The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (10 page)

[…]

March 23, 1975.
[…] Am reading, reading constantly, four or five books at a time, yet never much sense of urgency; am caught up at present with schoolwork; the new issue of the magazine is about completed;
finished “The Sacrifice”
*
(difficult and quirky but let it stand: my last story, I hope, about an elderly man greeting his destiny); am thinking stray unformed exciting thoughts about another novel…. A family this time, perhaps five children, four of whom survive childhood and three of whom I follow into adulthood,
†
adventures in America, a rise from poverty or the background I know fairly well to middle-class stability and a kind of mystical affluence (which still surrounds me, despite the evident economic crisis), a curve back toward the beginning, a reconciliation of warring personalities, fusing-together of opposites, practical and visionary wisdoms brought together…but everything is vague at this point, only my anticipation, excitement, intense interest seems clear, unmistakable; but another novel so soon!…not part of my plans. Still, I won’t be ready to write it, not even the notes for it, for months. A long time. It arises so slowly, the characters form slowly, emerge slowly, slowly, one must only allow them their natural growth…. Already
The Assassins
seems to belong to another lifetime, another phase of personality. […]

March 26, 1975.
[…] The novelist is an empiricist, an observer of facts…objective and subjective “reality”…he must guard against the demonic idea of imagining that he possesses or even can possess ultimate truth. In this way he is like a scientist, an ideal scientist. Humble, striving for what he does not yet know, wanting to discover it, not to impose a pre-imagined dogma upon reality. The novel as discovery. Fiction as constant discovery, revelation. The person who completes a novel is not the person who began it. Hence the joy of creation, the unpredictable changes, transformations, some minute and some major. As soon as the novelist stops observing, however, he becomes something else—an evangelist, a politician. A person with opinions…. The novelist must be on the side of life, willing to surrender his “beliefs,” even. Absolute truth is a chimera that draws us all but will destroy us should we ever succumb. Art especially is destroyed. Or, rather: set aside. When one believes he has the Truth, he is no longer an artist. When we finish a great work we
should realize that we know less than we did before we began, in a sense; we are bewildered, confused, disturbed, filled with questions, ready to reread, unsettled by mystery.

March 28, 1975.
[…] Since sending
The Assassins
out I’ve felt released and free and unusually happy, even for me; a sense of real completion, of having passed through and dealt with certain issues in my psychic life that were bound up with philosophical and social and historical paradoxes of our era. The novel does not solve anything; it is an experience that should not really point to anything beyond itself. The freedom of art, its ultimate ahistorical essence…. Began Carlos Baker’s
Hemingway
and read almost straight through, finished the book yesterday; felt drained, moved, even a little frightened. A far better book than Blotner’s
Faulkner
, since Blotner struggled with too much external detail and failed to get into the spirit of the man;
*
but it, too, could have relied upon quotations from Hemingway’s work, or from letters, that might have allowed the man to seem rather more intelligent than he did. He was intelligent, after all—a genius! Yet one comes away with the impression of a big bulky grizzled blustering half-mad egotist. Quentin Bell’s
Virginia Woolf
still seems to me the best biography I have read for years. How I would love to write a biography!…to immerse myself in the details of someone else’s life, for years, to live through and re-experience and possibly even give new life to that “other” human being…. But the subject would have to be perfect; would have to be sufficiently antithetical to my own personality, and not bound up with too much gossip or literary politics…. On the other hand, since I enjoy biographies, why write one? It’s enough simply to enjoy other people’s work without wanting to do similar work. Music and art are delightful, partly because I feel absolutely no inclination, no interest, not even a vague vicarious fantasy-interest, to do likewise. Whereas musicians, composers, artists must always feel a slight twinge of—of that indefinable impulse—that needling, abrupt, flurrying sensation of—of what?—of a desire
to create?—not to imitate, not even to rival, but to—to make one’s own statement?—to outdo what has been done, in one’s own terms? The writer can’t really read other writing without feeling these dim sensations or urges, however engrossing the work is; I assume it must be the same thing, with musicians and composers and artists of any sort. The peace, therefore, of standing before a painting and looking at it. Or of listening to music. Peace, tranquility, a kind of submission to the spirit of the other artist, with no desire whatsoever to add anything of one’s own. (Criticism, professional criticism, must spring from such urges. The critic wants so badly to create!…to do something, anything!…but being unable, perhaps, to create original work, or being dissatisfied with what is possible, chooses instead to spin theories about other people’s work, to offer opinions in strategically obscure language, at times to destroy. Criticism can be monumentally creative, of course. At times highly artistic, highly personal. But it rarely relates to the work of art being assessed. It is an expression of the critic’s own subjectivity. Only when the critic is patiently descriptive, willing to set aside his or her “feelings” for a while, and attempt to describe the work objectively, is criticism legitimate. At other times it is illegitimate, but it can be very interesting nonetheless.)

[…]

April 3, 1975.
…Sleet storm, blizzard, everything covered (again) with snow. Wind all night long. Bits of ice thrown against the windows, crackling tinkling noises, small explosions. Another Ice Age is upon us…. Yesterday, Wednesday, left me totally exhausted. Regular teaching and a two-hour session of such intensity, afterward I felt as if I were another person, or half a person, kept blinking and wondering if I could make it home. Luncheon at the University doesn’t interest me and there isn’t much time; so I don’t eat, don’t have any appetite; then this terrible exhaustion comes upon me, about 5:30, and at 6, when the seminar ends, I am what they call “wrung out.” No emotion attends this: no feeling of depression or dismay or even vexation. Just tiredness…. After dinner I feel better, usually much better. And I may do a little writing in the evening. But usually not: I just read, take notes. Which allows me to know that if I had a really demanding job,
and worked like that five days a week, I probably wouldn’t write at all. The
New York Times
did a small article on women who worked very hard—“workaholics” was the catchy title—and I was included, but what I had said about University teaching was eliminated. But that’s half my life!…maybe more than half. If I had nothing else to do but write, I would write constantly and would be what is known as “prolific.” Which, of course, I wouldn’t want.

Seem to be working, taking notes, on three different things. They are three different “visions,” and the style for each is uniquely its own. One is sardonic, satiric, quick-moving. Another is more “intellectual,” in the sense of dealing with ideas. Another, the one that interests me most, that I somehow can’t stop thinking of, is heavily detailed, slow-paced, a possible novel about the young girlhood of a woman rather like myself, with important fictional differences, of course…. Want very much to do a “family” novel again. Mother, brothers, sister, grandfather. Why is the father missing?…Because the family cannot be perfect: not in literature. “Happy families are…” as we know. And they teach us very little. Happiness is soon infuriating, in other people. It seems so self-congratulatory. It seems so shallow. “Happiness is only purchased by suffering,” says Dostoyevsky. Perhaps that is true. I don’t know. Dostoyevsky could not have known either, since “happiness” might have come to him whether or not he had suffered; whether or not he had known he had suffered. But it is an incontestable fact that “happiness” and its variants—contentment, well-being, optimism—are exasperating when they are pushed down our throats. When I read an interview with myself—which, I confess, I find it hard to do—for good reason—I’m annoyed at the statements I make as I would be annoyed at a stranger making them: who cares about normality, about things going right or well, about “Joyce Carol Oates” enjoying her writing? I should say that I find it torture and don’t know why I do it. Then I would sound more human. But that would be a lie: I’m as priggish as Conrad lately, and refuse to lie. (Even going through Customs with a $2.98 record.) So I can’t lie and the truth sounds wrong somehow. I don’t want to be concocting an “image” to set loose in the world, yet the reality disappoints or disturbs me, when I witness it from a distance. Always, though, the problem is solved by being forgot
ten. So I forget. I forget many things. I can’t take them seriously and I can’t take certain people seriously. But everything exists, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

[…]

April 28–May 10, 1975.
Trip to Washington, D.C., and New York City and return home by way of Brockport, New York, and my parents’ home in Millersport.

A multitude of experiences, most of them overwhelmingly positive; a few strange, sad, subdued moments; a renewed sense of interest in my childhood environment and genuine pleasure—relief—that my father seems so much more healthy than he did a year ago (he was told to give up smoking and evidently this has made all the difference). Reluctant to bring the trip to a close….

“A colleague of mine said: ‘If I could publish in the
New York Review of Books,
like you, I would be completely happy.’ So I said to him, ‘I do publish in the
New York Review of Books
—and I’m not happy!’”—Alfred Kazin. In a sardonic mood, at Evelyn’s dinner party for me. Strange tic, facial tic, distorting his mouth at odd intervals; doesn’t seem to bother him; he holds forth with amusing anecdotes but seems a rather sad man, having remarked two or three times upon the fact of “physical isolation”…he writes in an office, he says, and is alone, and doesn’t know very many people very well, in Manhattan, believes that writing is a lonely life. I didn’t agree but did not wish to argue. Anyway one cannot argue with him, not really. Perhaps he is unhappy over the poor reception given
The Bright Book of Life
, his loose collection of essays on American writers. An uneven performance with some good pieces and a number of very casual, indifferent pages…. Kazin’s cheerful jaunty despair upset me a little and I found myself unable to sleep that night, thinking of the man’s probable resentment of those who are not as unhappy as he. On the other hand, he very much recommended Antonioni’s
The Passenger
, claiming it to be a fine film; Ray and I went and it turned out to be slow, dull, pretentious, and a dim repetition of other Antonioni films, mainly
Blow-Up
and
Red Desert
….

[…]

Lillian Hellman treated us to lunch at the Italian Pavilion: a gracious, frank, amusing, brilliant woman. I liked her immensely but felt shy in her presence. I had been too shy, actually, to telephone her…luckily she had telephoned me, by way of Vanguard, so the luncheon was set up, and Nona Balakian of the
New York Times Book Review
joined us. Someone had said Lillian Hellman wasn’t well, and wouldn’t stop smoking, so that her illness was aggravated, but she seemed in good health and certainly in good spirits. Spoke of Faulkner, of Hammett, of the poor state of the American theater, of revivals of her work, the most recent of which (
The Autumn Garden
, off-off-Broadway) she hadn’t even seen, dreading their production. (We wanted to see it but were unable to get tickets.)

At Bob and Judy Phillips’ home in Katonah we met William Goyen, whose work I’ve known for a long time but not in depth; must reread the stories that struck me as being so good, years ago, and also
The House of Breath
, re-issued as an “American classic.” A good, kind, gentle, soft-spoken man, obviously complex while appearing simple, uncomplicated.

In Washington, D.C., reading my poems at the Library of Congress, a fine and generous introduction by Stanley Kunitz, who is Poetry Consultant this year. A good evening, many people, the delight of talking with Kunitz, one of our outstanding poets, and a very nice person…. A day or two later, an award at the Lotos Club in New York, a few words, question-and-answer session lasting about half an hour, another group of fine people, seemingly so nice. I was treated like a queen, shall we say, at both functions, and at times wondered if this was altogether real. Are people really reading my work—with such enthusiasm? It seems hard to believe. I must take it with a grain of salt.[…]

June 3, 1975.
…Drove across Michigan to Kalamazoo College where I visited a large class and gave a reading in the evening: a small liberal arts college, 1500 students, only 7 men (men: male) in the English Department, a sense of domesticity, everyone knowing everyone else, friendship, easiness, a pleasant atmosphere. Reading from
The Poisoned Kiss
, discussing “psychic” experiences, however they are labeled—“psychological,” “pathological,” “fraudulent,” “authentic”—the person who has the experi
ence has it and is not interested in categories or explanations. Afterward, as always, people came to speak to me about their odd experiences; one can never guess, setting out on one of these minor adventures, what amazing relationships, kinships, communions-of-spirit will result. Always, at first, it is bothersome to be wearing the headdress “Oates”—which calls attention to itself rather than to the human being beneath it; but as time passes, as we get to know one another, this distinction fades. I think. Or are people watching and memorizing small, stray, non-representative bits, for future use? Stanley Elkin, who preceded me at Kalamazoo, evidently did a reading of a novella during a violent storm—a tornado warning, even signaled by a siren in the area (which means everyone should go to tornado shelters)—but Stanley didn’t know what the siren meant, or perhaps didn’t hear it, and kept on reading while his audience suffered, more or less docilely. A marvelous anecdote…! Generally he didn’t seem to be in top shape, is in fact ill, less energetic than in the past, so they said; poor man, has always seemed so peculiarly driven…and for what reason? Wherever he goes, however, anecdotes arise. Which can’t be said about me, I suppose. “Joyce Carol Oates and her husband Ray Smith were here last week.” “Oh—what are they like?” “Well, they’re—they’re quiet. They’re nice. They’re—well—like any of us—like anyone, I guess—nothing remarkable.” “Nothing remarkable? No drinking bouts, no poisonous barbs, arguments, battles? Nothing?” “A few years ago we had John Berryman up, and there was a poet for you. Did I ever tell you about what happened…” etc., etc…. Though I may acquire an aura of being unwell, sickly, a kind of ambulatory patient, since I am often distressed at having to turn down invitations (especially from well-meaning but opportunistic and, alas, tedious people: acquaintances who would like to be intimate friends) and use the excuse of poor health. It seems a kindness—what else can one say? A simple “no” is out of the question. Even a complex “no” is out of the question. Sometimes we say we’re about to leave on a trip, or a set of relatives is due to visit us; sometimes I just say, or Ray says, that I’m not feeling well. Over the years these excuses will accumulate…I’ll appear to be like George Eliot! In fact the last time I was ill, and forced to miss classes for about a week, was in 1967, with the Asian—or London?—flu. I was really sick. Really sick. Enough for a decade, I hope. But I have never missed a class at Windsor since, have never canceled a poetry reading engagement,
or—really—anything much: which is not meant to be a hubristic statement, simply a statement of the facts. Someday, of course, ultimately, inevitably, necessarily, “excellent health” must succumb to something else…but I’ve had remarkably good luck so far.