The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (36 page)

[…]

June 5, 1978.
…Working mesmerized on “Queen of the Night.” I had wanted it short, twenty pages or so, but it can’t be short; hence it will demand its own length. Difficult to tear myself away from it.

[…]

…Piano, and “Queen of the Night,” and more piano, and the sunny courtyard, and reading. It’s difficult to imagine other ways of life, other pleasures. (Ray playing golf this morning, up early, left at 7:30.)

To live sequestered and protected in a room. The universe squeezed into a single room. Chastity: the freedom from the emotion that leads to marriage, children, family, “feminine” obligations. By this pathway Emily Dickinson created herself as a poet; by this scrupulous meanness of her life’s energies, which had to be rigorously protected so that she could write. And I am exactly the same: for with me the art comes first, must come first, and everything else is grouped around it, subordinate to it. If I required “neurosis” (neurotic dependencies on other, stronger people) or even psychotic flashes of inspiration or energy, I would submit to it for the sake of the writing. Because nothing else is permanent, nothing is transcendent, except art.

Dickinson, to hoard her spirit, had to remain a spinster, in seclusion. I can handle an expenditure of spirit—to some extent. But at a certain point I too would retreat, shrewdly. For one
must
hoard this sacred power which is like a flame that can burn intensely or flutter out….

[…]

June 7, 1978.
…Writing for hours, and have finished “Queen of the Night” which frightened me, made me giddy, at the end. I will set it aside. Think about it later. Revise somewhat. But this is it, it’s set, not quite according to the outline I’d sketched….

Brutal, that story. Who wrote it…? I wrote it, am it, am infused with it. Yet it isn’t
me
.

…“My relationship with her has always been a perfectly serene one. I inhabit her as smoothly as a supple hand inside a glove of fine leather. There are no obvious creases or wrinkles, no crevices, interstices in which the eye might fall and grope about…. She invented a
persona
to accommodate me, many years ago. And she inhabits this persona as smoothly as
a hand inside a glove. The persona is infinitely flexible because it has no center, no reality. It has been called, in print, in fact in a national news-magazine, ‘intensely feminine.’ This is not a lie, nor is it true…. The persona is sometimes sweet, patient, kindly, courteous, extremely interested in other people (or personae?). On the other hand it could easily be cynical, impatient, cruel, rude, and indifferent to others. It has a tendency to be witty, but the wit might slide into nihilism (the best jokers are nihilistic)…. My relationship with her has always been untroubled. This is because, I think, she does not take anything as other than fictional. She invented herself, in order to give me a free hand, a channel to the outside world. Yet she could write a paragraph or two setting forth the terms of our understanding and it would not disturb her because she would see the words as expressive of a fiction, a metaphor. She looks upon everything tolerantly, though sometimes intolerantly. She can love but cannot ‘fall in love.’ Because ‘falling in love’ demands a violent projection of the self onto an image, an object, and she understands the unconscious processes too well to fall prey to them. (Or so she thinks! But she may suffer from hubris, that most fascinating of ailments.)…She can compose the words of a fiction like ‘Queen of the Night’ in order to give dramatic structure and a substance to my inchoate strivings, and though the story is as terrifying, perhaps, as anything she has ever written, she will not really be troubled. She will think of…she will think of small technical problems…. She will retype paragraphs, pages. The labor of art becomes an end in itself so that one will not be
forced
to contemplate its tragic content.”

Fair enough? Ah, there are many Queens of the Night!

[…]

June 11, 1978.
[…] Thoughts in our summery Edenic garden: a massive three-part novel, perhaps three separate novels,
Bellefleur/Mahalaleel
; the first part rendered in outright fantasy (as befits a very small child’s world), the second more realistically and the third quite naturalistically, as Germaine emerges into the consciousness of an adult. I envision 1000 pages exactly. 333.3 pages to each novel. What a marvelous idea…. Plotting it out would take weeks. Writing it would take years. I
could go slowly, very slowly, putting in all sorts of fanciful things, making a kind of Book of Kells, a vast tapestry…. No hurry to finish, certainly, since Vanguard has manuscripts of mine that will take me into the 80’s. But what to call it?
Bellefleur. Mahalaleel
.?????????

[…]

June 15, 1978.
[…] Long bicycle ride this afternoon, by the river. Along the bicycle path. And then east of here. These days pass as if in a dream, so idyllic, one hesitates to describe them. The mere act of setting down such things is reckless, invites trouble…fate…. One must be humble in the face of happiness; otherwise the gods are provoked….

…A flood of notes, thoughts, half-thoughts, re.
Bellefleur
. Cascade of ideas. Excitement mingled w/despair…for how on earth will I ever transpose the visceral sensation of the novel into prose….

(The lushness, shameless gorgeous exaggerated beauty of colors, in Matisse. The hard edges, black lines, w/their look of being lazy: arbitrary. Two-dimensional world. Colors, shapes, almost featureless faces. For
Bellefleur
: but of course it’s impossible. Words can’t do it, can’t be transposed. But I
want it so badly
…. )

…Pascal & the “thinking reed.” By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

(But is it “the world” that is comprehended, or only the self-deceiving images of a feverish mind turned inward upon itself…. The risk, the fate, of all philosophy. Turning endlessly upon itself. Defining definitions. Words, concepts. Syntax. Art breaks through such paralysis…transcends the rigid limitations of language, what-has-gone-before…. )

Bellefleur, Bellefleur…. Mahalaleel.
…It seems that I have been living with this “novel” for most of my life…but the first page hasn’t yet been written, the formal plot hasn’t yet been planned. Perhaps I am intimidated by the ambitiousness of the subject…a fear that whatever style I choose will be inadequate….

And then there is Kristin, “The Story of a Bad Girl,” which I seem to have set aside. Rereading
Sentimental Education
was a disturbing experience because it seemed so good, so right, so perfectly-modulated, and I wonder if I could do that again…I wonder if I could do that again….

[…]

June 17, 1978.
…Idle thoughts on “The Precipice.” Reading a new Iris Murdoch novel,
The Sea, The Sea
, to review for
TNR:
*
her usual meticulous prose, fascinating, fascinating simply to read, though I must admit that the character, his brooding, his voice-rhythms, are awfully familiar. (He sounds very much like Hilary of
A Word Child
.)

…Very nice day yesterday, my birthday. Luncheon w/Kay, Liz, and Marge. Several presents, the most striking from Kay, who seems to have spent more money than the occasion—the informality—would justify. (A gold necklace with tiny stones. Extremely attractive.) Ray surprised me with a jade ring in a gold setting. Which I certainly didn’t expect, and halfway didn’t want…since he had gotten me an opal ring not long ago…and I am uncomfortable with luxuries of this sort, pleasant enough but rather superfluous…. However…. There
is
the reality of the gift, my husband’s love for me, our really quite extraordinary (I suppose, I never think about it) rapport for over eighteen years; the ring
is
beautiful; I am wearing it now; I will continue to wear it.

…My idleness. My inclination to drift to the piano and stay there for hours. I suppose it’s another sort of reading, another kind of exploration: reading not a novel (what, after all, am I going to learn from Murdoch, when I know her work so well?—of course I admire it, that’s something quite different) but Chopin’s Preludes, brooding over them, staring, listening, contemplating. The pieces Carolyn assigns are technically tricky […] but boring musically, all surfaces, no depths, nothing jarring or arresting. So I spend hours sight-reading pieces that are beyond my technical skill,
but it doesn’t upset me, it doesn’t seem to matter in the slightest…. This year, my fortieth birthday, the election to the American Academy, the publication of
Son of the Morning
, some sort of watershed, a sense of tranquility, rest, balance.

[…]

June 24, 1978.
…What strange, exhausting images the unconscious mind forces upon us…. Woke this morning after an extraordinarily painful, distressing dream; lay without being able to move for ten or fifteen minutes; when at last I went to the bathroom to wash my face I saw that I had aged ten years; deep indentations around the eyes, two odd severe lines on the left side of my mouth, other perverse defiant lines on my cheeks…. I stared in dismay at this worn, sallow face, a mask I detested and could not accept, and felt for a moment such a sense of…of giddiness, unreality,
dislike
of what constitutes reality….

…Now, 10:30
A.M
. after a long shower, after having shampooed my hair, I feel and look exactly as I always do. There is no sign. And the dream is rapidly fading. It must be like those legendary birth pains, which are so terrible and yet cannot be recalled afterward. Unless of course the body, the body’s tissues, recall them.

…Spent yesterday morning and most of the afternoon reading & rereading Murdoch, and writing my little essay-review on
The Sea, The Sea
and her work in general. Feel fairly satisfied with it though I should have very much liked to work in her stirring, elegiac, rather beautiful poem “Agamemnon Class, 1939.” When a writer is so uneven as Murdoch it’s necessary, and only fair, to concentrate on her best work. Unfortunately the review had to be of
The Sea, The Sea
, which obviously isn’t her best work; so I tried to say things about
Henry and Cato
,
A Word Child
, etc.

…The
betrayal
of Murdoch’s vision by the rowdy Restoration-comedy atmosphere of her settings. The ponderous introspective style, which should signal a certain kind of novel,
betrayed
by the determinedly superficial nature of her plots. Why?

…Shall I record the exact images of that dream? But I hate to.

…Finished “The Precipice” the other day, and went for a long walk, thinking of it, its implications. With me a story grows as if alive, day by day, becoming more and more concentrated, until it seems to fill the entire sky and I am enveloped in it, troubled by its inevitable implications: in this case, character as fate, Spinoza’s seamless universe. In that universe there is no “imperfection” as such, only imperfect vision. All maladies, all hurts, are dissolved into a higher, broader consciousness that is God. I can accept this, being a sort of Spinozist myself (like Wesley Sterne); but I don’t particularly like it.

…What troubles me about Murdoch, which I haven’t said in my essay, is that she consistently betrays her characters. She uses them, discards them, speaks through them. And that is all. One doesn’t feel that she has any particular emotion about them, not even about poor Cato. How can one write and not
care
about the personalities that are given birth in the process…. For they are all human potentialities, in a sense.

[…]

July 2, 1978.
[…] Hours yesterday, & again this morning, at last plotting out
Bellefleur.
And taking notes for the characters, events, themes, motifs. Cross-references. Background of family. Lineage, family tree. The horizontal (present-time) plot, the vertical grid. Exhilarated. But want to go slowly. Perhaps not begin the writing itself until September…. I must have notes here for 1000 pages. How lovely, how luxurious, to sink into a work so challenging, so complex, that it would take me a year or more to do. I
must
go slowly with
Bellefleur.
That is the whole idea of
Bellefleur
.

[…]

July 3, 1978.
…
Bellefleur. Bellefleur
. Mesmerizing, intimidating…. I envision 800 pages. Divided more or less into four sections. One for each “year” of Germaine’s life. Each section to contain about ten “chapters” or clusters of voices.

…Reading
A Writer’s Diary
, Virginia Woolf, which I had read of course in fragments earlier (she is quoted by so many people) but which I hadn’t
actually owned until now. Exciting to hear—or do I imagine it—a kind of sisterly tone there! She begins the diary at the age of thirty-nine, I think, or was it thirty-seven…. Around my age anyway. It’s fascinating to read her thoughts to herself and to perceive how similar dissimilar personalities can be when they are apprehended in their inner lives, not in their “social selves.” Woolf is certainly right in saying that when one writes one is a “sensibility.” When other people intrude, one becomes a person.

Philip Roth mentioning that he’d be very grateful for a page or two of serious criticism from Virginia Woolf, whom he admires as a critic. But: look at her rather silly remarks about
Ulysses
! Embarrassing. If only she had read more slowly, with more sympathy…not rearing up before him as if he were a poisonous snake…. “Underbred,” indeed. She simply seems to have
not read
Joyce…. And then again I began
Jacob’s Room
for the second or third time and have had to put it aside. Too superficial, too many mannerisms, quirks.