My Secret Diary -- Part 2 (1984-85)
September 15, 1984
The authorities have released me for a few months, during which I'll write a new novel, six essays and reviews for the New York Review of Books and the Guardian, and reform PEN. So I'm hard at work, which for me is play.
I met a fellow writer -- which is to say, a fellow prisoner -- at Yaddo this summer. Now she's back in stalag 32 (B____ University's creative writing department) babysitting a bunch of wetnosed American youths. She said they all suddenly want to be Madonna, and I made a madonna-whore joke, but she didn't even react. I should pay more attention to popular culture. Maybe I should subscribe to the New York Times Book Review. Though it's written for the hoi polloi, and rarely contains anything close to an original idea, I suppose I could skim it once a week.
November 7, 1984
Reagan re-elected. I don't understand this country. But what matters is, is this good or bad for artists? Republicans hate all art because they think it's gay, and they hate gays worse than anything. On the other hand, Republicans provide much fodder for protest and satire.
But I am not interested in satirical novels. I am interested in the experience of the foreigner, the exile, the outsider. That's why I travel, why I live abroad -- which is to say, why I live in the United States.
How glad I am not to be teaching this year in some corn-fed American university. The little fascists must be gloating. They're probably composing odes to El Presidente and his Los Angelean dentures.
December 26, 1984
I've finished my new novel, though I ought to rewrite the second half. I won't be able to work on it for the next month, though, since I must earn lucre. A trip to Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia for the travel press. God, why don't I move to Sweden and get myself supported by their government? I'd probably have to teach there, too, though.
February 2, 1985
Thanks to the Guggenheim fund I can stay home for precisely seven weeks and finish the rewrites on my new novel. How I wish I would never have to darken the door of a classroom again.
April 1, 1985
Just balanced my checkbook and realized I'll need a few summer workshops to tide me over until the second half of my advance comes in. God, summer workshops. Those doughy, hopeful faces; the awful prose.
The only good thing about them is talking to other writers. (By "writers" I mean, of course, other published novelists and authors like myself. Those who attend summer writers workshops have not earned the appellation. I shall capitalize Writer when I am speaking of others like me.) When I meet men like John Cheever, Gore Vidal, Gay Talese, I feel at home. No slight intended to R.
I just had a horrible thought. People have to apply to attend those summer workshops. I've seen their work. Imagine what gets rejected!
July 27, 1985
Dead of summer in Napa Valley. Mornings are workshops; afternoons are free, except one. The workshops remind me of a passage in DeSade when one of the villainous protagonists picks up a set of blacksmith tools to torture some unfortunate lass. He urges his companions to make free with his victim while between her legs "I shall labor in the workshop of human flesh" -- in other words, he's going to do something nasty to her reproductive system.
I know just how that feels -- from his perspective, I mean. That's what it's like to take up your pen and try to enlighten the cowlike purveyors of prose like... oh, just to take something that's lying around:
Dear, dear. It's enough to wish you were like one of them. I see them gather in groups to go to lunch, excited at the insights they received during the morning. They seem to be having fun. As for me and the other faculty members, it's all we can do to drag ourselves into the local tavern at the end of a long afternoon of reading students' work. And when we meet, it's not to talk about the workshops, not at all. We talk about book contracts, fellowships, movie deals. I think if another Writer came to me today and said he'd received a brilliant piece from a student, I'd drop dead.
August 17, 1985
Another writers workshop -- Squaw Valley -- as good an excuse as any to drive into the mountains in the summer. This workshop is supposedly more prestigious than Napa Valley, but that's like saying Andropov is a nicer dictator than Breshnev. (I live near the Napa Valley affair, so I probably shouldn't be bitchy, but it's like so many things in what they call the Wine Country: self-consciously handsome, faux-aged, too expensive.)
The low point today was when a young lady came in wearing a an open blouse over a bathing costume. Nothing else, not even footwear. I thought, where are the standards of today?
But I said nothing. They want to make me talk, but they won't. I know that soon their sly attempts will end, to be replaced by the direct interrogations. I only looked out the window at the glacier atop some nearby peak, so unlike Kilamunjaro. Then I turned back to the assembled students, who were discussing the finer points of a story that contained the sentence: "Walking down the street, all the shops were displaying their finery."
Sometimes I want to have done with words. The piano -- that has always seemed like a good instrument. Dignified, heavy, and black.
September 25, 1985
The notion of taking up the piano still in my mind, I got the name of an instructor last weekend. She lives in Marin County, but that's not far to go.
The authorities have released me for a few months, during which I'll write a new novel, six essays and reviews for the New York Review of Books and the Guardian, and reform PEN. So I'm hard at work, which for me is play.
I met a fellow writer -- which is to say, a fellow prisoner -- at Yaddo this summer. Now she's back in stalag 32 (B____ University's creative writing department) babysitting a bunch of wetnosed American youths. She said they all suddenly want to be Madonna, and I made a madonna-whore joke, but she didn't even react. I should pay more attention to popular culture. Maybe I should subscribe to the New York Times Book Review. Though it's written for the hoi polloi, and rarely contains anything close to an original idea, I suppose I could skim it once a week.
November 7, 1984
Reagan re-elected. I don't understand this country. But what matters is, is this good or bad for artists? Republicans hate all art because they think it's gay, and they hate gays worse than anything. On the other hand, Republicans provide much fodder for protest and satire.
But I am not interested in satirical novels. I am interested in the experience of the foreigner, the exile, the outsider. That's why I travel, why I live abroad -- which is to say, why I live in the United States.
How glad I am not to be teaching this year in some corn-fed American university. The little fascists must be gloating. They're probably composing odes to El Presidente and his Los Angelean dentures.
December 26, 1984
I've finished my new novel, though I ought to rewrite the second half. I won't be able to work on it for the next month, though, since I must earn lucre. A trip to Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia for the travel press. God, why don't I move to Sweden and get myself supported by their government? I'd probably have to teach there, too, though.
February 2, 1985
Thanks to the Guggenheim fund I can stay home for precisely seven weeks and finish the rewrites on my new novel. How I wish I would never have to darken the door of a classroom again.
April 1, 1985
Just balanced my checkbook and realized I'll need a few summer workshops to tide me over until the second half of my advance comes in. God, summer workshops. Those doughy, hopeful faces; the awful prose.
The only good thing about them is talking to other writers. (By "writers" I mean, of course, other published novelists and authors like myself. Those who attend summer writers workshops have not earned the appellation. I shall capitalize Writer when I am speaking of others like me.) When I meet men like John Cheever, Gore Vidal, Gay Talese, I feel at home. No slight intended to R.
I just had a horrible thought. People have to apply to attend those summer workshops. I've seen their work. Imagine what gets rejected!
July 27, 1985
Dead of summer in Napa Valley. Mornings are workshops; afternoons are free, except one. The workshops remind me of a passage in DeSade when one of the villainous protagonists picks up a set of blacksmith tools to torture some unfortunate lass. He urges his companions to make free with his victim while between her legs "I shall labor in the workshop of human flesh" -- in other words, he's going to do something nasty to her reproductive system.
I know just how that feels -- from his perspective, I mean. That's what it's like to take up your pen and try to enlighten the cowlike purveyors of prose like... oh, just to take something that's lying around:
Monica woke with a start. She had been having one of her save the world dreams again. In this particular version she was in a crystal city of the future where people floated on air soaring through the blue sky like birds. They lived blissful lives in shiny glass towers. The air felt light and smelled fresh and mountain tinged. But computers ruled the planet and an evil faction was trying to take over the city while randomly killing people. Monica was the only person in the world with the correct access code to stop them.It's the punctuation that gets me. Her driven COMMA QUOTE CAP Type A QUOTE personality. And then the cliches...
She knew from her years of therapy that these dreams were not premonitions, just the overworked imaginings of her driven, "Type A" personality.
Dear, dear. It's enough to wish you were like one of them. I see them gather in groups to go to lunch, excited at the insights they received during the morning. They seem to be having fun. As for me and the other faculty members, it's all we can do to drag ourselves into the local tavern at the end of a long afternoon of reading students' work. And when we meet, it's not to talk about the workshops, not at all. We talk about book contracts, fellowships, movie deals. I think if another Writer came to me today and said he'd received a brilliant piece from a student, I'd drop dead.
August 17, 1985
Another writers workshop -- Squaw Valley -- as good an excuse as any to drive into the mountains in the summer. This workshop is supposedly more prestigious than Napa Valley, but that's like saying Andropov is a nicer dictator than Breshnev. (I live near the Napa Valley affair, so I probably shouldn't be bitchy, but it's like so many things in what they call the Wine Country: self-consciously handsome, faux-aged, too expensive.)
The low point today was when a young lady came in wearing a an open blouse over a bathing costume. Nothing else, not even footwear. I thought, where are the standards of today?
But I said nothing. They want to make me talk, but they won't. I know that soon their sly attempts will end, to be replaced by the direct interrogations. I only looked out the window at the glacier atop some nearby peak, so unlike Kilamunjaro. Then I turned back to the assembled students, who were discussing the finer points of a story that contained the sentence: "Walking down the street, all the shops were displaying their finery."
Sometimes I want to have done with words. The piano -- that has always seemed like a good instrument. Dignified, heavy, and black.
September 25, 1985
The notion of taking up the piano still in my mind, I got the name of an instructor last weekend. She lives in Marin County, but that's not far to go.
