Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  Later. I’m coming out of it. The story of the sofa is true. The Williams girls—one of them just died at 85—remembered it all their lives. In fact all of the Hamilton stories are true.

  April 20, continued

  Well that section and my week’s work are done. It went longer than a day’s work but I wanted to finish it up. And it is my hope that I gave some picture of Samuel Hamilton. Garrulous he is but he has flair. And that is good. I wonder if I got the aliveness of his brain, his mechanical ability and the curious poetry he put about him. I can remember the lilt in his speech and he must surely have used fine figures of speech because I see him surrounded with all manner of birds and beasts and qualities of light. And I wanted to set down what the soil was like. This builds so slowly but I hope it builds. I think next I will go to my mother and do a sketch of her life ending with her airplane ride which I think is very funny. I see no reason for not skipping about in time with the Hamiltons. There are so many of them that if I tried to keep them all going at the same time it would be confusing. Therefore I think the Hamilton chapters will be sketches of the children’s lives. The next Trask chapter is going to be a long one, very long. It goes through the settling of the ranch, the birth of the twins, the first two years of their lives and Cathy’s departure. This is an extremely long chapter and one which will take at least two weeks to write. Then will come the life in Salinas of Cathy, I think. And now that is enough for now. I’m going to do some other kind of work for a while and try to settle down. I’m jumpy with fatigue today.

  April 22, Sunday

  No work today but perhaps a few notes. Circus yesterday with the boys and a good fine time. They wanted cow-horn horns and rubber tulips and got them. Then went to dinner. Lost a big filling from a tooth which angered me but I would rather go to the dentist now than this summer. Today I painted my workbench. It is now finished and I am glad. I shall begin to do my little doodly work on it.

  Tomorrow to work again and even though I was tired on Friday I shall be glad to get back to it. I’m going to do my mother’s story tomorrow, actually a little biography of anecdotes.

  April 23, Monday

  Dear Pat—another week. I must say that even with the boys and the circus I did not get far from the book. I have thought of little else. It’s a strange thing how one can become so obsessed that there is always the double thing—the book and whatever else is going on and both running parallel. I guess it has to be that way.

  They say, and I expect truly, that if a man could see his whole life, he would never live it. He would kill himself instantly. Something like this happens on the week-end days when I do not work. I lift my eyes out of the details of the little day’s work and a panic crashes on me. The size and the difficulty rise up and smack me. And yet it is necessary to look at the whole thing now and then. It’s like swimming with your head down or up. It cuts your speed to raise your head but at least you know where you are going. And it occurs to me that this may be a very good book —but with a slight variation it may be gibberish. Since you told me what the girl said about wanting to get on with the story and not stop for comment, I have thought a good deal about that. It is going to be one of the most constant criticisms of this book. People are insistent to get on with their lives too and not to think about them. It will also be said that I could well leave the Hamiltons out of the book because they do not contribute directly nor often to the Trask development. And I must be very willful about this, because this is not a story about the Trasks but about the whole Valley which I am using as a microcosm of the whole nation. It is not a romanza. I know I will have that war to fight.

  I was pleased about Pascal’s lecture about my work and I wish I could have heard it. I might have learned something valuable to me. For we work in our own darkness a great deal with little real knowledge of what we are doing. I think I know better what I am doing than most writers but it still isn’t much. I don’t know why I am thinking now of criticism since I will not let it change one single thing about the story or the method. It is almost the autobiography of the Valley. I think I had better put down a section on the place names of the Valley because sometimes they seem contrived unless it is known that there are many strange and interesting names in the region. Don’t you think perhaps this might be a good time to do this. People are interested in names. At least I think they are. I’ll put it in anyway.

  It is now getting on to time to go to work. On the last page Adam bought the Bordoni place. Now I am going to stay away from Adam and Cathy for a while to give Cathy a chance to get along with her pregnancy. Then when you start with them again you will have a sense of time lapse. So I am going off into several other things—nrst the place names, then some of the stories of my mother. I’ll stick with her until I am ready to go back to the Trasks again. So I will with the other children of Samuel. And now it is time to go to work.

  April 24, Tuesday

  Day by day it goes. And little by little I am trying to build up the picture. It may seem to take too great a time but I have a theory (good god, the number of theories you are subjected to). There are some people who deeply and basically dislike theories and are hostile to speculations. These are usually unsure people who, whirling in uncertainties, try to steady themselves by grabbing and tightly holding on to facts. And it is getting to be even sadder because facts have a way of changing nowadays, at least of changing their implications. This leaves the fact person on a limb. Speculation or theory-making on the other hand is simply a little game of pattern-making of the mind. The theory hater cannot believe that it is important. To such a person a theory is a lie until it is proven and then it becomes a truth or a fact. But there’s no joy in it. Now—to get to my theory. You have said and Harold31 has said often that a big book is more important and has more authority than a short book. There are exceptions of course but it is very nearly always true. I have tried to find a reasonable explanation for this and at last have come up with my theory, to wit: The human mind, particularly in the present, is troubled and fogged and bee-stung with a thousand little details from taxes to war worry to the price of meat. All these usually get together and result in a man’s fighting with his wife because that is the easiest channel of relief for inner unrest. Now—we must think of a book as a wedge driven into a man’s personal life. A short book would be in and out quickly. And it is possible for such a wedge to open the mind and do its work before it is withdrawn leaving quivering nerves and cut tissue. A long book, on the other hand, drives in very slowly and if only in point of time remains for a while. Instead of cutting and leaving, it allows the mind to rearrange itself to fit around the wedge. Let’s carry the analogy a little farther. When the quick wedge is withdrawn, the tendency of the mind is quickly to heal itself exactly as it was before the attack. With the long book perhaps the healing has been warped around the shape of the wedge so that when the wedge is finally withdrawn and the book set down, the mind cannot ever be quite what it was before. This is my theory and it may explain the greater importance of a long book. Living with it longer has given it greater force. If this is true a long book, even not so good, is more effective than an excellent short book. How do you like that theory?

  Now to get back to my book in particular. I feel that it is important to go into the school system at some length just as I think it will be necessary to go into the whorehouse situation also. These were two facets of the culture of the period and both were important. In fact, when you come right down to it, everything was important.

  I am learning many things—some of them not very flattering to me, but all of them important. I am learning how specialized I am and also that the degree of specialization is also the degree of limitations. Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I work on a book to this extent and with this concentration, it means that I am living another life. As it goes along, increasingly I give to the second life more than to the first. Then I must be very hard to live with in real life, not because I am mean but because I am v
ague. Things ordinarily done are forgotten. My expression must be one of fogged stupidity—my responses slow. It is during this time that a woman gets first restless, then uneasy, then angry. I don’t know what to do about it but there it is. And a book like this goes on for such a long time. You can read it in a few days but it takes years to think and write. It must be a great chore to live with if you are not writing it. This time I am making a distinct and constant effort to keep both lives going but even then I forget. But anyway I am trying. There is one other thing—the function which at a distance seems romantic and colorful must on daily contact become dull and usual and machine-like. It is bound to. And finally it may become a rival, an enemy. This is not inevitable but it has happened to me twice. End note for now.

  I got a little ahead of myself today. I like to hold the word rate down because if I don’t, it will get hurried and I will get too tired one day and not work the next. The slow, controlled method is best. But I got into my mother’s airplane ride and it got out of hand. But I used self-control and did not let her actually get into the airplane. That will come tomorrow. And I think I will finish the section of her life tomorrow. It is a strange feeling to be taking people who are close to me apart and putting them on paper. But I see no reason why I should not. They are mine and I can do what I like with them.

  It has been a good day of work with no harm in it. I have sat long over the desk and the pencil has felt good in my hand. Outside the sun is very bright and warm and the buds are swelling to a popping size. I guess it is a good thing I became a writer. Perhaps I am too lazy for anything else.

  Now I will leave you until tomorrow. I have letters to write. Sometimes the old terror comes up in the night but thank goodness it is pretty much gone in the daytime, except right at first and not every day even then. Now I must stop this dawdling and get to my other work in my other life.

  April 25, Wednesday

  The week and the month going fast. And I shall cross the hundredth handwritten page before the first of May. I figure it will take about four hundred to finish the book, so by the first of May I will be one quarter of the way through and that is right on schedule. If it continues this way I will finish just about when I thought I would. I started active work on Feb. 19 so it is just a little over two months. At that rate the book should only take 8 months and should be done by the first of November, but that is allowing for no accidents whatever and it would be an odd year when something drastic did not happen. I am allowing two months for accidents and will figure to be done by Christmas. But I am not going to speed up. I just can’t do it and keep with it for that length of time. Two of these pages is just about right for the pace of this book. And it is odd how every book has its own pace. The Grapes of Wrath was headlong and I don’t want this one to be. Slow and easy does it. I must say that I think of very little else now. I repainted my table and it is not quite dry so I am writing on a cardboard cover today.

  You made a bad mistake when you suggested that you buy a tool for my desk. There is only one that I want and it is expensive. I have everything else. But I do not have very small tools for very tiny work. Such I could use and would even make you something.

  Good early start today. A grey day but I like it. Almost like a Monterey day. Thinking last night about how many lives I have led and how much time I’ve wasted. Not a good way to think but sometimes you can’t control it. Little evil things rise up like gas bubbles out of a swamp. And maybe it is a good thing for it to come out now and then. Who knows what poisons in the mind can do. But what silliness to mourn over lost time. I have a feeling impossible of verification that worry is a pathological function of some time required by the human soul for its well-being in greater or less degree. I think that worry is a constant and that only after it rises to the conscious mind do we find a direction for it to take. If this were not so, we would not worry about such ridiculous things. But, given the feeling, we always find something on which to use it. (Theory?) I will constipate you with theories and drug you with speculations. That’s funny, isn’t it?

  Now we will go back to the book. I think and hope I am going to finish the chapter today. And that will be all about my mother. I feel that she is not as well drawn as some of the others and I also feel that this is natural. We cannot know objectively about one who is so close. I don’t see how we can anyway. The great story of the Hamiltons is that of Uncle Tom and his sister Dessie and of the death of Dessie and Tom’s suicide. I am going to do that one fairly late in the book because there is no Hamilton story to top it—a dreadful and beautiful story. And now to my day’s work.

  Well that’s done and I hope you will like it. And now I am ready to go back to the Trasks again. And this will be another very long chapter taking in the birth of the twins, their meaning and the departure of Cathy. This is a very long and extremely important chapter.32 It will be highly detailed. And you must not worry about losing Cathy. She will be always present even if she only comes into the story a few more times. In this chapter the relations between32 the Trasks and the Hamiltons become open and now I suppose the introduction is over and we are ready to move down the century. If it has seemed to take a long time, it had to be that way. Kazan is coming in Thursday about two o’clock to work. I think I will get up about four or five in the morning so that I will surely get my day’s work done before he arrives. I’m getting a fixation about not missing days even though I know I will miss many before this book is done. I just must expect that. But every day I don’t miss is a help and a treasure. The light shines on me sometimes and the sadness of remembering [grows full?] sometimes but there is no help for these extremes and they must be done.

  And now I must leave you until tomorrow.

  April 26, Thursday

  I think I am crazy to try to work today. Every bone in my body aches and I have no idea why. Maybe a little twitch of flu. I have been very lucky about that. Even my right hand and arm aches. Maybe it will be better later. And my spirit is very low. Well it is still early. I may be better later. I’m afraid I’m going to lose tomorrow. Kazan wants me to do a final bit on the script and he says he can’t work in the afternoon. Well, it will be the first day I guess in a long time so I should not mourn. And I have all day today. Might even go a little over. I am certainly not fit now. Lord! I hope I pick up later. I collapsed discreetly. Elaine has her problems today and I don’t want to be one of them. And my recovery is very rapid. I am feeling better. I thought I could bull it through and I was wrong. Sometimes it is a very great virtue. I get very boastful about what I can do. It is no bad thing to be brought down to size.

  The day is going and I am trying to get up the initial strength to get into my book. There’s a basic shove and I don’t seem quite capable of it. Strange, isn’t it? But at least I am getting dogged about it and I may just sit here until I dam well make it even if the warm-up is not taking effect very quickly. Yes, sir, it is really putting up a fight today. I don’t feel well but it is more than that. Maybe the basic laziness creeping back—who knows. And surely it is not lack of material. I am brimming with material. I’ve got to get to it. I simply must. I guess it will be about time now to force it through.

  Well, there it goes for better or for worse. And there is no harm done I guess. All the little things break in sometimes. I guess it is true that big and strong things are much less dangerous than small soft weak things. Nature (whatever that is) makes the small and weak reproduce faster. And that is not true of course. The ones that did not reproduce faster than they died, disappeared. But how about little faults, little pains, little worries. The cosmic ulcer comes not from great concerns, but from little irritations. And great things can kill a man but if they do not he is stronger and better for them. A man is destroyed by the duck nibblings of nagging, small bills, telephones (wrong number), athlete’s foot, ragweed, the common cold, boredom. All of these are the negatives, the tiny frustrations, and no one is stronger for them.

  Today in my bumbling, I have made two shel
ves and bored many holes and started on your box. It will take time but it is started. You said you wanted a box to put things in but you didn’t say what things so I will have to judge what things you would put in a box without falling in yourself. And now, it is time to ring off.

  It is just no good and I am going to throw it away. I haven’t had many bust days but this has been calamitous from the start. Also I am not going to worry Elaine about it. She has a million things to do. And I’m not going to worry myself about it either. It is just a loss. Maybe I can pick it up next week. That means two days will be lost this week. It may take me quite a bit to pick it up but maybe the rest will do me good. I’m going to try it anyway. I’m not going to worry about it but I wish I could know what caused it. Went to bed early last night, read happily, slept happily. Got up early and suddenly felt terrible—just terrible. Fought that off and was drained dry. Then I forced the work and it was as false and labored and foolish as anything I have ever seen. I tried to kid myself that it only seemed bad but it really was bad. So out it goes. And what do you suppose could have caused it? I just don’t know. There seem to be dead places in a man or like lit