[…]
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….
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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 experience 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.
Perhaps those who are sympathetic with ill health or neurosis are more likely to succumb. But such conditions are merely boring. There is nothing to be said about them—they are boring.
Donald Barthelme telephoned, wants to add my name to a kind of committee—literary arts, NY State I think—sounded funny, friendly, human—evidently our “feud” is over, and thank God: I reject those former selves of mine that said blunt things, however sincerely. Sincerity is the first refuge of the evil-doer. Still, Barthelme was rather mean to me in Newsweek and we are guarded about each other’s work.* I try to read it, I really try…!
June 20, 1975.…Slowly, in pieces, as if constructing a mosaic…or making a quilt of many colors…I am putting together Broken Reflections.† A novel that draws me into it almost unconsciously. Began to realize one day that it was far more ambitious than I had thought: three generations, five fairly complex characters, the evocation of ways of life I had known or had known about which are, perhaps, fading from America. And yet—maybe not. America is far more complicated, more dense, than one suspects. Small towns and rural neighborhoods are still there, their patterns of life still there…though television, shopping centers, the fluctuating economy are very real facts of life. Sometimes I am convinced that really nothing changes much. People aren’t being altered. “Change” is on the surface, almos
t a public relations or media invention. The mood of America and of most countries (most people?) is deeply and profoundly conservative; there is almost an inertia of the spirit, in terms of the collective. One of my students a few years ago, a volunteer worker for McGovern, said: “A man told us he knew Nixon was a crook but he was going to vote for him, instead of for McGovern with his strange ideas….” At least the man was honest. Americans tolerate and even encourage “change” which is superficial, like fashions in clothes or music, perhaps in order to maintain the status quo on another level. The sexual revolution is a disaster for many people, judging from evidence I have encountered. Girl students are as apprehensive, as miserable, as worried about “not being loved” as ever before, and perhaps things are even worse now: the offer of marriage still remains the token of esteem, no matter if they’ve been living with a young man or not. The emotions seem unchanged, entirely. There is a premature growing-up of a sexual or physical nature, though. Maybe it isn’t “premature” but part of a general acceleration of growth in the species. On the other hand, it is said that precocious sexuality is a mark of relatively uncivilized cultures…and constitutes, in species other than man, an evolutionary finesse of some kind. (Reproduction by organisms not fully adult, thereby eliminating the unproductive or self-defeating subtleties of the adult organism. I don’t think we can be accused of “subtleties” in our civilization, though…. ) Broken Reflections breaks into five points of view certain preoccupations of my own, merged with certain personalities deserving of study, of exploration. But how will it end…? The ending of The Assassins was not the ending I had originally hoped for.
Henry James, in the Preface to the NY edition of The Princess Casamassima:* “…this fiction proceeded quite directly…from the habit and the interest of walking the streets (of London). I walked a great deal—for exercise, for amusement, for acquisition….; and as to do this was to receive many impressions, so the impressions worked and sought an issue, so the book after a time was born.” How beautifully James puts it! I felt a kinship with him at once. […] The greatest influence for such writers (I hope I am one of them) isn’t literary, but life itself, the more unfamiliar the better, the more jumbled the impressions the better…because they do insist upon being given a structure of some kind, eventually.
July 26, 1975.…Traveling isn’t an American invention, but future generations may claim it as one; somehow it feels so specifically American.
Returned from three weeks on the road: Toronto; Montreal; Quebec City; Bar Harbor, Maine; Boston; Lake Placid; and then straight across hilly light-stricken Ontario to home. Our heads are ringing with sights and sounds. So much beauty! It becomes diffuse, irretrievable. Watercolors running together. Dream-visions piled atop one another. Stop! Halt! But the stream of images cannot stop. And so most of it is lost, truly irretrievable, as emotional encounters with other human beings usually are not.
I crave travel. Anonymity. Not necessarily beauty—though we experienced much beauty on this trip—but new landscapes, change, surprises. […] Travel is so addictive, we are reluctant to come home. The house is beautiful. The river is beautiful. Today is gusty, light-filled, lovely. Everything has grown: grass, roses, weeds, flowers. There is beauty here, I recognize it clearly enough, yet I really didn’t want to come home this time. The anonymity of travel beckons to me. No mail! No telephone calls! No constant restriction to a few cubic feet of consciousness: Joyce Carol Oates. Now that I am back, I am fated to spend hours as a kind of secretary to that person, answering her mail, turning down requests politely. Though some of them are, I know, very casually made, and will be made to others after me, with no sense of loss, nevertheless I feel I should reply. As Oates’s public fortunes rise, mine must necessarily fall; as hers level off or decline, I gain. What a trap fame must be, the mind-boggling media-inflated international kind….
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…Taking notes for Childwold: A Romance for Five Voices, as we drove along. A prose-poem it seems, but perhaps I can disguise it as a novel; no one would want to read a prose-poem. But perhaps it will stretch itself back into being a novel again, once I get working on it. At this point it’s the voices that haunt me. Voices. Not even words so much as voices. Laney, her grandfather, Kasch, Arlene, Vale. Five people, five voices. Perhaps they will all be absorbed into one, into the landscape of Eden County itself.* At this point I feel and have felt for days almost lost, almost bewildered. Today wasn’t bad, but yesterday I felt the sour certainty that it would not work, would never shape itself into a novel. I know enough, however, to trust the passage of time. A night’s sleep and much is changed in my interior landscape. I don’t have to think…don’t have to consciously plan certain things. They will evolve by themselves. The difficult part is to trust that evolution, to have faith in it. A bad hour is so uniquely convincing…. Recall with a curious affection the story I wrote just before leaving home, three weeks ago: Daisy and Bonham and their strange relationship.† The afterglow of the story is still with me. How snarly that seemed when it was in first-draft form, how complex and difficult…and then, after a few days’ meditation, it worked out fairly well. Perhaps it is my best story, so far as “best” goes…. Certainly it’s close to home, the artist’s relationship with his or her alternate self…the ego’s tense relationship with the pure, uncivilized forces of the imagination. I wonder if anyone will notice the James Joyce parallel. Like him, I am a joyce crying in the wilderness; unlike him, I tend to mistrust word-play, puns, arabesques of pure language.
Well, Joyce was an egotist; but is that necessarily bad? My periods of egolessness don’t strike me as having been superior to anyone else’s periods of egotism, really. What difference does it make? I know people who lust for fame, who would exchange friendships for some free publicity, but are they necessarily evil…? What I do I am, as Hopkins’ poem claims. For this I came.‡ The preachy self-righteous egolessness of certain nature writers and would-be mystics, who present themselves as panes of glass before nature and its wonders, is really a form of egomania, however disguised. I find it appalling. I find it tiresome. Better Joyce’s attitude, or Nabokov’s, or Roethke’s.
In a way I don’t mean that. I am exaggerating. The nature-mystic offends other people by claiming that his or her pathway is the pathway, that an intense interest in flowers, algae, trees, clouds, and insects is superior to an intense interest in, say, the stock market. The egomaniac offends for obvious reasons (though some people, born disciples, rather like egomaniacs—there is such a simplicity of response required in their presence). Certainly both ego and anti-ego are self-indulgences, and people mainly do what they want; what gives them pleasure. For this I came.
A slight tendency to be saddened, returning from a trip. Must resist. Must plunge into work of some kind. The galleys for The Assassins are due soon, and other material connected with that novel; I try not to have any expectations about it, having learned from the past that one’s hopes, even moderate hopes, are apt to be frustrated.
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August 9, 1975.…My fascination with Childwold grows, undisciplined. Many notes. More than enough for a novel, I’m afraid, and yet the material is nowhere near exhausted…. Still, I recognize this procedure as the identical procedure by which I managed The Assassins, though it wasn’t a very easy novel to write…or a very enjoyable one much of the time. Curious to know what people will think of it. Detached now, no longer emotionally involved with it, I think it is probably the best novel I have ever written or will ever write; Childwold can’t possibly be as “interesting” in a dramatic sense, since it will be primarily lyric. I don’t care: I want to write what I want to write. The work will be dense, will focus upon interior realities, will deliberately slight the external world. I think. But I won’t really know until it is written.
Childwold: the name itself is richly suggestive to me. Came across it on our trip, driving along a mountain road, don’t remember where. The name stung, stayed, grew, demanded room in my consciousness
…supplanted the other title, Broken Reflections. Childwold Childwold Childwold. A disturbing dream last night, in which “childhood” figures and I participated in the same reality. Two girls, one of whom had been a very close friend, Jean Windnagle, a year older than I; one of five children in the impoverished, rather miserable family who lived next door to us. The father unemployed, often drunk. Abusive. […] Nelia Pynn, a girl one year younger than I, not a close friend at all, but a country neighbor, appeared and I asked her about her family and she seemed rather envious of me, wouldn’t answer my question. […] The Pynns were a nice family, unlike the other families I often brood upon, who will figure in Childwold…. So many brutal, meaningless acts…incredible cruelty, profanity, obscenity…even (it was bragged) incest between a boy of about thirteen and his six-year-old sister…things done to animals…stones and rocks and green pears and apples thrown in spontaneous yelping battles…. Retarded children grown big and nasty. The extraordinary things they would say on the school bus, to very young children, about sex, sexual behavior…giggling, gloating, rolling their eyes. Only by focusing upon the stupidity (and inaccuracy) of such things have I been able, over the years, to draw out the poison drop by drop by drop; for this was an underworld, a child’s world (wold?) of which my parents knew nothing. Even when I and a few others were tormented at school, our fears were disregarded by adults who simply didn’t know….