The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates Page 5

  Still, judgments must be attempted. It is wrong to kill, it is “wrong” to be violent. But it is even more wrong, more reprehensible, to put human beings into the position—psychologically and morally—where their life’s energies can be expressed only in destruction, in killing. Violence is an admission of impotence. Violence is a kind of impotence. But who has brought the impotence about, who is to blame…?

  Windsor too has its problems, its urban difficulties, pollution falling from the skies (blown across the wide river from Detroit’s factories, primarily from Detroit Edison), and a considerable drug problem, so it is said. But there is not the air of defeat here, or dismay. The problems are large enough to draw interest to them, small enough to seem soluble. Of course they will not be solved—it is not in the nature of most problems to be “solved”—but in the meantime no one despairs.

  Found a letter of Anne Sexton’s mailed on June 4, 1973.

  She committed suicide not long ago; carbon monoxide poisoning at her home in Weston, Massachusetts.

  The shock of finding the letter—And the mingled fear, dismay, excitement in rereading it—The wish that I could write to her again, as I did then, and she would write back—and again, and again—in this way mortality defeated, destiny thwarted—

  Strange that I did not notice, or at any rate take seriously, certain remarks in her letter that were very, very sad, in a helpless way. My tendency to interpret other people as if they were myself speaking…and their words only expressions of my own. Very true it is (and who escapes it?) that we experience the world through the filter of our own personality; or, in the psychological terms of one school of psychology, we “project” our own traits onto others, and rarely experience people as they are in themselves….

  And yet? How could anything other be possible?

  Anne Sexton: “Yes, it is my nature to be apprehensive almost constantly, and my hunger for love is as immense as your eating people in Wonderland.* When I feel the antithesis, I do not know how to get enjoyment out of it, although it is part of life and as a writer I should enjoy being in touch with agony.”

  Incomprehensible differences of personality. Early childhood? Biochemical destiny? “Roles”…? For a suicidal person like Anne Sexton to have survived to the age of forty-five, seems to me an achievement, a triumph. Virginia Woolf, living to the age of fifty-nine, is even more extraordinary. Suicides are always judged as if they were admissions of defeat, but one can take the viewpoint that their having lived as long as they did is an accomplishment of a kind. Knowing herself suicidal as a very young girl, Virginia Woolf resisted—made heroic attempts to attach herself to the exterior world—as did Anne Sexton—as do we all. Why not concentrate on the successes, the small and large joys of these lives, the genuine artistic accomplishments? After all, anyone and everyone dies; the exact way can’t be very important.

  “In all that you do or say or think, recollect that at any time the power of withdrawal from life is in your hands.”—Marcus Aurelius

  Many individuals, many possibilities of “ways out.” To each according to his taste, his choice, his intellect…his courage. But at bottom the taboo of suicide is, I suspect, merely irritation and resentment on the part of those left behind. Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.

  November 19, 1974. Fragments of past selves, unbelievable in the present. Not recallable. Where is the person—loosely known as “me”—who played piano for so many hours?—daily? A kind of pleasantly demonic sinking into it—into that elusive “it” of music—which unfortunately evaporates as soon as one ceases to concentrate. And the frustrations, the desire for technical perfection—perfection!—one would have liked simply a casual kind of proficiency—unoffensive to the ear and the brain. But music was ultimately elusive, immediately elusive, and as the years passed I worked at it less and less, till finally not at all, not even once with any seriousness since we’ve moved here to Windsor…and the good trim handsome neat proper piano remains in the corner of the living room, forever silent…. How to believe that I had really worked at it so hard…how to accept the fact that that “self” is gone forever…that I am able to listen seriously, with concentration, to so few composers now…as if music, musics, were an island being nibbled at by the sea, worn away constantly, till all that remains is music of what might be called a higher consciousness…. Ravel and Debussy, of course, always, but apart from them it’s primarily religious music we listen to, and listen to, without being aware of this music being “religious” and perhaps not knowing what that term really means. All the works one might expect—Bach, Fauré, Mozart, Beethoven (though less of Beethoven than once), etc., etc., and unusual works like Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers.”…This is the music I could never have played, could never have attempted; perhaps I gave up playing piano because it was totally beyond me, the sounds I really wanted to hear, and the necessity for my creating them not very important. After all, when there are so many gifted musicians…?

  Contemporary music, experimental and non-traditional: far too cerebral to last. Electronic music is intellectual, idea-oriented, elitist in the worst sense of the word, a trivial minor growth out of Charles Ives…as if contemporary poets were to content themselves with “developing” a single aspect of Whitman…without an awareness of his true teaching: that one is oneself, an individual, not a mere copy of another. So there is a kind of “modern” music, avant-garde in intention, that blends in seamlessly with stray noises of the city (not nature: nature isn’t random)…music reduced to approximately the emotional value of words. But music is so much more than words…! It is connective tissue, pulsebeats between words, a para-or meta-language, far too precious to be reduced to ideas. But when I listen to a sprightly charming work by Rorem or Copland, and even Poulenc, and then listen to a work by…(unfair, yes, but let us say Mahler, not wishing to say Mozart or Bach)…I am aware of the depressing, colossal problems the modern composer must face, which the modern writer hasn’t had to face…. Thank God I am not a composer…what could be more merciless, more difficult, and more thankless? All the musics are simultaneous now: the classical, the “primitive,” the electronic, the very popular. Not so with literature, really. Not really. The next novel by Saul Bellow will not be in raw competition with Crime and Punishment; but the next work by Rorem, if played by a symphony, will be juxtaposed with the usual “great” works…and cannot fail to risk censure for seeming unforgivably different.

  […]

  The first issue of the magazine now out; being mailed; Ray and I both quite pleased with it. Ray did most of the work, suffered most of the frustrations, the initial idea of the magazine being—I suppose—my own; but of my hundreds of brilliant ideas, how many are actually brought into the visible world?

  The unheralded editors of our time….

  John Martin of Black Sparrow, for instance. Working constantly, for love of what he does, for—I gather—not very much money. The work is so absorbing, bringing out a magazine, a constant daily and even hourly challenge—the pleasure in a sense already guaranteed (there will be an issue!—it will appear!)—so one need not worry. And then, too, magazines are generally not reviewed as books are. The editors provide a structure in which others are presented. Being an editor is agreeable in a way that being a writer is not always, for one’s own writing is the presentation, and one cannot be dissociated from it…though of course all art is a “gift” to the culture, and the artist is ultimately detached from it. No choice about that.

  Publication date of The Goddess and Other Women, and New Heaven, New Earth,* sometime in early December. The book of essays is my least ambiguous book, very moral and very serious, absolutely “my heart laid bare”; it should not be misunderstood as most of my other books are. The Goddess has stories I cannot look at, except by paging through the book with a pretense of casualness…so painful are certain lines, certain paragraphs…the dialogue spr
inging out to the eye, and my astonishment that these words are going to be read by other people…. The book is, even more than most of the others, a curious mixture of “fiction” and “fictionalized life.” What upsets me because it is intimate, what pleases me because it is impersonal, art-work rather than journal, would appear to the reader unfamiliar with my life as more or less the same; what is “real” indistinguishable from what is “imagination.” I will consider myself free of the events behind those tales when I can read them as a casual reader, unable to distinguish and uninterested in distinguishing “reality” and “imagination.”

  November 22, 1974. Luncheon with old friends—Liz, Kay, Marge†—at a French restaurant in downtown Detroit—all of us in high spirits—why?—Kay having informed us that Eliot Janeway (whose wife Elizabeth had been in Detroit only a week ago—lunched with us—only a week ago?) had predicted in that morning’s paper a worse depression than that of the 30’s. Kay knows enough to believe him, the others of us accept it more or less on faith—yet don’t accept it, really, unable to absorb such mournful news—in any case unable to act upon it. Spoke of books, of writing, of mutual friends. Very enjoyable. Had taught my freshman class at eleven o’clock—dealing with the subtleties of “existentialism” in Kafka’s writing—if indeed he is “existentialist”—yet who isn’t?—but the morning receded, grew distant. So much life, so much living—conversation—crammed into so little space!—just as, having written the books I have, having submerged myself into the consciousness of so many people, my own “life” has been drawn out to a remarkable extent: not one but many, many, and no end in sight. The imagination defeats not only the body’s ostensible limits, the psyche’s ostensible limits, but time itself. Our margin of divinity….

  Fascinating, the discussion of parents/children. Two of us at lunch were without children; two with. What connections?—what responsibilities? Rare, the wisdom of a mother like Kay, who disclaims “credit” for her outstanding children—and thereby frees herself of necessary blame for one who might not turn out as well. Or might: who can predict? But it’s true, true, beyond a certain point we cannot take credit or feel guilt for one another, we must grant one another freedom, goodwill, grace, nothing more.

  Friendship: more satisfying than romantic love. Though romantic love, if one is wise, can be transformed into friendship.

  Returned to Windsor, 3:30, told by the departmental secretary that Ray has gone out with some friends—went to meet him at a local pub—the same place we had had lunch last week—only last week?—spent a loud cheerful newsy session with them—hoping that my presence—that is, my femininity—did not alter the occasion very much. The nuisance men must feel, when a woman approaches—that they must be more aware—“aware”—more socially sensitive. […] Ray rather lively, relieved to be free of the P & T committee meetings (Promotion and Tenure), the long week come to an end. Left reluctantly at six. Hours and hours of conversation, laughter, odd bouncy irreverence to both the luncheon and the pub session—a claim might well be made that the only valuable reality is with friends, with others, with relationships in which one’s individuality is practically extinguished.

  Drove home, pleased to find a few subscriptions for Ontario Review, a nice notice in the NYTimes of The Goddess (by Marian Engel—perceptive and generous and wonderfully uncatty, in contrast to the Times’ more characteristic reviewers: but they are mainly New Yorkers),* quite an assortment of letters. Now the day takes its toll, now we are both exhausted. No appetite for dinner. Unable to work at the novel, best simply to sit with one of the cats and finish the book I have been reading (one of those nice coincidences: Marian Engel’s The Honeyman Festival). A day that seemed at least three days in duration, so much crammed into each hour. Surely every moment is a small eternity?—one feels the exhaustion of this curious “eternity,” slipping back into “time” at the end of the day.

  November 23, 1974. Anniversary of our engagement. November 23, 1960. Met on October 23, at a graduate students’ coffee at Madison, Wisconsin; formally engaged a month later; married on January 23, 1961. The odd repetition of that number 23 in my life…. Meaningless, meaningful? Went to Syracuse University, arrived there on the 23 of September 1956 (an event of such psychic upheaval, can still remember the dazedness of it—and the half-melancholy, half-manic atmosphere of the freshman cottage I lived in); my first book, By the North Gate, published on October 23, 1963. I think it was 1963. Later events of 1963, public events, necessarily blurred and eclipsed personal life…so that one tends to block out the date 1963, in terms of personal existence.

  The assassination of Kennedy: an event no one who lived through it, no one with any sensitivity, will ever quite transcend. The burden of my writing, of the novels. Those who lived through the death of a President…a kind of original sin…though we are helpless, blameless, far distant from the actual scene of….

  The Assassins: A Book of Hours.

  Most difficult, teasing novel. Drains all energies to it, so that the effort of typing over a poem is too much: have actually postponed typing two or three tiny poems for weeks—not like me. No short stories, none. Except “Poetics 105.”* And that nightmarish, swinging-staggering, quite horrible; redeemed (if redeemed) by humor.

  Make a point of telling my students regularly: mankind’s talent for humor, for laughter, is possibly our highest talent. Ability to adapt. Imagination. The wilder the better. No restraint—no “common sense”—decency—etc.

  Anniversary, dinner out, a movie afterward. Grateful to be alone this evening (Saturday). Recall the delirious social life of several years ago—incredible that we actually participated in it—were we different people? So much energy expended…. Friendship, in contrast to social life, demands intensity, a kind of tenderness. One cannot maintain relationships with very many people. Limited amount of love, affection, concern, awareness. No getting around it: it must be nature. Friendship is endangered when “social life” gets out of hand. Instead of friends one has acquaintances. Instead of people with whom one can speak frankly, one has lists of people to invite to dinner, to send Christmas cards to, to wonder who owes whom whatever is “owed” in that odd market. Going to England was our salvation—making the break irrevocably—escaping commitments we had unwisely allowed ourselves to be drawn into making—learning to say No, no thanks, no—far harder than one imagines. Bred to be courteous, encouraged to be rather sweet (though not at the expense of being clever […]). Still, I doubt that one must always choose between being “sweet” and being “clever.” It is always possible to behave one way, and to allow one’s characters to behave in another way; to encourage them, in fact.

  Finished the first third of The Assassins. Felt some anxiety at the end, identifying with Hugh. But—he must be allowed his fate—his necessary destiny—the fulfillment of the pattern—his “values” (his God) making his comic suicide a bygone conclusion. “We are what we worship”—we become what we hate—the irritable isolated combative ego ends by destroying itself. Hugh’s horror: mystery. He cannot live with mystery. He must know—must know everything. Otherwise he won’t live, finds life intolerable.

  December 1, 1974. A Sunday. Woke to a blizzard this morning—wind wailing—snow already drifted quite high in our courtyard—in back, the river churning and breaking in enormous waves—running backward and sideways, against the current—Belle Isle across the way no longer visible. Not needing to journey out, we think of the storm as pleasant. The house cozy. A stray cat, taken in only yesterday, basks luxuriously atop the piano—trots into the kitchen to eat—again, and again—trots back to sleep—unconscious how close it—that is, she—came to oblivion. Last year there was flooding but this year hopefully there will not be. End of November, beginning of December. Always a storm. Driveway nearly impassable. Juncos out back, hopping in the snow, have found a kind of shelter inside the fireplace. No other birds. Snow falling, falling constantly, since before dawn and now it’s one o’clock and the bushes are heavy with sn
ow and the air churning with flakes and, from where I sit, the poplars by the river hardly visible. Yesterday a fairly busy day—shopping, other errands—Friday and Thursday very difficult days on account of departmental and committee meetings at the University—emotions running high, then dipping, plunging low, with exhaustion—and so today is marvelously welcome, restorative.