by Blake Bailey
“a distinguished job”: Carl Brandt to CJ, March 6, 1950, Rauner.
“At last report”: Hartford Courant, unpaginated clipping dated May 7, 1950, Rauner.
“Only five reviewers out of fifty-seven”: “In and Out of Books,” New York Times Book Review, May 28, 1950, 8.
Reviews for The Sunnier Side: Charles Poore, in New York Times, April 13, 1950, 27; Alice Morris, in New York Times Book Review, April 16, 1950, 5; Frederic Morton, in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, April 16, 1950, 7.
“the one [he was] fondest of”: as CJ noted in his inscription of SS, dated Nov. 11, 1950, to some New Hampshire friends, DeWitt and Gertrude Mallary.
“There seems to be little plot”: Sybil Walters, “ ‘Lost Weekend’ Author writes Another Book,” Newark Courier, March 23, 1950, 1.
autumn “while [he still could]”: CJ to Strauses, Oct. 25 (1949), Rauner.
he’d “unconsciously” used the name: CJ to BB, Jan. 10, 1949, Rauner.
“Look, Charlie”: Author int. Michael Kraham, March 13, 2010.
“For my sake if not your own”: F&W.
“He was the kind of guy”: Author int. Gilbert Burgess, March 2, 2010.
Chapter Fourteen • THE OUTLANDER
“highbrow, therefore balls”: CJ to “Paul,” May 13, 1946, Rauner.
“Creative,” he explained: Quoted in memo dated Sept. 27, 1950, from Marlboro president, Walter Hendricks, re CJ’s “Practical Writing” course, Rauner.
“inspiration” rather than … “impulse”: Rochelle Girson, “TB Made a Writer of Jackson,” Tucson Daily Citizen, Oct. 18, 1953, 26.
“I’m glad you find teaching”: BB to CJ, Oct. 26, 1950, Rauner.
finish his “new long novel”: David Dempsey, “In and Out of Books,” New York Times Book Review, Dec. 31, 1950, 5.
“I’m shooting the works”: Harvey Breit, “Talk with Charles Jackson,” New York Times Book Review, April 30, 1950, 19.
“The best novel I’ve found in years”: Roger Bourne Linscott, New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, Nov. 3, 1946.
American “cult of success”: Marlboro College press release, Aug. 22, 1949, Rauner.
“the best writing”: CJ, “The Sleeping Brain,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“in a writing lull”: RBJ to FSJ, Feb. 14 (1949), Rauner.
“It had not burned down”: CJ, “The Sleeping Brain,” Rauner.
“My God I’m even incapable”: CJ to BB, July 20, 1949, Rauner.
he’d written “about 800 pages”: Timothy S. Reed, “Jackson Ruthless with Own Novels and Dialogue,” The Dartmouth, Dec. 11, 1950, 1.
composed of “the same material”: CJ to BB, Dec. 15, 1948, Rauner.
“the peculiar fish that a writer is”: CJ to BB, Sept. 17, 1949, Rauner.
“I was talked out of it”: CJ to Mary McCarthy, Nov. 24, 1953, Vassar.
But after an “excellent beginning”: CJ to BB, June 5, 1950, Rauner.
“a kind of block or protest”: CJ to BB, July 12, 1950, Rauner.
“my fondest dream at the moment”: CJ to BB, Feb. 13, 1951, Rauner.
“In spite of fine moments”: William Maxwell to BB, March 12, 1951, Rauner.
“desperately in debt”: CJ to BB, Feb. 2, 1951, Rauner.
“No one, of course, has approached”: William Maxwell, Feb. 20, 1951, Rauner.
her morale was “persistently low”: RBJ to FSJ, Oct. 25 (1950), Rauner.
their guest’s “endless talking”: DS-Show, 86–88.
“We’re in a drying out phase”: RBJ to FSJ (c. late Jan. 1951), Rauner.
“he looks like the Seven Dwarfs”: CJ to DS, March 29, 1951, Rauner.
“represents Shakespeare’s most important”: Niels L. Anthonisen, “The Ghost in Hamlet,” American Imago 22, no. 4 (1965), 232.
“I’m not exactly Dostoyevsky!”: CJ to KWJ, Aug. 1, 1964, JFC.
“in my usual self-interested fashion”: CJ to SJP, Aug. 2, 1964, JFC.
“Jesus, what a cruel community!”: CJ to DS, March 22, 1951, Rauner.
“Papa doesn’t feel well”: Author int. KWJ, March 14, 2010.
“Your father drinks whis-kee”: CJ to Gershwins, Dec. 2, 1948, Rauner.
“a pain in the ass to live with”: CJ to CBJ, Jan. 13, 1954, Rauner.
“The secret inner mirror”: F&W.
“Make Katie stop teasing me”: CJ to DS, March 22, 1951, Rauner.
“Africa, Rome, Barcelona, Paris”: CJ to Strauses, Oct. 25 (1949?), Rauner.
“unconsciously would like to be rid”: CJ to Alice Morris, June 9, 1952, Rauner.
“And I find it increasingly hard”: CJ to BB, May 7, 1951, Rauner.
“ever invented out of whole cloth”: CJ to BB and Carl Brandt, May 30, 1951, Rauner.
“I should be giving that energy” CJ to Strauses, June 1, 1951, Rauner.
didn’t “feel up to it intellectually”: CJ to McCarthy, July 13, 1945, Vassar.
“The now-dead protagonist”: CJ to “Mrs. Harvey,” Jan. 21, 1966, Rauner.
declaring it a “masterpiece”: Quoted in CJ to SWJ, June 26, 1951, Rauner.
read it with “profound interest”: Margaret Cousins to Carl Brandt, July 20, 1951, Rauner.
“utterly disgusted” and “depressed”: CJ to BB and Brandt, Sept. 5, 1951, Rauner.
“I wish Mr. Jackson would get back”: Kathryn Bourne to Brandt, Aug. 8, 1951, Rauner.
“Whee! No!”: Lilian Kastendike to Brandt, Aug. 30, 1951, Rauner.
pressure was “unbearable”: RBJ to FSJ (c. Sept. 1951), Rauner.
“Sounds corny but it’s ghastly”: CJ to BB and Brandt, Oct. 10, 1951, Rauner.
“the nosiest of women”: CJ to BB, Sept. 20, 1950, Rauner.
“no nice children’s parties”: CJ to DS, Nov. 1, 1951, Rauner.
“Pa-pa, why don’t you go to a job”: CJ to DS, Nov. 18, 1953, Rauner.
help “tide [Charlie] over”: CJ to DS, Dec. 15, 1953, Rauner.
Chapter Fifteen • THE BOY WHO RAN AWAY
“a grueling task”: Quoted in CJ to Alice Morris, June 9, 1952, Rauner.
“God knows who reads the Bazaar”: CJ to Carl Brandt, Oct. 14, 1952, Rauner.
“a little too agonized”: CJ to Mary McCarthy, Sept. 7, 1953, Vassar.
“tremendous burst of productivity”: CJ to Phyllis McGinley, July 28, 1952, Syracuse.
“a kind of American Madame Bovary”: CJ to DS, July 9, 1952, Rauner.
“sound[ing] cool, experienced”: DS-Show, 88–89.
the “indescribable” terror: CJ, “The More Social Disease,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
her “first concern” should be: RBJ to FSJ, Jan. 16 (1953), Rauner.
It was “demoralizing”: RBJ to FSJ (c. Jan. 30, 1953), Rauner.
Roger thought … “quickie”: RBJ to FSJ, April 8 [1953], Rauner.
his usual springtime “re-birth”: CJ to McGinley, June 9 (1953), Syracuse.
“Do try to do a story that’s a little”: Brandt to CJ, June 11, 1953, Rauner.
started “careening around”: Author int. KSJ, June 10, 2009.
the results were “grim”: CJ to BB, July 23, 1953, Rauner.
“LIEBESTOD shook me up”: Bob Pinkerton to Brandt, Aug. 7, 1953, Rauner.
“For the first time, I had had enough”: DS-Show, 82.
“I’m leaving today”: CJ/AA-59.
“I am neither a ‘foolish’ nor wise”: C. Dudley Saul to CJ, Feb. 28, 1944, Rauner.
Chapter Sixteen • A RAIN OF SNARES
“Of course the town has had”: RBJ to FSJ, Aug. 13, 1953, Rauner.
“I was the whole cheese!”: CJ/AA-59.
“flabbergasted,” Jackson asked why: RBJ to FSJ (c. Aug. 28, 1953), Rauner.
“In my loneliness”: CJ, “The More Social Disease,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“having the time of [his] life”: CJ to H. T. “Tom” McGuire, Nov. 27, 1953, Rauner.
“with the elegant name”: CJ to DS, Nov. 24, 1953, Rauner.
drown her (“for your own sake”): CJ to KWJ, Jan. 28, 1954, Rauner.
“one of his alcoholic pipe-dreams”: RBJ to FSJ, Aug. 13, 1953, Rauner.
Reviews of Earthly Creatures: Budd Schulberg, in New York Times Book Review, Sept. 13, 1953, 4; William Peden, in Saturday Review, Oct. 10, 1953, 17; “Briefly Noted,” The New Yorker, Sept. 19, 1953, 119–20.
“We have never seen Mr. Jackson better”: Harvey Breit, “In and Out of Books,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 4, 1953, 8.
“between-the-linesier”: CJ to Leland Hayward, Oct. 1, 1953, Rauner.
“Very nice, but after all”: Elliott W. Schryver to Carl Brandt, Oct. 9, 1953, Rauner.
“marvelous, almost Dostoyevskean idea”: CJ to BB, May 15, 1953, Rauner.
“I think I covered a little”: CJ to DS, Oct. 7, 1953, Rauner.
“much too cerebral for selling”: CJ to Strauses, Sept. 3, 1953, Rauner.
“in [his] callower drunkener”: CJ to DS, Oct. 19, 1953, Rauner.
“the psychology of writers”: William Maxwell to BB, Nov. 12, 1953, Rauner.
“extremely well-written tale”: Frank DeBlois to Carl Brandt Jr., June 6, 1962, Rauner.
“It has dignity, humor, calm”: CJ to RS, Dec. 30, 1953, Rauner.
“well, everything to do”: CJ to Walter and Merriman Modell, Jan. 9, 1954, Rauner.
“watched [him] like a hawk”: CJ to DS, Oct. 19, 1953, Rauner.
“shake the complacency”: CJ to CBJ, Jan. 13, 1954, Rauner.
“I never did finish it”: CJ to Elling Aannestad, Sept. 14, 1954, Rauner.
“three not quite so definite”: CJ to Dorothy Stickney, Dec. 15, 1953, Rauner.
“blind as a bat but marvelous”: CJ to Niels Anthonisen, Jan. 28, 1954, Rauner.
“I like him so much”: CJ to RBJ, Jan. 28, 1954, Rauner.
the man who “could sit on the edge”: DS-Show, 90.
“at one thousand per throw”: CJ to Strauses, Jan. 12, 1954, Rauner.
“I hope you are not involved”: Quoted in CJ to McGuire, Jan. 29, 1954, Rauner.
“I absolutely and completely agreed”: RS to CJ, Dec. 2, 1953, Rauner.
“a load on [his] mind”: CJ to Walter Modell, Dec. 23, 1953, Rauner.
“love for the children”: CJ to McGuire family, Dec. 24, 1953, Rauner.
reading “a good hundred pages”: CJ to McGuire, Feb. 5, 1954, Rauner.
“looking forward to being able”: CJ to McGuire, Jan. 20, 1954, Rauner.
“fall flat on [his] face”: Quoted in CJ to McGuire, Feb. 18, 1954, Rauner.
“I can never speak again!”: CJ/AA-59.
“I am still confused by Max’s”: CJ to Warren Ambrose, March 1, 1954, Rauner.
“Wanted the pickup of a pill”: CJ to Dick Anderson, March 3, 1954, Rauner.
“It was like living”: CJ to Ira and Lee Gershwin, Sept. 14, 1954, Rauner.
“Not that I’m girlish enough”: RBJ to FSJ, April 16 (1954), Rauner.
“Lar[e]s and Penates”: CJ to FSJ, Sept. 25, 1954, Rauner.
Chapter Seventeen • A NEW ADDICTION
“It’s a terrible medium”: CJ to KWJ, Feb. 5, 1954, JFC.
“Monstrous in a nice house”: CJ to FSJ, Sept. 25, 1954, Rauner.
“make the rounds of the agencies”: CJ to Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney, Sept. 14, 1954, Rauner.
he found it “astonishingly dull”: George McCartney, “Waugh on Television,” Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies 34, no. 3 (2004); posted at http://www.lhup.edu/jwilson3/newsletter_34.3.htm.
Marty Mann would “respond to”: Quoted in John W. Crowley “A Charles Jackson Diptych,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier 32 (1997), 45.
“realism with a modest moral”: Michael Mashon, “Kraft Television Theatre”; posted at http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=krafttelevis.
“One very obvious problem”: Charles Mercer, “Radio’s Popularity Increasing Despite Inroads of Television,” Kokomo Tribune (A.P.), July 21, 1955, 12.
“one of the greatest of contemporary”: John McLaughlin to Kraft executive personnel, Feb. 20, 1956, Duke.
“I’m so involved with a job”: CJ to SJP (c. June 26, 1956), JFC.
“He was a forgotten, sad man”: Author int. Edward Pomerantz, March 7, 2009.
“John said ‘Gosh, I didn’t know’ ”: CJ to SJP, Sept. 23, 1958, JFC.
“The implication was that he didn’t”: Author int. Arthur Laurents, April 8, 2009.
“Never, I think, has the just”: CJ to Phyllis McGinley (c. 1955), Syracuse.
“because I lack so much”: CJ to McGinley, Aug. 1, 1952, Syracuse.
“Let Us Dare to Say It Out Loud”: Quoted in Herbert R. Mayes, The Magazine Maze (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1980), 53.
“would charm me less”: CJ, “To the Heart of the Times,” New York Times Book Review, Sept. 19, 1954, 4.
“But not in Larchmont!”: Author int. Robert Markel, Aug. 20, 2008.
“Be sure to tell Mama”: DS-Show, 89.
“How much larger your life”: Quoted in CJ to William Inge, Feb. 1, 1956, Rauner.
“It was during a troubled period”: CJ to Maurice Friedman, Aug. 5, 1964, Rauner.
“Please do not throw cigarettes”: Richard Lamparski, unpublished ms., courtesy of the author.
“Pete Gurney was my closest friend”: Author int. Ron Sproat, March 25, 2009.
“I hate to think I was”: E-mail from A. R. Gurney to author, Feb. 15, 2010.
“In the fifties you could know”: Author int. Gurney, April 8, 2009.
the “star pupils” of their meetings: Ned Rorem, The New York Diary of Ned Rorem (New York: George Braziller, 1967), 145.
“clear-faced and likable” daughter: Rorem to John W. Crowley, July 15, 1996, courtesy of John W. Crowley.
“What a break that would be”: CJ to Carl Brandt, Jr., July 4, 1964, Rauner.
“Whatever happens”: CJ to Inge, Dec. 5, 1964, Rauner.
“the frustrations, the anxieties”: Quoted in “William Inge, Playwright, Is Dead,” New York Times, June 11, 1973, 38.
“Charlie was like that too”: Author int. John Connolly, July 6, 2009.
“restimulate interest”: John F. Devine to Arthur C. Farlow, et al., Feb. 8, 1956, Duke.
a given show “didn’t misstep”: Author int. Paul Bogart, Dec. 8, 2009.
“recipe for an average TV program”: “Early ‘Recipe’ Reveals TV’s Darker Side,” 60 Years of Advertising on TV; posted at http://www.tvweek.com/2008/04/23/TVAdSpread3.pdf.
“most advantageous connection”: Memo from Maury Holland to Ed Rice, et al., April 3, 1957, Rauner.
“adequate (just) but not inspired”: George McGarrett to Dan Seymour, May 16, 1957, Duke.
“floors sag, practically no closet space”: RBJ to FSJ, Sept. 26 (1957), Rauner.
“Kraft carried [my father]”: SJP, “My Personality Shaped by Social Interaction / A Life History Paper,” paper written for sociology class at Connecticut College, dated Dec. 17, 1958, Rauner.
“Such titles as ‘Climax’ ”: McGarrett to Seymour, May 16, 1957, Duke.
“readjustment, with the help of AA”: RBJ to SJP, Dec. 10, 1958, JFC.
“It’s just a coincidence that we are both”: Doris E. Brown, “Rutgers Unveils Noted ‘Lost’ Writer,” The Star-Ledger, Oct. 4, 1964, 14.
“House lonely and cold today”: CJ to SJP, Sept. 18, 1958, JFC.
“devoted to an understanding”: TV listings, Bridgeport Post, Oct. 2, 1958, 39.
happy to “have a little money”: CJ to SJP, Jan. 23 (1959), JFC.
he seemed “very edgy”: RBJ to SJP, Nov. 17, 1959, JFC.
he was “financially desperate”: Carol Brandt to Ben Benjamin, Sept. 26, 1960, Rauner.
“it [made her] like people”: CJ to SJP, Sept. 21, 1958, JFC.
“affected Papa and all of us”: SJP, “My Personality Shaped by Social Interaction,” Rauner.
“distant isolated groups”: Joseph
Kessel, The Road Back: A Report on Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 152.
“our American De Quincey”: CJ/AA-59.
his “own humdrum mediocrity”: CJ to DS, Jan.13, 1954, Rauner.
“I was forced to recognize”: DS-Show, 90.
“Don’t expect to do anything”: RBJ to SJP, March 5, 1959, JFC.
“They were years of a kind of grey”: CJ, “The Sleeping Brain,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
worked best “for the mindless”: CJ to KWJ, June 26, 1964, JFC.
Chapter Eighteen • A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY
“You can’t think how much”: CJ to Felicia Geffen, April 2, 1959, Academy.
“some advance loot from Hollywood”: CJ to Charles Brackett, Aug. 6, 1960, Rauner.
two more pages “to establish”: Quoted in Margaret Cousins to Carl Brandt, Jr., Sept. 20, 1960, Rauner.
“The trouble with you, Daddy”: CJ, “One o’Clock in the Morning,” McCall’s, April 1961, 179.
“red ink on the books”: RS to Carol Brandt, Jan. 13, 1960, Rauner.
“gossip, shop talk, good food”: CJ, “The Sleeping Brain,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“But you know, Charlie”: Reminiscences of Roger W. Straus, Jr., Jan. 11, 1978, on page 365 of CUCOHC.
“I think he was feeling doomed”: Author int. Carl Brandt, Jr., March 11, 2010.
“the ramifications of the Straus situation”: RBJ to Brandt, March 1, 1963, Rauner.
“I wrote Roger a long chatty letter”: CJ to KWJ, July 2, 1963, JFC.
“I determined to myself”: CJ to SJP, Aug. 2, 1964, JFC.
“1 hour and 15 minutes of drowning”: CJ to KWJ, “July 1963,” JFC.
“I needed to get away”: CJ to Brandt and Robert Markel, June 22, 1964, Rauner.
“love, affection, and trust”: CJ to KWJ, July 2 (28?), 1963, JFC.
“I want to die, or get well”: CJ to SJP, July 28, 1963, JFC.
Charlie “learned [his] fate”: CJ, pocket diary 1963, JFC.
Charlie, was “the only one”: CJ to KWJ “& everybody,” June 10, 1964, JFC.
only one besides “a man of 42”: CJ to DS, Jan. 27, 1965, JFC.
moved to a “princely” room: CJ to SJP, Sept. 23, 1963, JFC.
“those heavy horseshoes”: CJ to SJP, Oct. 1, 1963, JFC.
