Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  Now it is done. And maybe tomorrow I will finish the chapter and maybe not. Because I feel that it is important to my theme, I am going to let it take as long as it wants. Also I need it for another maturation for the future. So don’t worry about its length. It is going to be all right.

  And now I shall celebrate the 4th of July without even a sparkler. We are not drinking anything but beer. I’m going to have a can right now.

  So there!!

  July 5, Thursday

  Although not a humanitarian, I do have certain human kindnesses and it does seem to me that these notes may be boring the hell out of you. So I will give you an antidote. There is no need for you to read them. You will never be questioned and it is unlikely that anyone will ever know. I hope this reassures you and makes it less a burden to you.

  You would be interested in my fingers, I think. I have designed pieces of rubber bandage to protect them from the pencil. They are so beat up that they hurt but my new method works fine.

  In the evening I am doing a little wood carving while listening to bad radio music. I have tried to read but I find I don’t pay any attention to the script of the book because I am always thinking of my own. A real monomaniac.

  The Bartlett arrived this morning. Isn’t it funny that I have always wanted one and needed one and never had one? I would like you to buy me another one to give as a present. Would you do that? And do all these requests and commissions bother you? You have only to say and I will stop it. Don’t let me impose on you. I don’t mean to but maybe I go too far. I do depend on you for so much.

  Now back to E. This scene is developing and I am interested in its tensions and I hope I am making clear what is happening in both people. It may seem a strange or outlandish situation but, with perhaps less violence, it is what happens all the time between people. And I think people might find some of it in themselves. And now I guess I have put enough down here. And I will get to my knitting. I don’t think I will finish the scene today, however. It is a very important scene, not only now, but for later.

  July 6 [FRIDAY]

  It hardly seems possible that this could be the end of the third working week since I have been here. But the pages say that it is. I’m glad you like last week’s work. I don’t think you will like this week’s. It isn’t likeable but I think it might be effective. And I know now that it is necessary.

  Yesterday we had Dorothy’s nice letter. Elaine is going to write her about clothes. I think we are working Tom over. He has made remarkable progress. [...] He is excited about working and we just have to keep it up. Elaine is doing wonders with him. There will be other outbreaks but we are equipped to deal with them now.

  I feel just worthless today. I have to drive myself. I have used every physical excuse not to work except fake illness. I have dawdled, gone to the toilet innumerable times, had many glasses of water. Really childish. I know that one of the reasons is that I dread the next scene, dread it like hell. You will know why when you read it because there isn’t any doubt that I will get it done today. I do not often permit myself to get away with nonsense. And I want this scene finished. Then I will have the week end to prepare Part 3 and its opening. And I will need the two days for it. But right now I am giving myself trouble like a stubborn kid.

  I was very glad of your last letter. And the translation of the word. Don’t worry about it. I will have to get the best answers. And if there is an argument I am all right. Don’t forget that in the Jewish translation you sent, they did not think “timshel” was a pure future tense. They translated it “thou mayest.” This means that at least there is a difference of opinion and that is enough for me. I will have to have the whole verb before I will finish, from infinitive on through past, subjunctives and compounds and futures. But we will get it. We may have to go outside of rabbinical thought to pure scholarship which may be non-Jewish. What American university has a good Hebrew department? Dr. Ginzberg, 54 dealing in theology, may have a slightly different attitude from that of a pure etymologist. We know that the other translations were warped by what the translators wished to be there. Words are strange elusive things and no man may permanently stick them on pins or mount them in glass cases. The academies have tried that and have only succeeded in killing the words. But why I should lecture you I don’t know.

  I’m going to rap my knuckles with a stick and force it now and we will see. This chapter must be mailed by tomorrow noon —must.

  There—that damnable chapter 55 is finished. But I think you can see why it was necessary. Maybe you understand Cathy a little better. And now Adam is ready to go into Part 3. And so am I. But I wouldn’t have been unless I had done this last chapter.

  You won’t like this chapter but you will understand it. Now the balance is achieved and we know where everybody stands.

  And so farewell.

  July 9, Monday

  This is a milestone day. The start of a new Part of the book. And I have thought and thought until my head was swimming. I have the fear that comes with starting and the usual lack of self-confidence. But also there is a kind of craziness it is hard to peg down—a willy-nilly, fly-off-to-the-ends-of-the-world feeling. And I must pull this down to a normal living and a regularity of thinking. It would be easy to say that I am tired. But I am not. I’ve been with book a long time now and I am not tired. And it is rare now for me to be frightened of it. This is temporary. What is it then that is bothering me? I don’t know. It isn’t the boys. They are making great strides. Tom has come around beautifully. I feel badly that I didn’t know he would. Both boys are being just fine. They are responding beautifully.

  Let me inspect then the book itself. It must be nearly 500 pages by now. It started by saying, “I’m going to tell you how things were then.” Now, has it done that? I don’t know. I just don’t know. It left customs and clothes and habits and went deeply into people but I think that is very good rather than bad. For customs are only the frame for people. You can’t write a book about customs unless it is a treatise. And I don’t want a treatise. I want the participation of my reader. I want him to be so involved that it will be his story. You are tied up in this story very deeply. I doubt whether you can see what has been accomplished because, through these notes, you know what the intention is. And perhaps because you know what was intended, you may believe that it has been accomplished. To that extent, these notes may be bad. I don’t know.

  Today, the work is bound to be slow. All week end I thought about it. The new section is about to start. It is a change in time, a change in direction. The nation, the Valley are changing their direction and also their tempo. How am I going to indicate this? I don’t know. I want to keep the curious relaxed feeling. Maybe the best way will be simply to tell the truth about it. Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them. That might be so. I have surely tried to do that in this book. I would hate to lose it in literary trickery now.

  You know from the form feeling in your stomach that I am more than half way finished now. Not that the book is drawing to its close, but it is all down now. Its thesis is stated—all of it. Now we will see the thesis at work. Do you feel that? I hope so. I don’t want you, and by you I mean the reader, to be conscious of the thesis. That should sink deeply under the skin and only the people be remembered and thought about.

  This is an old mess of a day. I don’t care whether I get my two pages done, but I probably will. I usually do. But I want to be inspective about it too. There has not been a book like this that I know of. Its leisure derives from 18th-century English novels, but it goes from that to the intense. The 18th-century novel projected people and ideas but they were set apart from the reader for his inspection. This attempts to use both, the old and the new. I don’t know whether or not it succeeds. That is why I want to hear Harold’s reaction. I am not writing you off but you are in effect one of the writers and have lost your separate standing. You will have difficulty being a critic I think although I may be wrong
. I am going to continue these notes and today I do not feel that it is either dawdling nor putting it off. And I want to ask you some questions that I wouldn’t have put in last week’s notes. Were you conscious of what happened to Adam in the last chapter? I have repeated that good things do not die. Did you feel that Samuel had got into Adam and would live in him? Did you feel the rebirth in him? Should I make it clearer or were you aware of it? Men do change, do learn, do grow. That is what I want to get into that last. And also, do you understand Cathy better now? You should, if I have done my work right. Her life is one of revenge on other people because of a vague feeling of her own lack. A man born blind must in a sense hate eyes as well as envy them. A blind man might wish to remove all of the eyes in the world. That last is a terrible chapter and maybe the best writing about people I have ever done in my life.

  I am nearly ready to start Part 3 now. I am going back to Part 1 for my tempo. Refrain is one of the most valuable of all form methods. Refrain is return to the known before one flies again upwards. It is a consolation to the reader, a reassurance that the book has not left his understanding.

  To a certain extent I have thought about the reception of this book. And it seems to me that it might find a public ready for the open and honest. As you know the novel has been falling before the onslaught of non-fiction. That is largely because the novel has not changed for a very long time now. Sherwood Anderson made the modern novel and it has not gone much beyond him. I think I am going beyond him. This may be rejected and kicked down but I do not think so. I really don’t. However, this is a conjecture which will be demonstrated.

  One thing I must say—I have never enjoyed my own work as I have this book. I am as excited about it now as on the day I started it. There is no letdown in my energy. I still think it is The Book, as far as I am concerned. Always before I have held something back for later. Nothing is held back here. This is not practice for a future. This is what I have practiced for. I do not know what I will do when it is finished. I will have some difficulty in living. I think there will be a bad time but I’ll weather that when I come to it. The book is a thing in itself, and it is not me. There is no ego in it. I am glad that you sense that while I am in it and of it, I am not the book. It is much more than I am. The pictures have come to me out of some hugeness and sometimes they have startled me. But I am glad of them.

  Now I am ready to shove off again and as the Catholics say, I will be glad to be remembered in your prayers.

  July 10, Tuesday

  Yesterday’s work was hard and at the same time rewarding. I think I accomplished what I wanted to do. It must go on in the economic change today. What, by the way, do you think of the analysis of the change? I happen to think it is true. As happens so often after a difficult day, no sleep last night but that doesn’t beat me a bit. It just means that I got a great deal of future work laid out. And the loss of one night doesn’t even seem to tire me. Which is a good thing. I start today a little tense but fresh. Elaine is taking the boys into Nantucket for haircuts. They are going to have dinner guests.

  The little present you gave me is in use every day. With it I can do almost anything. I have carved many things and there are pin wheels all over the place. I am even carving you a present which is a form I have never used before. And I hope you will like it. So far it is much the best thing I have carved. And rather good if I do say so myself. Now I have lots of time.

  Perhaps because of the tenseness of the scene, I got pretty wound up last week. And I was scared of the new section also, but now I am not and I can get back that fine relaxed feeling I have had for this book for so long. Surely though it is necessary that I more or less live in the tempo of what I am writing. That must be inevitable.

  There is one other thing about this book different from any I have ever done. Of course I am doing the best work I can but I am not taking myself too seriously. This is no assault on Parnassus. I am not putting grappling hooks into immortality. It is just a book—the best I can do with the equipment and training I have. And I’m pretty sure if I knew no one in the world would ever read it, I would still do it. I wonder whether that last is true. It seems so to me but being sure what one would do in a situation one hasn’t experienced is rather silly. And if it is true, why am I so anxious to know what you are getting out of it and whether you approve or disapprove. Still—I think I would write it anyway.

  Juan Negrin is coming up in the middle of August for a week end. He is such a good friend. I use his skill and his kindness all the time and I am unable to return anything. And his eyes looked very tired to me. I talked to him on the phone and he said he was pleased with your progress but doesn’t want you to stop the medication. I am going to ask him perhaps for a present and it has been considered the greatest gift of all. He is a good man, Pat. He has savagery and violence and courage. He is not afraid to take a chance in surgery. He would take a life to gain a life. And I like that kind of courage. I have thought too how a surgeon, particularly a brain surgeon, is very much alone in his decisions. He can’t ask for advice, for who is to give? It must take the greatest moral courage and a kindness that is far beyond softness or gentleness. He must in a word be part child, part savage and part god. And with that I will get back to my book which is more child and savage than God and that is a very good thing.

  July 11, Wednesday

  Last night an evil came on me. I planned, laughing behind my hand, to play hooky today and go fishing and pick up my work on Saturday. My course was set and my criminal path taken. And then this morning was an overcast and windy sky. The very forces of nature conspired to keep me pure. But being pressured into virtue, I am having a very hard time getting started today. I wish I had been allowed to be the sinner I wanted to be. Maybe I need some sin.

  I had fun with the economic section yesterday. Very few people ever reduce our system to its essential nonsense. And it should be done now and then if only to reassure ourselves that we are fools. I feel particularly a fool today. Sort of messy in the mind. I think I need a little rest and I know I would be very unhappy if I took one unless there were something like fishing to take up the strain. My fingers are not sore any more but they are really calloused. The cut on the tip of my fingers is hard as a rock. And I am unshaven. I don’t shave every day here, not by any means. We heat our water with a little coal stove and that means we have to build a little fire to have a bath. So we don’t bathe as often as we do at home but that doesn’t make much difference since we are in the ocean so often, a thing which does not get us very clean but at least we don’t smell bad.

  Now it is late and I still haven’t done anything. This is nothing but laziness—nothing. I am not stuck in my story. Do you remember once in New York I suddenly decided I was not going to work and didn’t? I felt very good about that. Maybe it would be good for me to do it again. I’ll have to think about that. And it might be good for you not to expect 10 pages every Monday. Maybe the regularity is hurting both of us. What do you think? I will have to think about that.

  Well, I can’t see any reason to sit here and shadow box. I ought either to go out and do other things or go to work. I think I will try both.

  Well I did it anyway and it has taken all day. The day has been saddened by Tom’s going on a tangent. It’s almost like a sickness. I could feel it coming on this morning and it built and built through all of his symptoms to straight disobedience and now he is in coventry and that is hard on the whole house but it is the only thing that seems to get through to him. It can probably be removed by tomorrow morning but it might have to go on all day tomorrow too.

  Now back to the book. I am through now with the introduction to Part 3 and ready to get back to my story.

  And now I am knocking off.

  July 13, Friday

  Yesterday I took the day off and went fishing all day. I caught nothing but had a fine day on the water and got so burned that I am in considerable pain today. And had a rough night last night. It was so cool that I didn’t kn
ow how I was burning. So I have a good reason not to work hard but not a good enough reason. I shall send the mss. at the usual time but it will only be four days, not five as usual. But since I intend to work tomorrow, there will probably be six days in the next batch. The sunburn pain will all be gone by tomorrow due to the glories of tannic acid which cuts it down quickly.

  Now to E. The entrance into Part 3 is done and I am ready to get back to the story. And I am going back now to the method used in the very first of the book—the long-range narrative with small interspersed scenes to cover a transition in time. I feel all right about it. And I think it will be all right.

  Your letter says among other things that Harold is bewildered at the mss. I hope you don’t mean confused. It occurs to me that one might well be confused by the very weight of this god dammed book. You and I have had it day by day but if it landed in one’s lap suddenly, it might have too great weight and complication. But such things we will see gradually. A book is as complicated as a life, in some ways more complicated. Right now I am so deeply immersed in E that I have a difficulty thinking outside of it. And I wonder in some ways what is going to happen. I mean I know the directions it is going to take but I don’t know exactly the incidents.

  In this I have always tried to tell you in advance what I am trying to do and I think that is a good thing, perhaps better for me than for you because it sets down the intention and purpose in advance and keeps the book from wandering. Very well, always going back to my C-A theme, the next section is going to reverse the first section. I will tell you what I mean. Do you remember in the first part the burden was with Adam who was the Abel? Even though it did not seem to, the book was seen through his eyes and through his emotions. Charles was a dark principle who remained dark. Think back and you will see that this is so. Now in Part 3 I am going to try to do just the opposite. Caleb is my Cain principle. I am going to put the burden of experience through his eyes and his emotions. And in the end you should know him pretty well. And since every man has Cain in him, he will be fully well understood. Part 3 is Caleb’s part—since he dominates and survives it. Thus we get no repetition but an extension of Part 1. Now there is the plan and as the man says—let’s see if you can do it. I feel free about it and good because I think in myself I have access to both Cain and Abel. There is the plan anyway and I am going to try it and I leave you to wonder how I am going to do it. I wonder myself.