7/13/56

Life—existence—getting along with people—or even getting along totally with oneself—is a matter of compromise. A platitude. But the wisdom (or the stupidity) depends on the things one compromises with, and also one’s sense of humor, or detachment, or earnestness, in compromising. It is the most important and the most difficult art in the world. But it is for people who have chosen happiness, alone. It is not really for artists, though they have to compromise, too (e.g. when they greet their cranky landladies; or do they always? No). One must either know instinctively when and how much to compromise, or one must have an intellectual system worked out about it. One must compromise the whole way, with a sense of humor and an absolute, beautiful conviction that one is not compromising oneself in doing so; or else one must be grim and equally well defined, saying basically I shall not compromise any more than is necessary for me to keep myself out of jail. But there are times when one should go to jail, prefers to go to jail. This is really the Endless Circle, the rat-race of Twentieth Century America.

1/18/57

My growing problem since 1951: (in Riesman’s terms) from inner-directed (ambitious, idealistic, self-driving, diary-keeping) I have become somewhat other-directed; and this is against my nature, or at least my nature until the age of thirty. Among its manifestations (which irritate the inner-directed side of me) are carelessness about money, looseness of morals in sex and drinking, smoking, abandonment of daily exercises (physical), abandonment of diary keeping, perhaps over tolerance of the mediocre in people and in art (this has its good side and is hard to make a judgment about), laziness (sporadic) about my own work, and a general lowering of sights in my themes. Time something was done about it. Something in between inner and outer, if possible.

9/29/57

On concentrating. (For The Writer possibly). A small matter, concentrating. But how many young writers can do it? It is not a new typewriter, a cushion in the chair, even necessarily stimulating or tranquilizing music playing. For most people, it is a guarantee of privacy. One cannot tell someone how to write a novel, the ingredients. One can only tell if they are not there. Privacy. An expensive thing in the modern world. How many young writers give themselves a chance? It is considered eccentric to like to be alone. Yet for such a short time, either a stay at a country cottage, or absolute quiet for six hours a day produce far more than the trouble costs. Take yourself seriously. Set a routine. Once you are alone, relax and behave as you will. Stand still for a moment and relish the novel sensation of knowing that you are utterly alone and will not be disturbed by a ringing telephone, a baby’s cry, an order from a boss, a groan or a whine from a spouse. Privacy is expensive. Perhaps it costs somebody else something. Relish it. But don’t feel guilty about having it. Take it as your due. Indulge yourself in everything that can possibly contribute to your writing. For instance, in the height of composition, which may last a week, a month, three months, you may not feel like writing personal letters. Don’t write them. Personal letters take something out of you, something of creative energy. It may be also that you cannot read other people’s fiction, however inspiring, or however much you may admire the author and wish to emulate him or her. To read a novel over a period of days means that you carry around in your head an emotionally charged atmosphere, a whole stage full of characters. While you are writing a book, you must carry around your own stage full of characters with their emotional charges. You have no room for another stage.

11/27/58

By the age of forty, one has amassed so many associations with music, colors, sounds, tastes, words, that it is possible to foresee life becoming unbearable. Every Beethoven sonata drags a nightmare in its wake. Every scent that women wear brings tears and trembling.

It is very, very difficult for me to know what to forgive among people’s vices (mine, too). Where to take a stand and say, finally, this is wrong, and therefore this person or that no longer deserves my love or friendship or anyone else’s. Europeans are better off than Americans in being brought up from infancy with clear ideas on morality—at least compared to Americans. Believing as I do that only out of personal chaos and failure and humiliation can truth and real character come, it is twice as hard for me. When should one’s patience give out? When should one stop believing in the core of goodness in everyone? In this is the whole art of life. And because it is an art, not a science, no one will ever lay down the laws. It is for this reason only that people are different, one from another. It is because of its flexibility that it torments me.

2/11/59

Discipline, solitude and the ascetic life are not difficult for me, but I do not like the feeling of being virtuous that comes when I lead such a life even for two days. I resent feeling virtuous, just as I resent ”virtue” and consider it stupid. Small use—at this point in my life—to remind myself that I am being virtuous in order better to practice an art that is by no means dedicated to virtue.

11/7/60

Lots of writers, especially young writers, think they will put down “everything” in one book. They mean human consciousness (that mystery!), emotions, atmosphere, the whole gamut of existence. When they begin writing their book, they realize how much must be left out, how painfully specialized a work of art has to be to be any good at all. They’ll tell only a fraction of what they want to in each book.

12/18/60

The muse doesn’t come when you beckon. She comes when you’ve tried all day to get something right, and you’re tired and about to go to bed—and then you stay up. She comes when you’ve lost your love. She touches you, she touches your shoulder, and then you know you’re not alone after all.

12/18/63

The taste of death is sometimes in my mouth, these solitary evenings.

Each day I live means one day less to live.

That’s evident!

Before I die, I’d spend some time with her,

Just living.

Mornings are frantic, like all mornings,

The too fresh mind incapable

Of the maniacal decisions that produce art.

Exhausted by afternoon, I have completed my chores,

And am faced with myself and my hot-self again.

Then I work. I work like a worm in the earth,

I work like a termite fashioning a tunnel, a bridge.

I work for a future I can no longer see.

That’s my life.

Will I in five years, two years, one,

Gnash my teeth again (teeth long ago gnashed to bits)

And curse what I hesitate to call my fate, my pattern?

Or should I call it my stupidity?

Who but an imbecile would have chosen such a hard way?

Or shall I in five years or one,

Grow like an oak dressed in evergreen.

Happiness having swollen in me, become me,

Because of the devotion which she swears?

This I argue with myself on paper.

That is what I feel like sometimes,

Paper.

8/9/65

With the new acquaintance: that moment in the conversation when I realize he has a different morality, weltanschauung from mine, like a sudden canyon between us. We can change direction and find some bridge across somewhere else. But the knowledge lurks. It will turn up again years from now to part us, in every way, though we remain friends.