Activity

FEBRUARY 6, 1942

Dinner with Hauser, we cooked, haphazardly, and started from scratch. Plenty of liquor. But no magic—no thrill, no beauty—no imagination, no ecstatic present, now perfect in the lift of a glass or a cigarette as I felt with Rosalind! I merely sit there, thinking of what to say n…

1/22/42

Able to think only when I have a background, of music, of voices, of lecturing, able to think creatively only in the unconcious, losing the thread when I realize I am following a thread, much addicted to cigarettes and alcohol; shy about emotions of any kind and disturbed at their displa…

AUGUST 26, 1941

[...] I want to do so much. The one moment of discouragement and doubt comes before all one’s things are put away again, when one sees all the old books and thinks that one has read them all and how little one knows anyway, when one sees unfinished manuscripts and thinks of the l…

This summer I have climbed, like a struggling Junebug on a fluted lamppost, to a higher ledge. A kind of higher standard, but above all a new hope and confidence. I intend to stay here. Right here and beyond.

AUGUST 15, 1941

[...] I want to sit down at a typewriter in a room all alone. I want long days to mull over what I’ve seen, silent hours to dream out stories that are as delicate, in the first plot germs, as smoke rings. And long evenings, which will be fewer now, I imagine, with Rosalind. [...]