7:10 PM Sat 2 Dec 72
Bruce touchingly excited about going to a party to meet local people so I am trying to get myself in the mood, but I am in a bad temper from trying to read an awful book by a man named Wight called The Open Door. Three generations of Pennsylvania family’s contact with the supernatural! But when the Hindu, the Persian and the Indian “spirit guides” show up, I’m outta here. Doubleday doesn’t want my gothic. They have a “cheat sheet” about everything that should be in it – dull, dull, dull. I have to admit, I hate these people’s taste. Wonder how I can change it. Bruce says if I would just get “high” I wouldn’t care. Am I going to go all “Puritan” on him tonight? Probably. I’m trying to get MORE, not LESS “me”! But I do feel shaken. One editor returned Don’t Bring Me Down and asked for something more “experimental”. I gamely sent her A Hot Day A Thousand Years Ago but she returned it, wondering why it had to be in the first person. I can scissor up my stuff or I can try to explain better what I’m driving at. I like that last option. Another editor liked Monopoly, but still wouldn’t publish it. (And they wouldn’t have paid me anything if they HAD taken it!!!) So obviously stories are hopeless. Back to the novel. Maybe if I put in enough sex….I’ll be interested to hear what Dad’s friend thinks. 7:05 PM Sun 17 Dec 72 Party as ghastly as I feared. Met a woman with a basement of Mrs. Butterworth bottles (because they’re going to be worth something someday) and a fellow writer who writes the most depressing little “housewife” poems and wants to start a club. Everyone aghast that I’m “all the way out there by myself” when Bruce is away. Tried talking me into signing up to be a substitute teacher. You don’t even need to have graduated from college; all you need is a lung x-ray! Bruce backs them up, the traitor. He says I need real life for my writing and money wouldn’t be bad either. We were arguing about it when a teenage boy pounded on our car hood, insisting on a ride to the hospital “stat” where he can get some Thorazine. (We obliged.) See? Real life. Right there. Bruce gave me such a depressing birthday present I am not looking forward to Christmas. It was an album of the photos he had taken in Vietnam. I knew I had to lie about this one so I praised him to the skies. He thinks he has a third career ahead of him as a rock and roll photojournalist! Then we make love, he comes and falls asleep, I lie there in the dark. Thinking. Fortunately I gave MYSELF a birthday present – Quentin Bell’s Virginia Woolf which I read in 2 days. I wish it had lasted all year. I was so moved. Tried to explain to Bruce that the mysticism of art is my religion. The dead live, and immortality is all around us. He gives me that “Let’s get you some Thorazine” look. I am obsessed with the notion that VW’s fear of critics led her to over-revise. Her descriptions of the ideas and first drafts sound so much more interesting than the “finished” work. I think she tried to eliminate specifics- to “bland it out” – generalize - the exact opposite of the way you should go – to give critics no purchase. So a lot of her “modernistic” affect is actually fear. She’s wonderfully specific and free in her own criticism. She didn’t want to seem to come to any artistic conclusions – but to obfuscate. Hide herself. I am sympathetic. Don’t know if I have any courage, either. Dad’s friend said my novel should be more like They Shoot Horses Don’t They? Which is just bizarre. Nevertheless, as a favor to my father, he would be willing to sign me to a two year contract. Writer’s Mkt says this isn’t “done”. Still, he has lots of ideas and I’d be willing to meet with him and see what I think, after the holidays. (He lives in Philadelphia and is “retired” - two bad signs right there.) I want to go to Pewter Hill for Christmas but Bud & Honor want to come up here and see the house, in spite of ten-foot snowdrifts and thirty below weather. Family! Bud will bring a garbage bag full of dope and Honor the Interior Decorator is certain to love what I’d done with the place! What could possibly go wrong? The hottest love has the coldest end, says Socrates. I finally get a Bruce poem. TOO LATE IN THE YEAR The mind is double-edged as well as double-eyed She thinks; she stands outside to watch him Sightlessly within; Covering sheets with runes, with Receipts writ by someone else; Plagiarizing loveletters Making a private snow of invisibility; his Sexual ivy casts hawkswing shadows on his bloodhound cheeks; conceals A smile too cautious; Too familiar; In season and out; Nurtured like his scars Deepening into drama. Save him, save him voices cry but I know better; it’s too late for that Too late in the year. Thurs. June 6, 1974 – Racetowne, MD Sitting in the living room, candles lit, carpet vacuumed, waiting for Avril whose visit I desperately need. Troubles with Bruce, as usual. Finished the novel – 359 pages – the love scene which I thought would be easy was hard and the ending which I thought would be had was easy. So many people have questioned my ending I was prepared to find it peculiar myself – strained, effete? But I like it. The childbirth image seems important to me – like lovemaking. So much emotionally was riding on this before going to the island. Thinking of my writing teacher who said, “You are going to be one of the biggies.” Is $15,000 too much to ask? Nobody seems affluent anymore. If Grove doesn’t accept my book I need to get rid of my agent. So desperate for entertainment B and I went to see the Midnight Man in Bel Aire. When I came out of that movie the scent of new mown grass was in the air and miraculously I suddenly felt 17 years old again – like I absolutely have a second chance. How is it everybody isn’t constantly falling to their knees with gratitude and amazement? Any novel is a pale reflection f that eternal joy. I no longer think it’s all my fault for failing to recognize B’s true personality. It’s his fault also. How dumb I was! When I saw him using that “I’m not really here” defense on everybody else didn’t I realize it would INEVITABLY be used against me? If he’s “NOT” really here he should be gone is my present conclusion. He thinks falling into ham radio will save him. I feel most bitter that he can’t even try. Marriage ruined our friendship.
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Alysse Aallyn
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