Herself (35 page)

I have known many respected editors—and respected them. Some more than others. Their general trouble is industrialisation. Plus the totem of the late Maxwell Perkins, who carved Thomas Wolfe’s books from logorrhea and morass. Probably young editors still invoke him even as they pick up the Sunday carving-knife. Knowing that on Monday morning they have to meet with Sales. And at Monday lunch with author—who may regard them as fundraiser, party-giver, alter ego and psychiatrist. Who may even want them to help write the book.

Editors used to be the recipients of books—in Britain, at the time of this letter, they still were. Now they not only tailor them as Perkins very specially did, they expect to potter with any book, as a matter of course. Often they initiate one—even a work of fiction intended to be “literary.” I hadn’t known this until I myself was propositioned. I had thought we were going to talk about something of my own.

It was one of those browngold, dripping days, when New York rains autumn outside, even offices take on a darkly double look, and men like these, kindly enough, can convince themselves they are still in libraries. This one—suddenly but delicately—tells me he is dreaming of a novel that could be written about student riots. He so admires my work—and was so excited to hear I was a professor. Don’t I think such a novel needs to be written? (And may have been, by now). Would it interest me to?

I smell the elusive, cardboard odor of highclass offices; it must get to a man’s mind. A man who can ask me to write a novel to order will never understand my shock. How can I explain myself to him? (And why should the onus always be on me?) And why do I feel so sorry for him?

“No, no,” I say. “I have to gnaw my own chains.”

Here I am doing it.

Exhibit C:
Written to my then agent, Carol Brandt, herself new to me, when, after
False Entry
I was being solicited by publishers and had some thoughts about leaving mine.

January 26th, ’62

25 West 16th. New York, 11, N.Y.

Dear Carol:

A courteous reply from X—he will eagerly await word from you or me. Meanwhile, perhaps some line from me on the “editor” business might be of use, and certainly will concern me.

Little, Brown and Co. has one great advantage to me which they don’t know about—and I’m certainly not going to tell them. They leave me entirely alone as far as critical suggestion is concerned. This is no doubt by default, since as far as I know they have no one “in authority” who feels able to cope with such, on my stuff. In any case, it means that I have in effect a “British” situation. When Bernice (Bernice Baumgarten, then my agent) sent in
False Entry
in toto, she told them that I knew one chapter had to be much cut, and probably some at the end. They were quite willing to take it as was. The stipulation that it
must
be cut, (as was done, by me) was mine—a reversal of the usual situation. I work best that way, in the long run.

Now—with editors of high literary intelligence—like X—there is an opposite dilemma, which I should want to consider very carefully, and have my views very clear to them at the start. Most of them expect to work “with” an author. Most delicately of
course
, with someone like me, and of course, author always to have the
final
word. All of them will say this, and mean it. It will be our problem to explain that I do not ever work “with,” either on work in progress
or
work completed, and that no matter how much I may respect an editor personally, I don’t want any “words” at all. What they think, beyond “yes” or “no,” will be a matter of interest to me only well after the event.

This is not because I arrogantly think the author is always right. But I know with every fibre, and much experience, that I must reserve the right to make my own mistakes, to
be
wrong. Otherwise, I am nothing. And once one embarks on any kind of suggestive discussion, the erosion begins. An author’s sense of autonomy is maintained with difficulty from day to day. All good sensitive editors will tell you it has to be handled ve-ery delicately. To my mind, it is best for it not be handled at all. For, on work in progress or just finished, most of us are indeed not arrogant, but far too amenable, to suggestion—and all the more so when we respect the source. This I learned at
The New Yorker.
It’s not the dopes who are dangerous, but the men of taste. And in the end, a writer always loses more by consultation than he gains.

X, for instance, wrote me a fine letter re
FE
, containing an observation that was absolutely just, re the fact that the high point of the book dramatically, the hearing, was so high that there was of necessity a drop afterwards. He was quite right; it worried me endlessly, with my final decision that it was a correct progression for this book; that the more orthodox way, of a gradually rising dramatic interest, was not feasible for what I wanted most in terms of this book. Other things could have been done—and if an editor had got to me in time, I might have done them. Or I might have decided as I did, or
we
might have, but I would never quite have that fine, unequivocal sense: On my head be it. And the next time, not trusting myself, I would lean just a little on a sympathy and taste I know to be so good, and eager to
help
… etc.

A good editor would be one committed to the author’s work, who also wields influence in the house—they must be in good supply. An
ideal
editor would be one also committed to standing by the principles above, even against his own finest inclinations. I do not ever expect to meet him in this life—at least not in America. The smarter they are, the more they want to use
their
talent; the more admiring they are of yours, the more they want to help. And they are quite right to say, or secretly believe, that “the work does not exist that is not improvable by editing.” Including Melville, Shakespeare. The only damage is to the author, if he has the misfortune to be still living.

I shan’t always be writing these declarations, God willing. But we are just getting to know each other, and this is a matter so important to me that is better voiced for whatever use it is to you in deciding among these gentlemen. The dilemma of course is that the editors who don’t “speak one’s language” are naturally less willing or able to go to bat for one—and the ones who do are always too bloody eager to speak it.

The best we shall probably be able to do is to enunciate as clearly as we can: that Miss Calisher regards the descent to hell as so easy she thinks she can make it without guides.

They won’t hear us.

Best,

H

”G
RANNY—WHAT DID YOU
do in the war?”

I wrote. And wined and dined, and walked about, slept with a man, agonized over children and took pride in them, built a house and traveled from it—suffering and enjoying the common experience of almost all people living off the battlefield in a land whose war they cannot tolerate.

If my grandchildren and I ever co-exist, that’s what I’ll tell them. In case not, I’ll say a little more.

I do not know what the position of honor is. Few writers I know, or the public knows, went to prison for long for peace, though a few were kings for a day there, Paley and Levertov were devoting their lives to antiwar activities. Lowell, remaining a poet (and a conscientious-objector in a prior war), spoke out most clear. Mailer, like Hemingway, became a correspondent, ruefully at home instead of abroad—but in the way of the world, peace gained less than literature and he did. Ellison, stoutly refusing to be caught in a popular position, bravely defended his own. Updike, in one letter to the Sunday
Times
, seemed to me to want most to disassociate himself from the
kind
of people who were against the war. Some never in any way lent their presences, or voices. Most of us who did, shambled about in the wake of organisers and occasions we could tolerate.

The Town Hall Read-in is the one I recall best. Most of “us” were there, minimally nodding at each other like people who meet only at parties or wakes—or on these lists—and in any of these places, know how minimally we are there.

Children, when you in turn come to it—you can usually count on us.

Your granny hated going. To sit with bowed head until her turn came to mount one of those mock barricades that are never composed of a barricade’s rightful ingredients—which the dictionary will tell you are barrels, wagons, and stones. And an enemy, very near.

As it happened, we were all herded into a kind of basement greenroom, there to wait our turn, listening to the program meanwhile, via the public-address system, while one after the other of us went upstairs to read, and came back. Downstairs, we hullo-hulloed with the sheepish looks of people accustomed to thinking of themselves as original, come together to share the same painfully undistinguished thoughts.

“Granny, don’t you remember anything nice?”

Yop, I do too. So-and-so kissed me, jumping from the chair he sat in. No I don’t either—that was on another barricade.

“Granny, remember anything
ghastly
?”

Well, not really. Downstairs, we festered familiarly along, as always in these dragged-out rituals, in which the effect was as if we gave ourselves the bastinado—a kind of foot-cudgeling, dears—with our own tongues. (I recall the kindly, sad face of Stanley Kunitz saying that many who hadn’t been asked, had demanded to read, in order to get in on it.) But as I turned to go offstage after my own stint, I saw the backdrop, one huge “atrocity” blownup, in which the dead and wounded bodies had been grossly magnified in the media manner—yet could one say
vulgarised
? I couldn’t decide.

“And how about funny, didn’t you ever see anything
fun—
?”

Yes, the look and shrug Lillian Hellman gave me as she held a friend’s jelly-jar of whiskey for him, while he went up. Why a
jelly-jar
?

“Granny, is there a moral to it? What are we supposed to
think
?”

You’re supposed to see what we know deeply, that reading one’s work aloud,
being
there, is not the same as writing it. A writer is not
what
he or she writes.

And yes, there’s a moral.

We had come there, all of us, a good portion of the writers of the nation, under agreement not to speechify, but to read from our own works. Glumstering over books thick or thin, or patches of paper rousted from pants-pockets, we did so. Only Sontag, chin Jeanne D’Arc high, and hands free, spoke—a speech as from an impulsive heart too
feeling
just to read like the rest of us.

And next morning, that’s what the
Times
remembered.

Then, while a poet was reading, a man, later identified as an unemployed detective, jumped on the stage and asked the audience to sing God Bless America.

And next morning, that’s what the
Times
remembered.

I had been in straits between “liberal” action and writer-action before this—remember? If I record these new trials of ego, it is for a reason. In the Gallup-poll of consciousness, writer’s egos are no different from other people’s—except in their ability to record.

In no war I had read about, or lived through, had the collectively expressed peace-consciousness ever been less than several respectful or frustrate years behind the starkly moving events. I had long since concluded that “made” events, such as the Read-in, did not make history. We were only having a dialogue with our own need to have a part in history. (As no doubt our grandchildren, if they exist, will be able to testify. To want the “real,” and settle for the unreal,
is
part of that history.)

So I began writing letters—for publication.

Exhibit D:
Excerpt from
The New York Times
, dated December 10, 1965.

EDUCATORS BACK
VIETNAM POLICY

190 Professors Sign Petition—They Defend Debate

One hundred and ninety professors representing Harvard, Yale, and 15 other universities announced yesterday full support of the Administration’s Vietnam policy. …

The statement of the professors, while welcoming debate, expressed serious concern, however, about the tactics of a “small minority of the intellectual community” in opposing the Administration on Vietnam.

These tactics, they said, led to exaggerated estimates of their numbers and could cause Peking and Hanoi to underestimate seriously the extent of the American commitment, thereby prolonging the war.

The signers included Max Lerner, who is also a political columnist, of Brandeis; Morton H. Halperin and Henry A. Kissinger of Harvard; Harold Isaacs, Max Millikan, and Myron Weiner of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Bruce T. Dahlberg and Thomas C. Mendenhall of Smith College, and Gunter Lewy of the University of Massachusetts.

Exactly half of the signers are professors of government, history or the social sciences, and almost one quarter are political scientists.

Dr. Wesley Fishel, chairman of a 10-year-old organization known as the American Friends of Vietnam, which coordinated the petition project, contrasted the signers with those who have signed academic petitions opposed to Vietnam policy.

“Opponents of U.S. policy on the campuses,” he said, “are largely teachers in fields unrelated to political science, international relations and Southeast Asian affairs.

“The further one gets from the subject—Vietnam and U.S. foreign policy—the more opponents among campus teachers there seem to be. The reverse is equally true. Most of the teachers of government, foreign policy, and international affairs support U.S. policy or accept it as necessary.”

Dr. Fishel is a professor of political science at Michigan State University.

Letter in reply:

205 W. 57th St.

New York, N.Y.

December 10, 1965

The Editor

The New York Times

New York, N.Y.

Dear Sir:

Dr. Wesley Fishel’s statement (p. 16,
The Times,
Dec. 10) that “opponents of U.S. policy on the campus are largely teachers in fields unrelated to political science” and that “the further one gets from the subject—Vietnam and foreign policy—the more opponents on campus there seem to be”—is interesting on several scores. It attempts to suggest that political science is an exact expertise which can tell us what to do, rather than merely the
study
of politics—an intermediary and quite ordinary subject, which often stands on just as illusory ground as any other. By implication, the statement carries also that latent contempt for the humanities which pure scientists have long since deserted, plus the same contempt for these scientists. But most of all it reveals the true limitations of those who put themselves forward as the only “informed” men, and therefore the only competent judges of what the body politic must do.

Historically, political scientists have often been used as apologists for the status quo or military ambitions. It is less easy to name those conspicuously chosen to lead nations in peacetime—perhaps because men who have at their fingertips all the reasons for past wars, are by habit of mind that much closer toward proclaiming a particular war “reasonable.” On campus, a political scientist is merely a man with a doctorate, like the rest; except for his small ballast of scholarliness he is as much at sea in human affairs as any, no better than they at the “practical,” and hopefully no worse at the “ideal.”

The educators who have signed Dr. Fishel’s statement, though implying that their colleagues in the pure sciences and the humanities must not be taken seriously on matters outside their ken, very graciously award us the right to speak out without being called Communists. In Dr. Fishel’s capacity as chairman of the American Friends of Vietnam, one must award him the same—and imply the same. But beyond that, any educators who so suddenly separate themselves from the rights of their colleagues, who so impugn that medium of total knowledge or inquiry in which they have spent professional lives to date—are at once suspicionable. To give them the status they demand is like awarding the exclusive right to serious statement only to pure scientists because they are “purer” than other men, or to us of the humanities, because they are more “humane.”

Most shocking of all is to see how such a statement fails to recognize that to categorize whole groups of men as incompetent to judge, is only deviously different from stigmatizing them politically—the intent to muffle or nullify being the same. For these educators not to see their own pronunciamento as a classic one of all war periods, is to be far farther away from their own subject—from a sense of history—than any of us.

Sincerely,
Hortense Calisher