The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (44 page)

[…]

June 7, 1979.
…Working, working on “The Cure for Folly.” Yesterday, most of the afternoon, until I finished the penultimate “chapter” and felt almost sick…reeling with fatigue…my head pounding as Marya’s (and Fein’s) head pounded. How odd, how mysterious, the relentlessness of…hour upon hour upon hour…
why
I do these things, why anyone would…until a kind of abyss of exhaustion opens…and the dim “demonic” perceptions force themselves through. The ugly little demon jumping about, dancing on Marya’s back—Hey nonny nonny—one can be ridden about the four corners of the Void, driven by such a creature.
Why
, I haven’t the faintest idea. One certainly gives one’s consent.

…Fein’s risk: to deny the power of the Unconscious: to attempt to trivialize it. Hence his fate.

…And now that it is almost completed, and I can stand back from it,
what
is it? The pattern of survival in Marya…the strength of will in Marya…

…Haunted by an account I read in the
Times
of a seventeen-year-old girl pushed off a subway station, onto the tracks, her right hand severed…she remained “conscious,” it was said…screaming for her mother, and that she had to go to college. (She had been accepted at Tufts. An excellent student, a flutist as well.)…The assailant was a black boy of about fifteen. Not apprehended.

…Such an incident is not more “real” than this Princeton idyll. The scene outside my window…the pond and the woods on the other side of
the house…. It is not more “real” but it is certainly more profound. And art must encompass profundity, no matter how ugly it is.

…Long walk around Princeton today; a visit to the art museum: Hans Moller, Charles Burchfield, some photographs by Walker Evans. Reunions at the University. (1922, 1932, 1954.) Aging gentlemen in orange blazers, orange trousers, some of them carrying straw hats. Lovely Princeton. Idyllic Princeton. Who, being sane, would prefer the 50th St. subway (where the girl was attacked) to Nassau and Washington Rd.?

…“I turn, I perish into work.” (Stanley Kunitz, “The Man Upstairs.”)

…The panicky sickish head-pounding of yesterday. Marya’s sense of danger…. Thinness of sanity: a playing-card held sideways: so easily flicked aside! Why one consents to such experiences I can’t guess…. I think it
is
a free choice…. I think, at my age, after having played so long at this game, that it is a free choice. There is no need, no compulsion, to take such risks with health and sanity and “cheerfulness”…but once the choice has been made, one really can’t control the emotions that arise. One
chooses
to walk out upon the ice…or the tightrope…with some degree of rationality. But once out there, away from safety, one cannot choose or control the existential experience; worst of all, one can’t scurry back to safety again. (As if I could abandon Marya in her state of terror. Which was, curiously enough, very close to being my own, as I wrote that scene. But today, on the other hand, all day long, from the very moment of waking, I have felt enormously good—in control—myself again—calm and ready to enjoy the day—which was lovely—and if I didn’t recall yesterday’s experience I would be inclined to doubt it.)

…“We learn, as the thread plays out, that we belong/Less to what flatters us than to what scars”—Kunitz, “The Dark and the Fair.”

June 10, 1979.
[…] The imposition of a structure upon the looseness, fluidity, spontaneity of life. This is the artistic impulse, but also the religious impulse. In religion it can be disastrous—a denial of life
itself. In art—? “But one must come to earth somewhere!” the protest goes…. The thematic usefulness of Marya Knauer. Who isn’t, of course, myself. But has shared certain experiences. If I were to imagine myself as Marya (as I might once have done) I would now be a quite different person…. The strength required to be weak, at times; to be passive. No one speaks of such things. A certain cowardliness, fear, underlies the need to be always in control, always “strong.” (Like Marya.)

…Life the immense wheel, grinding, moving. Rolling. Placid as a cow chewing its cud. I curl back upon myself, discover earlier selves—the same thoughts—the
same
revelations! Touching home always, this central core: simplicity: harmony: the doubleness of myself and my husband: a unity that can’t be spoken of, it goes so deep. (Yet when the
Paris Review
queried about my emotional stability, for the interview, and I replied, something to do with my marriage, with Ray, it was eventually cut from the interview…as if anything so normal or so “positive” wouldn’t have been of interest to their readers.)

…The “secret”…which sometimes feels awkward as a hammer stuck in my pocket, getting in my way…at other times small and contained and indeed unobtrusive as a tiny pebble…something foreign to me, yet carried about by me, invisible. I once thought the two or three selves in combat would be resolved, and one would triumph—and the worry of the secret—or whatever I must call it—would dissolve. But this hasn’t happened. It won’t happen.

[…]

June 14, 1979.
…Almost too much is happening: Monday, a lovely luncheon with Stanley Kunitz and his wife Elise Archer, 37 W. 12th St., about which I must write in more detail; and then a visit to Elise’s studio on 15th St. (she is quite a fine artist). That evening, a poetry reading at the Public Theater: the dramatization of my story “Daisy,” by actors (and superb actors they were) for the first half, and my reading the second half: and it seemed to go well. So—no more poetry readings until October!

…Yesterday, a long hike on the canal towpath, north of Rocky Hill. Though we were both feeling somewhat groggy after Monday’s exhaustion. (We didn’t get to bed until three, got up fairly early. New York is
always
exhausting…. )

…Finished “The Cure for Folly,” revisions, etc., and mailed out to Blanche; but now my mind is stuck on “Presque Isle”
*
…haven’t been able to write a sentence…. Am reading Sholem Aleichem’s stories, for
NY Times
review;
^†
and Philip Roth’s
The Ghost Writer
(which seems somewhat less intense, less interesting, than his usual fiction); Mavis Gallant’s
From the Fifteenth District
(not terribly good—though Gallant is always professional, competent, deft, wise); and a new Brian Moore which reminds me, at least at the outset, of
Ginger Coffey
.

…Today, a prodigious four hours: Gail Godwin, Robert Starer, Ed Cone, George Pitcher for luncheon:
^‡
and I’m still reeling at the way Ed Cone played three preludes…Chopin preludes…the First, Second, and Seventeenth…. My God, the way he tackled the first!…we all just sat there, and Robert and I exchanged a look of amused alarm…. Gail looking charming in white slacks, a purple sweater, sunglasses. George whom I like immensely, and with whom (perhaps because he is a philosopher by “profession”) I find it very easy to talk. I served Stanley Kunitz’s 10-surprise soup as a first course; chicken curry on fresh pineapple, with nuts; and a fruit salad sprinkled over with rum and lemon juice; and all went well—fortunately I didn’t worry beforehand, as I suppose I should have at the prospect of having Ed and George to lunch (they are gourmet cooks, alas). I felt my piano’s inadequacy, and heard a slight squeaking about the pedal, but Ed assured me it didn’t bother him…it certainly didn’t seem to.

…A lovely day, absolutely lovely. After our guests left (I didn’t want them to leave, but it was 3:20 or so) we couldn’t get back to work, and so went to Hopewell on errands, and walked about briskly for an hour, talking over the party, the conversations. George’s interest in “the rights of animals”…Ed and Robert on music news…mutual acquaintances…and we talked generally about music, the notion of genius, gardens, herbs, birds (Ed is an expert on birds)…. Now it is 7
P.M.
and the sun is setting languidly and I have been at my desk doodling, half-thinking, brooding, wondering what on earth next, how can I make anything sensible out of “Presque Isle”…all I have, really, is the name, and a few scribbled notes. Nice letter from Greg Johnson, a kind of soul mate. Wrote a long letter to Lois, whom I miss—how beautifully she would have fit in here this afternoon! Thinking of Marya—Marya—Marya—so close to me, yet so completely antithetical—I really am Marya—yet of course I’m not at all like her and never was like her—ah, that hardness of heart—yet her sullen passion, too, goes beyond my own. Or so I think…. To bring Marya to Princeton is my aim, but I must go about it carefully. Unassimilated experience cannot be transcribed into fiction…one must wait, one must wait, wait….

June 16, 1979.
…Forty-first birthday: a long leisurely drive to Pipersville, Pa., for luncheon at an old inn; a walk in Hopewell; fragrant new-mown hay…sweet clover…the usual placid beauty of hills, farms, horses in fields, a flawless sky…perfect summer day…perfect birthday. Ray gave me some very nice perfume, for which I thanked him sweetly. (Not mentioning that he’d given me perfume for Christmas—though, happily, not the
same perfume
.)

…Working on a story I like a little better than I thought I would, at the start: “Presque Isle.” (
Almost
an island.) Nearly all day yesterday, obsessed with the motion of the story, the dialogue; and then—what a disappointment!—to see how fast it reads. Thinking too of another Marya story […] What I want to achieve for Marya is the
complexity
of a life…the resistance of simplification. But when anyone approaches my writing, even well-intentioned and sympathetic critics, what happens immediately?—reduction, simplification, “theme,” “symbol”!

…Perhaps it is art itself, the very activity of art, that defeats our hopes for being understood. Selecting, emphasizing, imposing a structure upon random (seemingly random) events…and then the critic, the “professional reader,” comes along and imposes an additional structure, reducing everything yet again…!

[…]

…The
unreal
nature of “growing old”—that is, “growing older.” Anyone in his twenties would be appalled, even mystified, at the thought of being forty-one; and yet when one is forty-one, it’s hardly an accomplishment, it feels like nothing much. And then I see myself in mirrors, and in recent snapshots […] and I don’t
appear
greatly changed.

…Our problem, Ray’s and mine: we tend to be happy, inertly happy, wherever we are. And so, how can we possibly even consider returning to Windsor? Is it the case that we might really—someday—in another year or two—return?[…]

June 20, 1979
…. Working, hour upon hour, at “Marya & Sylvester.”
*
Which I like very much. Very much. It is probably the strongest, the most succinct, of the Marya stories so far; I’ve deliberately sacrificed density, in this version at least, for a faster narrative movement. And then too everything will be rewritten…. It made me rather nervous, typing out the words “Princeton University.” Should I have done that, or should I have left the university anonymous…? I imagined Walt Litz reading it. Walt, the chairman of the department, whom I like very much; whom everyone likes. Do I really want to do this, and jeopardize my own position here…. Well…. I seem to have done it…. It
had
to be, however unwise.

[…]

…Marya & Sylvester. The “harassed” woman. Persecuted, tormented. Of course she is just as persecuted and tormented by the men who have academic power over her, but I want this parallel to be subtle, very subtle,
very
subtle…. The image of the urine: male marking: the arrogant cigarette butt, the quasi-affectionate torture. By cutting a great deal I must later work into the longer narrative the story emerges, I think, quite powerfully. I feel oddly moved, even rather upset, by it…by the final scenes with Sylvester and the “chairman of the English Department”…and the unflushed toilet.

…(In real life, our janitor, X, whose name I have forgotten, only left cigarette butts in my toilet. And the window open—once. Perhaps he did go through my desk, I don’t know…he
did
call me “Joyce” familiarly and a little drunkenly, once…and he was behaving oddly around Maxine…but Marya’s adventure is purely Marya’s, and a hideous one it is.)

July 1, 1979.
…Working on “Canal Road.”
*
Have finished revisions on
Bellefleur.
(Henry [Robbins] came out to lunch on Thursday, and stayed the afternoon; a lovely visit.
He
is a lovely man. His suggestions re.
Bellefleur
are helpful ones, mainly involving some tightening or deletion of “digressive” chapters. Which of course is easy to do. Reading through that “long lurid gothic” I became newly excited about it—its energies, its people, the range of its freedom, the very rhythm of a typical tale—so different from the tone of the Marya stories and their “naturalistic” basis.) Now it appears that
Bellefleur
might be published in spring of 1980!—amazing. And
Unholy Loves
in Oct. 1979. I believe that this is too soon, there are already too many of my books flooding the market (or not flooding it—which is more accurate) but Henry doesn’t agree. At any rate Dutton, and Henry Robbins, would “publish” the book with more fanfare than Vanguard publishes their books.

…My love for
Bellefleur
is such that, yes, I suppose I do want to see it safely out…bound, in hardcover…published. In the world. For better or worse. In order for this to transpire I must accept, with as much good humor as possible, the reviewers’ inevitable misunderstandings and barbs and, no doubt, dismissals as well: but I’m sure I am equal to it. After all I
do
have the hide of a rhino….