The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

  …Finished the novel on Saturday. Including the Epilogue, which I believe I will omit. And to offset a possible attack of melancholy I began at once to work on the introduction to The Best American Short Stories 1979 (Of which I am halfway proud. And the stories—! The stories seem to me wonderful.)

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  …Began revising Bellefleur before the ache of its loss hits. The first chapter was rougher than I had anticipated but seems fairly satisfactory now. And on to the second, and the third….

  …Life, examined minutely, is a matter of endless, totally absorbing tasks. One completes them and moves on. I suppose I am no more absurd than anyone else though I seem to have more consciousness of my absurdity than others. Yet it isn’t, exactly, absurdity I feel…. A kind of odd directionless levity.

  …How will this all turn out, one asks innocently. The answer: Exactly as it appears at this very moment.

  …Teaching until 5:20, and quite drained afterward. I note that I have been “drained,” “exhausted,” etc., etc., for years after these long teaching sessions. Yet I continue teaching; obviously I don’t mind the excursions into my soul…. […]

  March 21, 1979.…Spring. And so it is: sixty-four degrees already, at 9 A.M. Mockingbirds outside the window. Kittens frolicking. Lovely blue sky. And all is exceedingly well.

  …Revising Bellefleur. Now that I have finished it I feel so pleased: as much with my new freedom as with the novel, the massive thing, itself. 820 pages. 820 pages! Never again will I attempt anything so huge.

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  …Walking miles these days, in the country, in Princeton. How many thousands of miles have we walked together, Ray and me, since our marriage…! The dailyness of life, never preserved. It doesn’t seem to matter, now, tonight, that we had a pleasant dinner together…that this afternoon we had lunch on the terrace for the first time this year, in the sunshine…all four cats nearby, and the parakeet on the wall…. Nothing matters when it is within reach, when it’s a matter of the dailyness of living; I mean, it doesn’t matter in terms of recording. But once gone it will seem invaluable in the memory. So I must record these things, I must put everything down…

  …The lifting of that mild anxiety of last fall and winter, that I wouldn’t complete Bellefleur. Now life is easy, astonishingly easy. The revisions I am doing aren’t radical; don’t take many hours out of the day; are absolutely reasonable and pragmatic. I do admit that thinking about Graywolf once again is unsettling…and perhaps I should turn to some short stories first, before plunging into another novel. […]

  March 24, 1979.…Gray lewd winds. Rain. My study an absolute oasis: scattered & heaped with the manuscripts of two novels, one of them the enormous Bellefleur. (Revising B. But also, alternately, Graywolf: Life and Times.)

  …Revision. Could anything be more pleasant, more engrossing, and yet not (and this is important!) upsetting? There is no mystery, why writers want to revise and revise…why some writers are reluctant to make an end…for the first draft is so difficult, so groping and choppy and obtuse and bewildering, one hardly wants to begin another project; one would like to remain forever with what is known, what has been conquered.

  …To, Graywolf. Not revision so much as complete rewriting. Every chapter, every scene, every page, rewritten. Though I know the novel will probably never be published. For I much prefer Bellefleur, and will ask Henry to substitute that novel for this. (Graywolf being the novel that Henry read originally, and offered a contract for, bringing me to Dutton.) But it’s a vehicle, an exciting vehicle, a way of channeling certain ideas that have come to me since last spring, which fit in beautifully with Johanna and her friends….

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  April 5, 1979.…Recalling 1970, 1971…the early stages of what was probably anorexia…when I weighed 95–98 pounds for a while, and had no appetite: or, rather, what should have been an appetite for food went into an “appetite” for other things. (I say for a while but it was a considerable period of time. And I’m not yet free of the old psychological aspects of that experience…about which I can’t talk altogether freely.)

  …The appeal of “anorexia” is no mystery. Perhaps a number of mysteries. A way of controlling and even mortifying the flesh; a way of “eluding” people who pursue too closely; a way of channeling off energy in other directions. The mystic “certainty” that fasting gives…a “certainty” that isn’t always and inevitably wrongheaded. For I remember mornings, driving down to the University of Windsor, I remember the look of the river, and the sky, and my thoughts flying ahead…the sense of drama, risk, exaltation…all combined with a part of my life I can’t discuss…but there it is, a tiny nugget or kernel, still with me, no longer dominating my thoughts but still available should I want to think about it….

  …Anorexia is a controlled and protracted form of suicide, literally. But figuratively & symbolically it means much more. No one wants to be dead—! But there is the appeal of Death. The romantic, wispy, murky, indefinable incalculable appeal…which seems to me now rather silly; but I remember then. Yet it isn’t even Death that appeals so much as a transformed, exalted vision of oneself…a sense that one has transcended the gross, physical level. (But then I never disliked my body. I had as much adolescent pride in it, I suppose, as anyone else. Being told the other day that someone had told Ray at dinner how beautiful I was, one Friday evening at dinner, with people in Bucks Co., I thought—Is it possible! But in whose eyes, and in what sort of deceptive lighting? It only makes me uneasy, this sort of well-intentioned flattery, because of course then one must live up to it; one feels one should, anyway. And the external being is so irrelevant, finally.)

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  April 6, 1979.…Marvelous poetry reading yesterday by Maxine Kumin. Though Max said she was nervous—extremely nervous—she read her poems beautifully (and they are beautiful poems, among them her elegy for Anne Sexton, and another elegiac poem set in the St. Louis zoo, Maxine and Howard Nemerov as characters) to a quite good audience in the Firestone Library, second floor. Then an unusually pleasant reception; then dinner at an Indian restaurant just this side of New Brunswick—a most uproarious evening […].

  …Working, working, working on the novels: a few hours on Bellefleur, alternating with a few hours on Graywolf. Yesterday it began to wear upon me that I was grateful, exceedingly grateful, to be drawn away from my study to Maxine’s reading. (Her poise, her sense of humor, her solid, technically precise poems.) […]

  April 8, 1979.…Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the University chapel, a deeply moving occasion; at the very beginning I felt almost shaky…apprehensive…not simply because of the music (the beginning is so uncannily lovely) but because of the setting…. […]

  …Yesterday, a long drive in the chilly sunshine along the Delaware River, as far north as Upper Black Eddy; then to Stockton; then home. Gusty, sunny…daffodils everywhere…the river blue and glinting…the trance of idyllic immobile beauty…the enchantment of what is silent.

  …Palm Sunday. What thoughts?…Many, but inchoate; inarticulate.

  …Revising Bellefleur today. Hour upon hour. The mind feeds greedily upon its own images. And then, afterward, what seems to excite me is, oddly enough, the verbal structure…the self-conscious arrangement. I fear the frenzy of the initial inspiration more and more. Revision is fine: a highly engrossing occupation which one might carry on to infinity: but it doesn’t excite, it certainly doesn’t frighten.

  …Can I undertake another long work? I sometimes feel…not that I am “wearing out”…though sometimes my eyes burn and my brain feels seared…but that…that…how to express it…I owe myself an oasis of calm…an interlude…solitude…time to exist in my own conscious life, not beset by the delirium of the other consciousness. To revise, and revise, and revise…to return to the books already published, even, and revise them…anything to keep myself occupied and safe from the unhealthy (but it isn’t always unhealthy!) excitement of the initial onslaught…. What is called a “first draft” wh
en the images, the words, the scenes, the voices come halfway unbidden, and must be dutifully transcribed.

  …My courage, years ago, was a function of my relative ignorance. Now I know more, and now I am inclined to be more apprehensive…. How safe is this sort of activity, one wonders. “Safe” emotionally rather than psychologically. (For I rather doubt that I could ever slip into insanity. I don’t seem to be that sort of person.)

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  April 9, 1979. […] One lives an entire life, no doubt, uneasily wondering at the relationship between the “dreaming” self and the “conscious” self. For surely there is a profoundly intimate relationship…yet at the same time such peculiar elements are introduced, such extra-personal things…. A mystery that refuses to resolve itself, even with the passage of time. At the age of forty I know as little as I knew at the age of twenty-six; though at the age of twenty-six I probably believed that in a brief while I would know.

  …Man can embody truth, Yeats said, but not know it.

  …As I move out of the remote world of Bellefleur and come back to this world, which I’ve never left, I see quite clearly how the creative experience (which is often a creative frenzy) does several things for the artist—

  …a sense of immortality that is not cerebral or intellectual, but sensory: the suspension of timelessness in the task

  …a sense of extraordinary self-worth…. (Glancing at oneself in store windows, in car windows, one sees a quite ordinary wraith…about whom anyone might reasonably say, Her! But so what!—the world abounds with people.) In the frenzy of composition, however, the self feels truly singled out…for it is only by way of this self, and with a great deal of labor, that the art-work can take its place in the world…. It isn’t a delusion, in fact…but there is something touchingly naïve about the situation

  …an addictive calm, even within the frenzy: one never has to ask what to do, what to think…one’s emotions are entirely concentrated

  …The desire to be “utterly normal” and even conventional on the one hand; and to be absolutely free, inventive, wild, unrestrained in the imagination. So that the two worlds appear incompatible. There is no point of contact…. But the unrestrained world is within the “normal” world; it is the normal world’s untold secret.

  April 11, 1979.…A painted wooden Easter egg: rich colors of orangered, maroon, cream, turquoise, gold, green, red…. Intricate little flowers & designs. Exquisitely beautiful. (A gift, probably from a student, left in my mailbox this afternoon.)…The lovely scent of hyacinth: a cream-colored flower in a wineglass on my desk here…. Evening, 7:20, and my reflection has taken its usual shape in the window before me: black sweater, gold chain, my hair parted in the center, my features indistinct.

  …Tomorrow, a drive to Wesleyan College. Middletown, Conn. Workshop in the afternoon…reception…dinner…reading…another reception: and so another visit will be over. It should be highly enjoyable if the weather holds. (Today was lovely. We walked for two hours…along Mercer, up Springdale, to the Institute, the pond, and back along Battle Rd…. in time for my 3:30 class.)

  …Revisions, earlier, on Graywolf. Bellefleur now beginning to recede. I feel…or think I should feel…its loss. But perhaps because I am so uncommonly busy I really don’t.

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  …Finished Sister Carrie. Which, surprisingly, is a romance! I had not anticipated that. Hardly a “naturalistic” work—what on earth do critics mean? Compared to Crane’s Maggie, or George’s Mother…. Not at all, not at all. It’s sheer romance, fantasy, a fairy tale. A mild “moral” indeed. Am reading Joe Frank’s excellent essays, some for the second or third time, in The Widening Gyre. And Cortázar’s Hopscotch (at Joe’s suggestion)—which doesn’t especially impress me, at least initially.* […]

  April 16, 1979. […] Finished revisions on Bellefleur. But continue to pick about here and there. Embroidering. Fussing. Will be taking the manuscript, and Graywolf, to NYC next Wednesday, to deliver to Blanche. Should hire a U-Haul trailer…. Feel somewhat lonely. Restless. Or do I exaggerate? The vampirish experience of Bellefleur isn’t one I really want to repeat. But then…. I see how so many vignettes in Bellefleur are analogues, somewhat exaggerated, of my own predicament. “The Bloodstone,” “The Clavichord”—an obsessive infatuation which leads one away from life, and yet it’s far more fulfilling and exciting than “life” itself. Veronica’s relationship (though comic, campy) with Ragnar Norst: the realization that she loves him, that her life is centered upon him, and to hell with “normality.” One goes where excitement leads….

  …Thinking wanly about some stories. But my heart isn’t exactly in them…. A new long novel. Marya Knauer. Her coming-of-age, her maturation, her fulfillment as a whole person…triumph over thievery, the wretchedness, the failure of her past. But it’s all so frustratingly vague. Five or six pages of incoherent notes so far. I see Marya and I hear her voice and I feel her restlessness, the muscular tension of her shoulders and legs. A strong sullen girl.

  …Easter Sunday, yesterday. Went to the Fagles’s for drinks. Good conversation. Bob will be flying to Wesleyan next week, to see a production of “his” Oresteia. Lynn an exceptionally friendly, attractive person. […]

  April 22, 1979.…Working on the second Marya Knauer story, “Schwilk.” Finished & revised “Sin.”† […]

  …Marya Knauer. Marya Knauer. Marya Knauer.

  …This past week, hours & miles of walks. Walks along the Delaware River. Through Titusville. In Princeton—around Lake Carnegie. In Hopewell. Walking, walking, walking against the stiff northeast wind. Inhaling the marvelous sunny-chilly air, grateful for spring. And the novel’s completion. And revision. And Graywolf too. Thank God! Thank God. To have come through…. Ray and I walking, one of our greatest pleasures. And over in Cranbury too, though it was fairly cold that day.

  …Reading more of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. For poor doomed Mr. Schwilk, who recites it on the bank of the Invemere Canal.

  …Tomorrow, New York City: 10:30 our NBA committee meeting, the last, at which Michael Arlen and I hope to convince Kenneth Clark of The Snow Leopard’s worth;* and then luncheon for all the judges; and then a press conference; and then, at five, a photography session with Jerry Bauer, an acquaintance of Henry Robbins’; 5:30 a cocktail party at the Biltmore, for judges and nominees and winners (should be fairly embarrassing—and there’s Alfred Kazin, nominated four times for an NBA, and not to win it now either; but perhaps if we’re lucky he won’t be there); Ray will join me at the Biltmore and then we’ll slip away to dinner, earlier; and then at 8:00 Seamus Heaney reading his poems at the 92nd Street “Y.” An ambitious day. But then it will be good to let “Schwilk” rest for a while, so that I can contemplate it, and Marya within it.

  …Heidegger: To think is to confine oneself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky.

  …The telephone rang, and Gail Godwin was on the line. Warm lively conversation, half an hour’s worth; a pity we don’t talk more often, and see each other so rarely. Gail has been writing novellas. I, with an 800+ page novel behind me, feel like a glutton. Jaded, reckless, shamed, dazed. Insatiable, the imagination’s appetite! I am both vampire and victim.

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  May 5, 1979.…Sunny chilly day. Revising poems. Thinking of Marya. (Marya at Port Oriskany. Befriended by a girl named Imogene. I see the final scene clearly: Marya with Imogene’s earrings, confronted at 9 A.M. on the windy quadrangle in front of the University chapel, in full view of students hurrying to classes, Imogene accuses Marya of theft, slaps her, and Marya responds with a hard straight blow, a punch, to Imogene’s face. Two tall girls, their cheeks flushed with cold and passion, their eyes wild…while everyone stares.)

  …Last night, at Newton, Pa., Robert Bly in a completely successful ecstatic reading. His own poems, and Kabir’s, and two other Indian poets’. Remarkable performance. He was accompanied, and very beautifully and hauntingly, by two musicians (Minnesota boys, training
in India), one of them playing the sitar, the other a sort of drum. Robert came up into the audience to speak with us. I was surprised he recognized us—I hadn’t especially wanted to be noticed—but he was very friendly, very much at ease, expansive, enjoying himself, “high” on poetry or anyway his kind of poetry, which was entirely convincing. He’s an amazing combination of Midwestern mysticism and flat skeptical good humor. Without the skepticism he’d drift off into space…without the mysticism he’d be sour and tired and depressing. Many poems about the body; the body in an Indian sense; the body’s ineffable energies. (“I’m tired of St. Paul bitching about the body,” he says suddenly, as if spontaneously, evoking startled laughter from the audience.)

  …The other day, luncheon at Richard Trenner’s (at the house he is staying in, on Hunt’s Drive), Maxine Kumin also, talking of the “poetry mafia” (Richard Howard, John Ashbery, the New York people primarily—though Stanley Kunitz isn’t in that circle […]). Maxine’s uneasiness re. Bly. Though I tried to dissuade her. (They will be meeting at a conference in Washington next fall.) Maxine congenial, funny, easygoing, friendly, someone I wish badly I had had time to know, but now the semester has gone and she has gone; and anyway she hadn’t time for me—not much time. The fact is, we never spent a minute alone together, and there must have been time for that: a lunch here, even breakfast across the street from 185 Nassau. Now too late.