to Evert Duyckinck, December 13, 1850, in Correspondence, 174.

  431. “I have a sort”: Ibid., 173.

  432. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Malcolm Cowley, ed., The Portable Hawthorne, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1969); Randall Stewart, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography, (1948; repr. North Haven, CT: Archon Books, 1970).

  433. “As the years”: Cowley, 2.

  434. “I religiously seclude”: Quoted in Stewart, 112.

  435. Leo Tolstoy: Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy’s Diaries, ed. and trans. R. F. Christian (London: Flamingo, 1994); Sergei Tolstoy, Tolstoy Remembered by His Son, trans. Moura Budberg (New York: Atheneum, 1962); Tatyana Tolstoy, Tolstoy Remembered, trans. Derek Coltman (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977).

  436. “I must write”: Diaries, 166.

  437. “From September”: Sergei Tolstoy, 53–4.

  438. account by Tolstoy’s daughter: Tatyana Tolstoy, 20.

  439. “At five we”: Sergei Tolstoy, 55.

  440. Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky: David Brown, Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music (New York: Pegasus Books, 2007); David Brown, Tchaikovsky: The Final Years: 1855–1893, (vol. 4) (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).

  441. “What a joy”: Quoted in The Man and His Music, 284.

  442. “was not only pleasure”: Quoted in The Final Years, 19.

  443. “Before setting about”: Quoted ibid., 21.

  444. “Somewhere at sometime”: Quoted ibid.

  445. “The seed of a”: Quoted in The Man and His Music, 207.

  446. “always found himself”: Quoted in The Final Years, 22.

  447. Mark Twain: Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain, vol. 1 (1912; repr. New York: Chelsea House, 1997); William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910; Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1997).

  448. “On hot days”: Quoted in Paine, 509.

  449. “the whole house”: Howells, 45.

  450. “In those days”: Ibid., 38–9.

  451. Alexander Graham Bell: Charlotte Gray, Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006).

  452. “It is hard work”:
Quoted ibid., 177.

  453. “I have my periods”: Quoted ibid., 204.

  454. “I wonder do you”: Quoted ibid., 265.

  455. Vincent van Gogh: Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2000).

  456. “Today again from”: Ibid., 48.

  457. “in a dumb fury”: Ibid., 203.

  458. “Our days pass”: Ibid., 101.

  459. N. C. Wyeth: David Michaelis, N. C. Wyeth: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998).

  460. “fortified by grapefruit”: Ibid., 293.

  461. “It’s the hardest”: Quoted ibid., 294.

  462. Georgia O’Keeffe: John Loengard, Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch: A Photo Essay (New York: Steward, Tabori and Chang, 1995); Lisa Mintz Messinger, Georgia O’Keeffe (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001); C. S. Merrill, O’Keeffe: Days in a Life (New Mexico: La Alameda Press, 1995).

  463. “I like to”: Quoted in Loengard, 8.

  464. a typical meal: Merrill, 23.

  465. “On the other”: Quoted in Messinger, 182.

  466. “When I think”: Quoted ibid.

  467. Sergey Rachmaninoff: Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda, Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (New York: New York University Press, 1956).

  468. “Some pianists say”: Quoted ibid., 295.

  469. “today I worked”: Quoted ibid., 136.

  470. Vladimir Nabokov: Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (1973; repr. New York: Vintage International, 1990); Vladimir Nabokov, “Nabokov on Nabokov and Things,” New York Times, May 12, 1968, http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-v-things.html.

  471. “I generally start”: Interview with Alvin Toffler, Playboy, 1963, in Strong Opinions, 29.

  472. “I awake around”: Ibid., 28–9.

  473. “My habits are simple”: Interview with Allene Talmey, Vogue, 1969, in Strong Opinions, 157.

  474. “soccer matches”: Interview with Kurt Hoffman in Strong Opinions, 191.

  475. “I sleep even worse”: “Nabokov on Nabokov and Things.”

  476. Balthus: Balthus with Alain Vircondelet, Vanished Splendors: A Memoir, trans. Benjamin Ivry (New York: Ecco, 2002); Nicholas Fox Weber, Balthus: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

  477. “This is the”: Balthus with Vircondelet, 3.

  478. “I’ve always painted”: Ibid., 147.

  479. Le Corbusier: Nicholas Fox Weber, Le Corbusier: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008); Jerzy Soltan, “Working with Le Corbusier,” http://www.archsociety.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.24.

  480. “The process of”: Soltan.

  481. Buckminster Fuller: J. Baldwin, BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today (New York: Wiley, 1996); Elizabeth Kolbert, “Dymaxion Man,” New Yorker, June 9, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_kolbert.

  482. “A series of trials”: Baldwin, 66.

  483. “disconcerted observers”: Ibid.

  484. Paul Erdos: Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth (New York: Hyperion, 1998).

  485. “he only needed”: Quoted ibid., 256.

  486. “You’ve showed me”: Quoted ibid., 16.

  487. “A mathematician”: Quoted ibid., 7.

  488. Andy Warhol: Pat Hackett, introduction to The Andy Warhol Diaries (New York: Warner Books, 1989).

  489. “Keeping to his”: Hackett, xv–xvi.

  490. Edward Abbey: David Petersen, ed., Postcards from Ed: The Collected Correspondence of Edward Abbey, 1949–1989 (Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 2006).

  491. “When I’m writing”: Edward Abbey to Morton Kamins, December 14, 1981, in ibid., 107–8.

  492. “I hate commitments”: Edward Abbey to David Petersen, July 25, 1988, in Petersen, 152.

  493. V. S. Pritchett: Jeremy Treglown, V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life (New York: Random House, 2004); Complete Collected Essays (New York: Random House, 1991).

  494. “Pritchett was a”: Treglown, 3.

  495. “clocked on”: Quoted ibid., 203.

  496. Edmund Wilson: Lewis M. Dabney, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Jeffrey Meyers, Edmund Wilson: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995); Louis Menand, “Missionary,” New Yorker, August 8, 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/08/050808crat_atlarge.

  497. “Wilson was the”: Dabney, 4.

  498. “at the Princeton club”: Quoted in Meyers, 48–9.

  499. “You have to set”: Quoted ibid., 77.

  500. “To write what”: Quoted in Menand.

  501. John Updike: Interview with Zvonimir Radeljkovic and Omer Hadziselimovic, Knjizevna Smotra, 1979, at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/10/american-centaur-an-interview-with-john-updike.html; interview with Charles Thomas Samuels, “The Art of Fiction No. 43: John Updike,” Paris Review, Winter 1968, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4219/the-art-of-fiction-no-43-john-updike; John Updike, introduction to The Early Stories: 1953–1975 (2003; repr. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004); interview with the Academy of Achievement, June 12, 2004, http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/upd0int-1.

  502. “I would write”: Interview with Samuels.

  503. “Around noon the”: Updike, xvii.

  504. “I try to”: Interview with Radeljkovic and Hadziselimovic.

  505. A solid routine: Interview with the Academy of Achievement.

  506. Albert Einstein: Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: His Life and Times (1971; repr. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007).

  507. “Einstein would pose”: Quoted ibid., 746.

  508. L. Frank Baum: Katharine M. Rogers, L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002).

  509. “My characters just”: Quoted ibid., 179.

  510. Knut Hamsun: Ingar Sletten Kolloen, Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter, trans. Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

  511. “A great deal”: Quoted ibid., 127–8.

  512. Willa Cather: L. Brent Bohlke, ed., Willa Cather in Person (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).

  513. “I work from two”: Latrobe Carroll, “Miss Cather” in Bohlke, 23–4.

  514. Ayn Rand: Anne C. Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2009); Mary Ann Sures, “Working for Ayn Rand,” in Mary Ann Sures and Charles Sures, Facets of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand Institute, http://facetsofaynrand.com/book/chap1-working_for_ayn_rand.html.

  515. According to the: Heller, 147.

  516. “She was very”: Sures.

  517. George Orwell: D. J. Taylor, Orwell: The Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003).

  518. Waking at 7:00: Ibid., 148.

  519. Bachelor Griller: Ibid., 155.

  520. James T. Farrell: Robert K. Landers, An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004).

  521. “needed someone to”: Quoted ibid., 405.

  522. Jackson Pollock: Deborah Solomon, Jackson Pollock: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); “Unframed Space,” The Talk of the Town, New Yorker, August 5, 1950, 16.

  523. “I’ve got the”: “Unframed Space.”

  524. Carson McCullers: Josyane Savigneau, Carson McCullers: A Life, trans. Joan E. Howard (1995; repr. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); Virginia Spencer Carr, The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975); Carson McCullers, Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers, ed. Carlos L. Dews (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).

  525. pact with her husband: Savigneau, 56. 205 McCullers wrote every day: Carr, 78–9.

  526. McCullers later recalled: McCullers, 18.

  527. Willem de Kooning: Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: An American Master (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

  528. “Typically, the couple”: Ibid., 197
–8.

  529. Jean Stafford: Fern Marja Eckman, “Adding a Pulitzer to the Collection,” New York Post, May 9, 1970, 21; David Roberts, Jean Stafford: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988).

  530. “worn, patient”: Eckman.

  531. “I’m a compulsive”: Quoted ibid.

  532. “Does she write”: Ibid.

  533. “I stay in”: Quoted in Roberts, 384.

  534. Donald Barthelme: Helen Moore Barthelme, Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001).

  535. “the process of”: Ibid., xiv.

  536. “during these first”: Ibid., 94.

  537. Alice Munro: Robert Thacker, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives: A Biography (Toronto: Douglas Gibson, 2005).

  538. “very big on”: Quoted ibid., 130.

  539. Jerzy Kosinski: Interview with Rocco Landesman, “The Art of Fiction No. 46: Jerzy Kosinski,” Paris Review, Summer 1972, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4036/the-art-of-fiction-no-46-jerzy-kosinski; Jerzy Kosinski, Blind Date (New York: Grove Press, 1977).

  540. “When he was”: Kosinski., 1.

  541. “I guess both”: Interview with Landesman.

  542. Isaac Asimov: Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir (New York: Doubleday, 1994).

  543. “The overriding factor”: Ibid., 36.

  544. “I must have”: Ibid., 38.

  545. Oliver Sacks: E-mail message to author, March 17, 2010.

  546. Anne Rice: Interview with author, January 27, 2011.

  547. Charles Schulz: David Michaelis, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (New York: Harper, 2007).

  548. “just sit there”: Quoted ibid., 370.

  549. “I would feel”: Quoted ibid., 363.

  550. William Gass: Theodore G. Ammon, ed., Conversations with William H. Gass (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003); Diane Ackerman, “O Muse! You Do Make Things Difficult!” New York Times, November 12, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/reviews/ackerman-poets.html; interview with Thomas LeClair, “William Gass: The Art of Fiction No. 65,” Paris Review, Summer 1977, http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3576/the-art-of-fiction-no-65-william-gass.

  551. In a 1998 interview: Richard Abowitz, “Still Digging: A William Gass Interview,” Gadfly, December 1998, in Ammon, 146.

  552. “ ‘No, sorry to be”: Quoted in Ackerman.