The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (34 page)

…The larger world, the world outside our lives: the economy, politics, declining morale: what can one say, or even think, about it? I have no hope for the collective. The larger the “collective” the more certain it will be betrayed by its leaders, or by its ordinary citizens. Why, I don’t know. A “tragic” view of life, or simply a realistic view…? The Soviet theme of disillusionment with Communist ideals and leaders can hardly absorb me—for who could have believed such things anyway?
*
Not that sharing-the-wealth etc. isn’t a
good idea
but that the revolution wouldn’t be eventually betrayed. Where more than a few people are gathered together the seed of corruption, or selfishness, always flowers. Again I don’t know why—haven’t any idea. But egotism asserts itself, inevitably, in any relationship that isn’t tempered by mutual regard and affection.

…Parties, parties. As Virginia Woolf comments in a diary or a letter—it’s impossible to say why we like them, what value they have, how they justify subsequent exhaustion. […]

April 13, 1978.
[…] Yesterday, to Ann Arbor, there to meet with Tom Wolfe, who gave the Hopwood Address in the Rackham Bldg., the same building I spoke in two weeks ago exactly (surprising, that the seats weren’t all filled for his talk): Wolfe in his trademark vanilla ice cream suit with pale blue shirt and pale blue socks and white shoes (rather rushing the season, those shoes), a nice person, warm and congenial and,
offstage, not at all pretentious. His talk was low-keyed and superficial, perhaps aimed for a somewhat younger (or less intelligent) audience. I am thinking of writing him a letter…. We talked a bit, though not at great length. The two of us were “guests of honor” at the Inglus House dinner following the reception, which meant that we were many yards apart, at either end of a very long table.

[…]

…No luck thus far trying to rent our house; and prospects at Princeton aren’t inviting. (Rentals are prohibitively expensive—someone has offered us a house near the Institute for Advanced Study, at only $750 a month—not including utilities!) We are asking $350 for this house, but no one appears to be interested. Such a boring, tedious side of life, this business of arranging for houses, moves…. I’m almost tempted to remain where I am.

…Piano lessons. Rising early to practice an extra hour. Byron and Carolyn Rourke are flying to France this Saturday for two weeks, and then Ray and I are going to NYC, so I won’t have a lesson for some time; which is disappointing, and oddly unsettling. It’s no exaggeration to say that I am
infatuated
with the piano, and with piano music, right now—the word
love
being, perhaps, too melodramatic.

[…]…Am doing galleys for
Son of the Morning
. How very closely Nathan’s experiences parallel certain experiences of mine. And his ostensibly eccentric ideas. I
believe
in much of what he believes in (the essential spiritual nature of human beings, our interior-ness) while at the same time I can see, not without humor, that his beliefs aren’t very plausible. Ah but still: we
are
souls inhabiting bodies, and the bodies
are
the least significant parts of us.

April 15, 1978.
…A very deep sleep, from which I awoke entirely rested (I haven’t felt “entirely rested” for weeks) and with the absolute conviction that I must revise certain sections of
Son of the Morning
, before it’s too late.

…So, this morning, rewriting the already-revised section in which Nathan banishes Japheth; and developing further the section at Patagonia
Springs. The eeriness of the writing: to see, there, on the page, given to a fictitious person, some of my own convictions, knowing they are bizarre and yet knowing that they are, more or less, correct. God as the force which creates and sustains all living creatures, and allows them the illusory “knowledge” that they are separate from one another; God as devourer, and creator. I believe it all, really. Yet I’ve managed to escape, thus far, Nathan Vickery’s collapse and speechlessness.

(He doesn’t seem to have comprehended, however, the idea that “God” is also “love” of a kind. Or at any rate intense sympathy.)

…Working then on a poem, “Painting the Balloon Face.” Which isn’t quite right.
*

…Three hours of piano. Or was it more. Playing everything I know, memorizing scales (exasperating, G major and E minor; D major and B minor), doing various finger exercises.

…Reading Russian poets: quite intrigued by Zinaida Hippus, who is evidently unknown in Russia now; and Anna Akhmatova, whom everyone likes; Osip Mandelstam (however, I do believe his satirical piece on Stalin wasn’t worth his life—it doesn’t strike me as a particularly good poem); Vyacheslav Ivanov; Vladislaw Khodasevich; and of course Mayakovsky, who is both absurd and sometimes moving; and Voznesensky; and Bella Akhmadulina. Some compelling stories by Abram Tertz (that is, Andrei Sinyavsky), a woman named Tarasenkova, someone named Alexander Urusov who may or may not exist (he may be a pseudonym).

…Something fascinates me here. I think it’s the Soviet writers’ instinct for pseudonymous lives; careful duplicity; the creation of and control of a public self, while the interior, private self exists in secret. With the Soviets there is nothing playful about it, it’s done in absolute seriousness. Perhaps there are writers—perhaps there are many writers—who maintain an inner, secret self without sharing their knowledge with anyone at all. One
could be, almost, a member of the Writers’ Union, writing and mouthing their propaganda-drivel, while maintaining a secret self all the while…. But the strain of it, the guilt at such hypocrisy, expediency…! That would be crippling, I should think. And if there were others involved, families, children….

…My sympathy for someone like Sinyavsky. Who, fortunately, according to Deming Brown, is now living in Paris, after having been in a concentration or labor camp for several years. But there are others, at the very moment, in mental asylums….

Ironic, to be meeting with “established” Soviet writers in NYC. While others, the dissidents and the criminals, are in exile or in prison. Typical diplomacy, hypocrisy. Yet I suppose it would be altogether wrong to say anything. Not in the spirit of the U.S.–Soviet Writers Conference which is to stress positive rapport….

April 17, 1978.
…Lovely day, chilly & sunny. Went for a long walk. Talked of our impending trip to NYC: a great deal to be done beforehand.

…At the piano for hours. Working on the #1 “Two-Part Invention,” which is coming along well; and the other pieces; and “La cathédrale engloutie,” which is too hard—the chords too immense for my hands. But a lovely piece of music.

…Read with interest Adrienne Rich’s
The Dream of a Common Language
. She
is
a fine poet, apart from her rather fanatical feminism…radical/lesbian stance…anti-male bias. Does she think, do the radical feminists really think, that only men were in favor of the Vietnam War…? Would that life were so simple…so simply apprehended.

[…]

…John Ditsky gave me a present, a recording of Berlioz’s
Te Deum,
which is of course beautiful, but I can’t get interested in it; I want to hear only piano music; I want to hear only Chopin. Listening & reading through
the Nocturnes last night. The challenge is,
to keep myself away from Chopin and at my desk
.

[…]

…Reading more Soviet poets & writers. Thinking. Thinking of a short story involving a Soviet writer…a former dissident, who has been imprisoned…but who has a family back in Russia; who is consequently vulnerable. He would be confronted with a very shallow sort of American, perhaps an interviewer, someone like Tom Wolfe…all “style,” no substance. Or should the American be a woman….

April 19, 1978.
[…] Preparing to leave, Friday morning, for Lockport, Millersport, New York City. The Soviet delegation looks disappointing: I suspect several of the “writers” are mere party hacks (they are secretaries of unions); only Valentin Kayatev seems substantial. Ah well. It should be, at the very least, an educational experience….

…Glancing through piles of mail at the University yesterday. Skimming an asinine “interview” in some Ohio newspaper, a dull-witted journalist who approached me at the Birmingham book-signing, of course it’s all well-intentioned and friendly and
nice
, but such drivel…. My God. The queer image of me that people have, or have invented: that I am big-eyed and shy and tremulous etc. etc. Solemn. Grave. According to this idiot my eyes “registered fear” when he approached with his tape recorder. (Fear! No doubt it was simple hostility.) Asked a question re. one of my novels I “seemed nervous.” Oh it’s all such…drivel. […] Most of what is “known” about other people is drivel, unsubstantiated rumors and “memories” recounted by so-called friends, or outright enemies; people who want to impress themselves upon history, so to speak, with their intimate knowledge of a great personality, but who want nonetheless to achieve a small sort of triumph over that personality by adding unpleasant or grotesque or merely humbling details. It is a fact not generally recognized that any detail is mysteriously crippling. To know how many cavities Shakespeare had, or what sort of sordid cheap exchange went on between Shelley and one of his loves, or the money worries of Dostoyevsky, or…. In some cases, as w/Hawthorne, in his
American Journals
, one
is
positively im
pressed; Hawthorne emerges as a person of greater depth, and greater humanity, than one might have thought judging simply from his stiff allegorical stories and novels. But in most cases it’s simply garbage, clutter, drivel….

The impulse to go into hiding: quite strong at times. Perhaps I will someday. But. This life is too enjoyable, teaching and friends and various visits; it seems a great deal to surrender merely for the solace of having one’s privacy more respected. Of course one can send out into the world an image that is
contrary
to one’s deepest self, thereby protecting it; to some extent I seem to have done this already. That my reputation for being shy, tremulous, “almost pathetically serious,” is belied by the fact that I teach full-time, address large classes and large audiences, that I frankly enjoy the commotion, and certainly enjoy a small circle of friends and a small social life, no one seems to notice, or to register. It’s as if my real life, my real self, continued undisturbed by the silly tremulous “image” certain literary journalists have taken up.

[…]

April 30, 1978.
…Returned home today, a lovely chilly Sunday, at about 7
P.M.
, daylight savings time; have been gone—how long?—eight days. The Soviet–US Writers’ conference was very moving, in fact one of the most interesting and memorable experiences of my life. Yet difficult to assess though Ray and I have talked of nothing else for days….

A crowded, intense trip. The reading at Millersville went without any difficulties; my “serious” poems first, and then at the very end one or two of the satirical poems […]. Visited beforehand w/my parents; Daddy, fifteen pounds lighter, looking healthy, and Mom her usual self: cheerful, energetic, attractive.

Poetry reading, Sunday evening; Monday morning two classes (at nine, ten). Then to NYC. Stopped for lunch at The Ship Inn, an eighteenth-century place on Highway 30, had to hurry to get to the Gotham Hotel on time for the briefing at 4:30. There, a very attractive older woman with chestnut-red hair came up to me, said she was delighted to meet me,
shook hands, etc., and I didn’t know who she was—though I discovered a few minutes later that she was Elizabeth Hardwick. (Somehow I had imagined she would look much older. And plainer.) Met Kurt Vonnegut, of whom I’ve heard so much from Gail Godwin; and he is charming. And Edward Albee, whom at first I rather dreaded. (His reputation for being cold, formidable, sarcastic. […]) Bill Styron. (Who must be one of the nicest, most congenial people I’ve ever encountered.) Norman Cousins is a delightful person, infinitely patient and tactful […] I was rather unprepared for the Soviet delegates’ friendliness. And their insistence that I am “famous” in Russia (and Lithuania).

Buffet dinner, not very tasty food, at the Cousins’ apartment on Central Park South. John & Martha Updike there. We talked at some length. The Soviets’ interest in me was rather startling. (They
seemed
sincere.) The formidable Nikolai Fedorenko (who, according to Kurt, used to bully Adlai Stevenson when he was ambassador to the UN), the editor of
Foreign Literature
and chairman of their delegation; the very interesting, oddly charming Yassen Zassoursky, Dean of Journalism at Moscow University; and Mykolas Sluckis, from Lithuania, who followed me closely about, smiling hopefully, unable to speak English.

[…]

I liked Yassen the most. Perhaps because he’s traveled so much, knows English perfectly, was funny, warm, informative, eager to talk about his membership in the Communist Party, and his family background, and his work at the University. (He is an American literature specialist, in addition to being Dean of the Journalism School.) Unfortunately we didn’t take pictures of any of these charming people….

[…]

…George Klebnikov, the interpreter. Remarkable man. I want to write a story about the unsettling experience of earphones, simultaneous interpretation, the metaphysical uncertainty of listening to a language that is, and remains, foreign…indecipherable…no matter how attentively one listens. (Might one fall in love w/a foreign language?—with the people who speak it so effortlessly, and so mysteriously? I was flattered by Mykolas’s interest in me, which was almost boyish; but Yassen’s more sophisti
cated interest was more disturbing…. The fascination of these people who are, in so many ways, similar to us…yet at a certain point one encounters something unshakable, their faith in their own received truths. Yassen, for instance. A quick-witted, charming, wonderfully friendly person, a man whom I came to like very much (which is unusual, for me); yet I know he would countenance dissident writers being persecuted (“They are not really writers,” he said, and went on to say something about “anti-Soviet” activities) and sent to labor camps. He feels the need for censorship of written work. He mentioned being a friend of the (former) Russian ambassador to Canada (who has just been expelled from Canada for spying!)…He invited me, and Ray also, to Moscow; and Mykolas has invited us to Lithuania. (2.5 million people there. 1 million Lithuanians in the US.) Of course we’ll never go.