The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

  …Luncheon with Karen and Mike Braziller, midtown yesterday; then a two-hour walk up to the park, in the sunny but rather brisk wind (and I am so slowly recovering from a cold—why do I feel, at times, invincible?—when all the evidence is otherwise); then, a meeting with Blanche, at the almost too sumptuous Palace Hotel, at 51st & Madison; then a reading at Brentano’s, with Annette Jaffee* (which went well—though I’ve come to dislike reading prose: it cuts me off from the audience, as poetry never does); then dinner at a Japanese restaurant; then home. Yet, this morning, I felt unaccountably fresh and, I suppose, “normal” enough. In itself very suspect.

  April 2, 1981.…Working with painful slowness on “Old Budapest.” Going through my journal of last spring. Slow, slow, frustrating, slow, remembering, hearing again, seeing, but so slow, so slow….

  …Finished revisions on A Bloodsmoor Romance, finally. Under 900 pages. How I did it I can’t know, how I got through it, endured it, did not collapse, maintained some sort of good humor throughout, or so I think, or so I tell myself, but in any case it is finished!—and delivered to Blanche. A day or two of wistful cheerfulness, cheerful melancholy, the usual, mild withdrawal symptoms, but so much social life of late, and the sudden eruption of spring (long walks, bicycle rides) the transition was less evident than usual.

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  April 17, 1981.…A lovely free morning. Revising poems, working on “Presque Isle” which I like better all the time, thinking about the long gothic novel, how to construct it, how vast to make it, how to possibly begin…. The great relief, of having Monday behind me—that is, the long day at Columbia, the photography session with Jerry Bauer, the reading at Lincoln Center (so poorly organized by Mrs. Pat Kennedy Lawford and Dotson Rader), the party afterward at the Kingsleys’ (on Central Park West)…. Quite deliberately I chose to read a very difficult story, but then any prose, for me, is difficult to read, poetry is so much more engaging and appealing, but I thought, why not—why not give myself a considerable workout, and my audience too—why not read something so new to me, it still frightened me—assuming that the very weight of the words will prevent me from any expression of uncontrolled emotion.

  …How rapidly we change, how scarcely we know ourselves!…last Sunday I sat in this very room (the “new” room—white, sunny, elegant, a new de Kooning lithograph just to my right, our long white Parsons table here, many windows, much glass, I look up to see a hawk circling over our woods, marvelous terrifying wings spread wide, and here is the quirky little blue Swedish horse just to my left, and Art of the Printed Book nearby, and Philip Guston, and Prize Stories 1981: O. Henry Awards, in which my “Mutilated Woman” appears—and the history behind that—!)—last Sunday in this very place, at this very typewriter, I worked for hour upon hour upon hour watching the sun careen slowly through the sky, rewriting “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” which I thought—but I didn’t dare—I might read the following evening:* so close, so very close, painful and hideous and unbelievable and ultimately not-to-be-communicated to others, the overwhelming significance of the story for me—the obsessive haunting terrible intolerable images—and finally the voice too—the voice!—not my own, or is it?—just as the dead brother is, and is not, the living brother; just as I am, and am not, the angry suicide, the mocking survivor, the baffled mourner.

  …“Demystification”: a new critical notion. But it’s simply to hide from themselves the unfathomable mystery at the core of their own imaginative and emotional lives. Why any artist does what he does; why the sacrifice, why the queer intoxicating pleasure, why the willingness to be scorned, to fail, to start again, to continue, to lie to oneself in the service of the art—anything, anything, to get it born!—as Joyce said, to get one’s soldiers across the bridge. Nearing my 43rd birthday I know ever less about the processes of “creation” in other writers, in my friends, in my students, in myself. One’s “true subject” announces itself by the involuntary nature of the emotion. It is not summoned, it cannot be blocked. Images arise from—from where?—the “unconscious,” we might as well say—well, from somewhere!—from God of old, or the Devil of old, wherever: one’s obsessive need is then to keep pace with them, running faster and faster, breathless, heart hammering, how to keep pace, how to translate, how to comprehend…. And “ordinary life” is left behind. The wrong end of a telescope trained upon it. How to make oneself stop, to rest, to eat, to take a walk, to “live.” Even when ordinary life is so attractive, and one’s career attractive, “encouraging” as we might say…. A Constantine story, “The Sunken Woman,” has just been taken by Playboy of all places; and Cosmopolitan will publish not only an excerpt from Angel of Light, but “The Tryst”—which has already been published in Atlantic!—evidently the fiction editor likes it so much. And the acceptance of a poem I love, “The Wasp,” at Atlantic, and—and so it goes: my “career,” my “real life,” so blossoms with good tidings, why should I wish to turn away from it, and plummet into that other world, “darksome” as my romantic narrator might say…beyond my control, my comprehension….*

  …Image still of the Wall, the Wall…which I can’t free myself of…which I am compelled to write about….

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  …The Wall, Our Wall, fatigue & ecstasy, the end, the limit, the beginning, the measure, the possibility of freedom (if one can scale it), the possibility of absolute safety (for perhaps one cannot scale it), the promise that Time itself has an end, the sudden childish hope that Time will not have an end, if we can but climb the Wall—! And so on, and so forth.

  …A political haunting. A racial haunting. So very deep in the bones, in the marrow, it draws us back again & again, but to what end, and to what cost!…I throw myself against the Wall and manage to cling to its top, and look over, for a moment before falling back…. I throw myself against the Wall and with all the strength in me…with strength that I did not know was mine (for, truly, it is supernatural!—it is very very cruel) I manage this time to grab hold of it so firmly, with such desperation, and indifference to my own pain, that I don’t fall back…safely back…but I pull myself up…the cost to my physical being is immense, I will not survive, I have in fact forgotten the very terms of survival…but all is irrelevant suddenly…all is explained suddenly…by the very vision of the terrain that lies on the other side of the Wall. (A terrain that might well be doubted, by others. Yes indeed doubted…. ) And so, it is very difficult suddenly to climb over…and to jump down…the other side exists, one does not die, it is gradually…how gradually, I can’t recall…ordinary life.

  …There, the ordinary: the solace of routine, execution of details, immense gratification of small accomplishments. Day upon day upon day. Once the Wall is scaled, and left behind. And so, a life…incalculable.

  …Then, in the distance, at the horizon, another Wall: another: and so we comprehend the terms of our earthly contract.

  […] Life fluctuates between contour and detail (as my mad narrator of A Bloodsmoor Romance noted), and, atop a wall, one is impressed by contour, distance, sublime vistas, scale, the way fields are laid out, the way the earth arranges itself…. So too, these intense periods of meditation. Before plunging into another worrisome project….

  …A fable, a fabulous metaphor. I envision a “great man”—living in Princeton—a former governor—former president of the University—(though not Wilson—not precisely)—whose “pact with the forces of disharmony, evil, cruelty, aggression”—whatever—has brought blight, disaster, accident, madness, upon an entire community. Though, for a while, for purposes of (parody) plot, it must seem that others are to blame…. The “scapegoats” being naturally women, a black, an Indian, a half-breed…or whatever: the outbreaks of madness, monsters, lurid events accelerating…. Mysterious deaths, grotesque episodes, “walking dead” & shared hallucinations; mystery!

  April 19, 1981. Easter Sunday…. Sunny, windy, chill day; we hiked through Bayberry field & along the roads, in a delirium of relief at not having to see anyone or talk with anyo
ne all day—except of course each other. After a virtual avalanche of social events in Princeton: each desirable in itself, but, in accumulation, rather overwhelming.

  …Working on new poems […]. Here in the sun-filled white-walled room, two cats sleeping nearby, pale red tulips just beginning to bloom, daffodils, miniature iris…. (Not one but two tachycardiac episodes yesterday. After a very long time—years?—I seem unable to recall with much precision. The first seizure lasted about an hour and a half, and the palpitations grew so strong, Ray drove me to the emergency ward of the Princeton hospital…at his doctor’s suggestion…and as I was checking in, rather breathlessly giving information to the nurse on duty, the symptoms lifted, and vanished; and we walked out, free, into a lovely summery day, had lunch at the Nassau Inn, strolled out toward Snowden Lane, were intercepted by Elaine, went to the Showalters’ for an hour, there to talk over the party of the night before […]. About the seizures: they don’t greatly frighten me, but they aren’t, it must be said, very pleasant, nor do they inspire confidence, in my general health…. What to do?—how to forestall them?—which attitude to take? A noble resignation seems the best strategy; panic isn’t helpful, nor is the pretense that nothing is wrong. The beating was so pronounced, I could not sit still, certainly could not lie down, but had to keep walking around the house, walking and walking, waiting for the seizure to pass, optimistic that it would pass, which eventually it did. A late night out, return at midnight and, my God, a second attack—which lasted a half-hour—and wore me out, so exhausted me I did lie down, trying to read Hoffman’s The Sandman…. My sense of mortality is such that I thought repeatedly of A Bloodsmoor Romance and the fact that it was “all right” for me to be swept away, since I had finished that laborious feat, and everything was more or less in order…. Ray’s expression of concern, alarm, sadness was very moving, I felt tremendously sorry for him, it becomes clear to us both at such times that we are in this for keeps: entering that dark low tunnel, before many years, from which…. But I can’t continue.

  …Lovely dinner last night at Walt and Marion Litzes’, where we met David Lodge, English critic, professor, novelist. I hope to read David’s most recent novel, not yet published here, and perhaps help arrange for an American publication…. (Many years ago I read The British Museum Is Falling Down, and Changing Places. But David L. is really unknown here.)

  …Sitting in the courtyard, in the sun, lazy & placid, cats sleeping nearby, bumblebees, the Sunday paper strewn about, reading idly and working on poems & taking notes for the new long gothic novel…which will be an engineering feat, and must take some time to prepare. I envision a structure of various documents, letters, eyewitness accounts, interviews, newspaper articles—in short, a carnival of voices, which is what I love best. The Blisses of Weirland…Willowby…Apthorp…Winslow Bliss. Winslow Strand…. A calendar year, Ash Wednesday to Ash Wednesday. A gentleman not unlike Woodrow Wilson…in whose (former) mansion, Prospect, I have lunch twice a week. A doctor, Dr. Snow (?). Various marriages, interlocking relationships, Reverend Bierce…. But in the meantime, work on Invisible Woman, a volume of poetry…poems which mean more to me than perhaps they should, considering the logjam of books I have accumulated…including that 900-page romance.

  April 21, 1981.…Pondering, brooding, daydreaming…The Maidstone Horror (????)…. But nothing is clear save perhaps one or two central characters, and the concept of the narrator…a descendant of Winslow Strand’s. Flaubert speaks somewhere of man’s “dark depths that must be appeased.” Thus the gothic mode, the metaphor for all we can’t name and can’t bear…. A mysterious aesthetic bond between pleasure (in the spectator at least) and cruelty: but it must be aesthetic, otherwise….

  …Visiting Ed Sullivan’s class in The Short Story this afternoon, discussing Crossing the Border, but managing to speak of Joyce, Lawrence, Faulkner, Borges, Updike…anyone, indeed, apart from myself…. How distant I feel from that book; how little it engages me, as an exercise in style; the themes of the stories, the “visions,” are perhaps of interest still. […] My surprise, dim alarm, “interest,” when, afterward, a number of the students came forward to talk with me, to have me sign books, to say they had liked the book (!)…. I wonder: Do we outlive ourselves always so radically, so transparently, so irrevocably?—I would have greatly preferred talking about any other book, any other writer, why in fact am I obliged to present “Joyce Carol Oates”…. A sense of amusement, irony, philosophical resignation…. So we outlive ourselves book by book, page by page, scarcely recognizing “ourselves,” yet held to account for all we’ve done, and even congratulated on it. “Thank you: but I am not that person; that person does not exist any longer; that person is—vanished.”

  …My new project arouses my interest but hasn’t yet crystallized into any specific images; or very few. I think it is mainly a mood, an atmosphere, a temper, a “gothic” air…. The voice of the narrator begins to be heard. I “see” him but dimly, dimly…. Prissy, prudish, about twenty-nine years old but already middle-aged, a seminarian who has (so we gather) suffered a nervous collapse, and is “recuperating” on his grandmother’s estate somewhere in Maidstone…or near the Delaware. So he spends his summer rooting through this old mystery, looking up newspaper articles in the local library, journeying to Trenton, to Princeton itself, to the historical society; perhaps he tries to interview survivors, who would now be very old. He wants to know the true cause of the Horror….

  …“Fascinated” characters, victims, of the rampaging evil. One must imagine the “evil” as erotically charged…. I want, and obviously don’t want, to write a tale that reads in a straightforward manner: otherwise there’s no experiment, there’s no pleasure for me. The feat is, to write as if the tale were being told by this crazed narrator, like the romantic maiden lady of the Bloodsmoor chronicle…. Alas, I must call forth an actual Villain; and a Villainess; or the tale cannot get going. Yet there is some resistance to solving the problem too quickly.

  …Dinner tonight at the Showalters’, with David and Mary Lodge, and George Levine and his wife. Sunny & quite cold. A strange day, but why?…so pleasant, so superficial…. I worked on poems this morning; contemplated the “gothic” tale most of the day; feel very unmoored, at loose ends, without a narrative voice in which I can hear myself “thinking.”…I see that I must love the (invisible) narrator, or I can’t begin the novel!…a fondness tempered with some sense of his absurdity, his self-deception.

  May 1, 1981.…Calm, seclusion, the sunny white room, hour upon hour this morning uninterrupted, rewriting poems for Invisible Woman, an extraordinary experience…but I can’t talk about it, I had better stay with the poetry, the peripheral narrative thread that runs through the poems, the sense of a “novel” evolving…. (How blissful, how truly sacred, such episodes in my private life. Yet to speak of these matters, in public, always seems to me impossible. The inner life, the stream of the inner life, the dark and barely discernible but never-ceasing stream of the imagination, always there, always hidden, but there, unceasing, unfailing….)

  […] It is impossible to explain to outsiders what April is like in Princeton, impossible, ridiculous, outrageous, the end of term the senior theses the student conferences the special meetings of workshops the student reading marathon (which I left after the first hour—simply exhausted) the parties the lectures the dinners the receptions the Gauss seminars […] Tuesday, a committee meeting at the American Academy, much warmth exchanged with John Updike, whom I like immensely, and who (or so it seems) appears to like me; and John Hollander—brilliant man […] he’s astoundingly well-read, and professorial in the most helpful ways, funny, kindly, witty, at times a little malicious, as we all are, and must be, faced with the avalanche of names—about 100, this time—we are obliged to deal with, for Academy-Institute awards. And then a reading at Books & Co., 7:30, I read my new poems. […] Ah, Princeton isn’t to be believed!—and we decline most invitations, and stay away from most events, and yet…I should
attempt a poem, Princeton Frenzy in Spring, but no one would believe it, and no one would care, but perhaps I’ve already written it (“The Present Tense”)* at one of those alarming junctures in my life when I halfway thought I might collapse: sheer overwork, overstimulation, and the perpetual pull of the unconscious or the imagination or whatever it should be called—the novel that insists upon its shape, its language, its integrity—Year of Wonders it might be called, but would Pearce van Dijck II call it that?—Year of Horror—The Crosswicks Horror—I had wanted The Prince-town Horror but Princeton acquired its present name well in advance of the early 1900’s…. Yes, the psychological “problem” is always the same with me: a work demands to be contemplated, its voice demands to be respected, and if the external world is too absurdly complicated, I feel the strain as if I were being pulled virtually apart…. This way, and then that way; gravitational tugging this way, that way, this way, backward & forward, yearning to be at home & quiet & composing my chart of people, as I am doing, yet also wanting (though less powerfully) to be out with my friends […] and so it goes, and so it’s a ceaseless tug-of-war, for one has only to touch nearly any individual in this part of the world and a life-altering friendship might blossom…. My God, what a sobering thought: yet it’s absolutely true.