Journal of a Novel

by John Steinbeck

  October 1, Monday

  This book seems fated to be done with a counterpoint of small, rather funny frustrations. The woman who rented my apartment has run off sans rent and ruined the walls. I could hire someone to fix it over but I can do it myself more quickly and better. So I will go there, prepare it this afternoon, and tomorrow I will paint it. There is always something. Always will be too. For I truly believe that people call their lives to them the way you’d whistle up a dog. I seem to thrive in small frustrations and make them when I don’t have them. This is not abnormal. In fact it is very supernormal.

  I am stuck this morning because I don’t know exactly where I am and what was in the work. You aren’t in your office. Of course I know you are out for coffee. But I will have trouble starting until I can talk to you. But that’s all right. Today’s story is one of almost animal double-dealing, but double-dealing so natural that it is not even dishonest to the people involved. It is hard to balance what we call the honest and decent against the dishonest and indecent because they are very much alike except in their ends. I suppose self-interest is the end of all. It is only the quality of the interest that is different. So I had better go to work.

  October 2 [TUESDAY]

  This is an interesting part of the story to me because in this important phase of two dishonest people trying to cheat each other, I have another microcosm. The fact that Joe acts wrongly doesn’t make his act any different. He simply makes a mistake. His motives never change from simple self-interest.

  Now I have finished this day’s work. Had to work early. There’s something I have to do this afternoon. I’ll tell you about it maybe tomorrow. If it warrants telling by then. And now I’m going to get some abrasive to finish the top of your box.

  October 3, Wednesday

  Today Giants and Dodgers play off their tie. Today I must paint that damned apartment and today I’ll go right on working. There is a kind of inevitable quality about this book. It just seems to stagger on. To work very early this morning. I hope to get to my work at painting very early. Tomorrow I am going to the opening of the World Series. I’ll get up early and see how much I can get done in the morning. Maybe not much but some.

  October 4, Thursday, 5:30 A.M.

  Up and to my desk very early because going to the opening of the World Series today and I don’t want to lose any work time. Baseball yesterday, probably the best game I or anyone ever saw.65 And I was glad then that I had a full day of work in.

  It is my opinion that I shall finish my book in three weeks beginning on Monday next. I am fairly sure that it will not be longer than that. Can’t get used to the idea. It seems so strange. I read the last three days’ work to Elaine last night. I guess this kind of viciousness is going to make you very nervous but it is the balance, a kind of delicate balance. There will always be the difficulty that the average reader is more interested in evil than in good. That is strange but it seems to me to be true.

  Now I am going to work.

  October 5, Friday

  This is a hard week now nearly over. To survive this one is a job. I am mixed up with things. And the silly truth is that I can take almost any amount of work but I have very little tolerance for confusion. That throws me soon and hard. But as of today that will be over. Now that I can see the end of this work, and I think three more weeks will do it, a great change is coming over me. I am reluctant to finish. But do you know—the decision to do a second volume dealing with the second 30 years has made a great difference. This means that I am not finished. I guess I am terrified to write finish on the book for fear I myself will be finished. The second volume puts it off quite a bit. Isn’t that fine? I am almost gay about it. And I had better be gay because I am coming into the most violently emotional scene I have ever attempted and I am frankly afraid of it. For, while it must explode with emotion, it must also be restrained in treatment. Almost as though the reader brought his own pocket full of emotion to the page. I wish I could do this well. Today of course I am going to end the slower organ music and get ready for the announcement of the end. The end will be announced very soon now. And heaven knows I am afraid. It’s a new thing and a strange thing and a frightening thing. The incident of Mr. Fenchel the tailor is exactly true. That is even his name. Mary66 remembers it too and with the same shrinking kind of shame.

  October 7, Sunday

  World Series rained out today so I think I will try to get some work done. Will try anyway. I have a powerful pain in the right pleural section but probably just the change of weather and it will be gone. I hope so because it is very inconvenient for breathing and makes for a kind of weariness. But I’m a mass of that anyway—very deep-seated. Lots of contributing factors, largely confusion, and some of it fear of endings. But, as was said very early in this book, one foot in front of the other and little by little. That’s the only way to do it. Little by little. What a strange thing is a book. Sometimes I feel so close to it and sometimes very far away. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. I guess all of this is weariness. I dread the next scene very much. It is such a difficult one. So hard to do. And the longer I put it off

  October 8, Monday, 6 A.M.

  Yesterday’s game was rained out (World Series). I did my day’s stint and so got a little ahead. This morning got up at 5 and will get done again, I hope, and go to the game and again tomorrow. I guess the rain is over but it was a big one. The thunder and lightning last night and the pouring rain made for good and early sleeping.

  This morning I looked at the Saturday Review, read a few notices of recent books, not mine, and came up with the usual sense of horror. One should be a reviewer or better a critic, these curious sucker fish who live with joyous vicariousness on other men’s work and discipline with dreary words the thing which feeds them. I don’t say that writers should not be disciplined, but I could wish that the people who appoint themselves to do it were not quite so much of a pattern both physically and mentally.

  I’ll have to phone you this morning not to come over for book this afternoon. I shall not be here. The pain in the pleura is gone this morning thank goodness. Just a small cold no doubt but it hurt.

  Now—the work. Because it is very early in the morning, I am looking for something to complain about. And there isn’t anything really except that it is very early in the morning. Did you like yesterday’s work? I thought the funeral of the nigger was pretty good and of course it keyed in the other thing, crazy Alf and Joe’s access to rumors. The whole sequence will be completed today. Oh! Lord, there’s so much of it that I can’t leave out. So much. I guess I’d better get to it. It is daylight now and time to work.

  October 9, Tuesday, 5:30 A.M. (again)

  This will be the last of the very early starts. We have no tickets after today’s game. It has been exciting but for me at least it will be enough. But I would not have missed it. Cold this morning. The winter is here or a junior relative of it. I am up very early so I won’t have to rush it. The next scenes are terribly important to the book. I want them to be good and I want them to be very clear. And at the same time not belabored. Anyway, this set of scenes is going to tie into the end of the book.

  It is a lovely clear cold day—the kind I love. I should finish early. I know what it’s going to be like pretty much but even for me, there are sometimes surprises. There are four relationships to go through and probably all in today’s work. And that is a lot. It will be well if I get to the work immediately.

  October 10, Wednesday

  Went to our last ball game yesterday and this morning slept until 9. And that seemed to have slept me out. I can’t sleep indefinitely I find but also I don’t ever get quite enough. And maybe that’s the way I function best. If, that is, I can be said to function at all. Sometimes I wonder. I seem to exist on the lip of a curving wave—always seeming to be waiting for it to break from under me. And maybe that is enough of generality, except for one thing—

  I have noticed so many of the reviews of my work show a f
ear and a hatred of ideas and speculations. It seems to be true that people can only take parables fully clothed with flesh. Any attempt to correlate in terms of thought is frightening. And if that is so, East of Eden is going to take a bad beating because it is full of such things.

  I don’t really know how much I can do today. I’m a day ahead and perhaps I may just think. I have lots to think about in this final two weeks and a half. I may not have it done then. Can’t tell. There’s lots to do but I can’t tell whether that lots is long or not until I come to it.

  In a short time that will be done and then it will not be mine any more. Other people will take it over and own it and it will drift away from me as though I had never been a part of it. I dread that time because one can never pull it back, it’s like shouting good-bye to someone going off in a bus and no one can hear because of the roar of the motor.

  Now I have this Thanksgiving dinner coming up. And I want not to write it. Isn’t that odd. I must admit that I have liked this book. Or at least I have liked being with it—living with it and going along with it. It will be like coming out into another world to finish it. And it might be a very good thing that there is another volume in prospect.

  This day is going to be wasted in vagueness, I can see that.

  I just haven’t got it today. There’s a sadness all over everything and the little mental plans do not come off. I don’t have this very often but I surely have it today. I just don’t.

  October 11, Thursday

  Last night to bed at 8:30 and slept nearly 11 hours in a kind of disgusted exhaustion with many bad dreams thrown in for good measure. All in all I had the sleep and am rested but groggy. So I will get to my work early and see what I can make of it. Our discussion yesterday is evidence of a ridiculous situation and one we will not permit to happen again—mainly the critical appraisal of a book which is not finished. I don’t know how we got into this but we won’t again. And there won’t be any trouble about this. I’m pretty sure I can control it. My job now is just to finish it, not to defend it.

  My job even more is to be sure it is well done in my own terms and to forget the rest. The time passes and I must pass with it. Today’s work is one of those hazards we avoid as long as possible. One of the difficult times. But there are many. This is only one of them.

  October 12, Friday

  Also the day one Cristobal Colon is said to have discovered San Salvador Island. To me, so far, it is only Friday and I will have two days without work. This week has been a struggle. The scene is difficult and I don’t know whether or not I have it. It is a preposterous situation for one thing. But is not all good literature preposterous? I think so. A situation is not written about until it becomes preposterous.

  I feel good today, And I think I will do good work. I’d better. I want to very much. And this might be called the payoff scene. I think it is the key scene of all. Maybe that is why I have been so much afraid of it. But two nights of long and restful sleep have put me in a position of inner security so that I think I can finally do it.

  There is only one thing to discuss. I have, during this whole writing, been doing something that is not good. You have been getting the week’s work on Friday. This means that on Monday, when I am two days away from it, I do not have the last day’s work to refer to. If, on the other hand, you were to get it on Monday, I would have the beginning of the week done with reference to the last. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. But I didn’t. And I guess that is all for the notes today and I will go into the scene I have worried about. We shall see.

  October 13, Saturday

  I didn’t quite finish the scene yesterday because I was very weary and I want fresh force for it. So I am up very early this morning having awakened normally thinking about the scene. It requires a very quiet force in complete control. I think I have that now. At least I am content that I have and we will have to see.

  I’ll write it now.

  October 15, Monday

  Again we start on the week. Last week I worked on Saturday because I wanted to finish the scene between Cal and Aron. It had been with me a long time. I’m glad I finished it and I shall want to know whether or not you find it effective. It should have a dreadful quality of happening in spite of anything that could be done. It’s what I have been aiming at for so many pages. It is a shock finally to come to it.

  Now—you will be calling pretty soon or I will call you. I am going to finish my stint and then I want to go out to buy some things we need and to look at some things. Maybe you would like to go with me. We’ll talk of that when I see you or rather talk to you. Today’s work is half funny and it will be easy after that other. It was very difficult. I still think I will probably have my first draft done a week from next Friday. It seems that way anyway. Then Elaine and I are going away for a few days—alone and probably under an assumed name. I think I will need that. And now I have several very short sharp scenes to do and I might just as well get to them.

  October 16 [TUESDAY]

  I will be a little slow today because I didn’t finish yesterday so I am up early to try to get it done. And I hope I shall. Today, I have a kind of a fairy tale to tell. I’ve wondered about it a good deal and I am fairly sure it is ready. Everyone will find something in himself of this, I think. I should like to finish with Kate today if I can. And I think I can.

  I hope you liked last week’s work—some of the hardest in the whole book. Today’s story is pretty good I think.

  October 16, Tuesday, continued

  I didn’t tell you that I got up at four this morning to work on this final Cathy scene—but I did. Couldn’t sleep for thinking about it and I couldn’t see any reason to lie in bed waiting for daylight. I guess there will be a howl that I am being sympathetic to her. I’m not, really. Just putting it down as it might have happened. There aren’t any should have beens. This is the way Cathy died.

  October 17, Wednesday

  And Cathy died. I did well over three thousand words yesterday and built a coffee table too. Last night went to the Kazans to see Streetcar.67 Really a fine film. But I was pretty sleepy. I’d like to see it again when I am a little more alert.

  Since I did nearly two days’ work yesterday I am just going to complete Joe today and let it go at that. Then tomorrow I’ll get back to the others. I can’t do too much at once. Don’t want to.

  We’re going up to look at marble this afternoon and maybe order a piece. I have finished the mahogany coffee table and I think it is very good looking. Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow and Friday I shall lead up to my ending and next week I shall go into my ending. That will give me Saturday and Sunday to think about it. I have it all worked except of course for the exact length and some few things like that. Now I should go to work on Joe. He is really a lyric character, isn’t he?—a lovable boy. But he is calling me now and I must go to him.

  October 18, Thursday

  If I were not so nearly finished with this volume, I would not permit myself the indiscipline of overwork. This is the falsest of economies. But since end is in view I am permitting myself the indulgence. It is two o’clock in the morning and I can’t stay away from my book. Since I can’t sleep anyway I might just as well be putting words down instead of only thinking them. Every other night I sleep heavily as a pig.

  I’ll be through pretty soon. Yesterday I wound up Kate and Joe. I am ready for the last—leading to the ending—except for one thing. I must balance the book. I feel need for proportion. This is a book unlike any other. It has a greater freedom than most and much more discipline than most. What follows in the story is a kind of envoi and before that I must prepare. In every book I have ever written, it has occurred to some readers (and I know because they have written me) to wonder where I stand in all of this. Well—this time I propose to tell them in advance. And I am ready in this. And I am going to take the means you must know in your bones is inevitable. So—now read on and see.

  October 18, still Thursday, and now it is
getting toward morning

  And now you see, Pat, that I had to put in that last chapter to the boys. And, as you know, it is to many others besides the boys. I had to say it out and honestly because that is the kind of book this is. It has no subtleties or rather, no obvious ones. Besides that, the book’s form required that chapter. And I had to state my credo in plain language. Now I am ready for the last of the story. It will be straightforward and direct. It is now November and the story ends in April but there will be a jump between.

  Now, having done my day’s work before the day has dawned, I am going to spend the day in the garden, in painting, in making furniture. I need to work with my hands.

  And there’s no reason why you should not have this last part to get into type now. Maybe I’ll even take it to you. But if I don’t, you may come for it.

  October 22, Monday

  So, we go into the last week and I may say I am very much frightened. I guess it would be hard to be otherwise—all of these months and years aimed in one direction and suddenly it is over and it seems that the thunder has produced a mouse.