Rousset: L’Univers concentrationnaire (1946) by French political activist David Rousset (1912–97) is about the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where he was imprisoned. It was published in English translation as A World Apart in 1951.
To Ida Williams Way
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
18 February 1948
dear Granga.
Many thanks for the Keystone View offer. I have been sitting over 3pm breakfast (I worked until 7 this morning) trying to think it out clearly. But first let me give you an idea of my present circumstances. I am, you know, spending all of my free time working on this novel; some times it looks good to me—as though it deserves all my time—and some times quite worthless. So clearly I am in no position to judge, and the only thing to do is to continue to work on it. Except for the fact that I lead a compleatly lonely life here, this life isn’t too conducive to writing and clear thinking. Living in a large building where I can’t use my typewriter because of other men resting &c. is one thing; then the Canal Zone, which is a sterile American monstrosity; and the job, which takes a good deal out of me. I am hoping now to hang on for about 8 more weeks, until early in April. And since I am living very close to the wall, spending as little as possible, by then I should have around 500$ put by, enough to travel down here, settle somewhere for a little while and write unhindered. Plan to be back in N.Y. around the middle of June.
Do you think it would be worthwhile? the photographing? And would it cost me, to get around here and take pictures? When I leave I’m going up into the interior—toward the Costa Rica border (and probably on to Costa Rica) to see what this jungle country really looks like. Certainly an opportunity for photography. But you will understand, I shan’t have the money to spend traveling for that—for taking the pictures I mean. You see, I have a pretty vague picture of the set-up. It is awful to be this way, to have both time and money mean so much. But that’s the corner I’m in. Also I must mention, no cameras allowed on the canal, if they should want some pictures here. Anyhow, if I had some better idea of how extensive a tour they wanted, and who would foot the bill, and what sort of remuneration, &c. And if, after all of this whining, it sounds feasible, you might let me know.
I wrote Uncle Oscar, and enclosed a picture card which may please him—and am half expecting, any day, to get an undecipherable answer.
And news from New York is good, although I am just as glad to be here for this winter.
Thanks for your letters—and the Valentine—and now I must get back down to business.
Love,
W.
Keystone View: a Pennsylvania company that produced stereoscopic images.
Uncle Oscar: Oscar Rhodes (1862–19??). The protagonist of A Frolic of His Own is named Oscar.
To Charles Socarides
[A Harvard friend; see note to letter of late February 1943. This is the earliest letter to explain the essential idea and plot of R.]
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[February or March 1948]
dear Charles.
First—please don’t be alarmed by the weight of a correspondence which I may seem to be thrusting on you. But when you write a letter like this that I have just received, honestly I go quite off my head with excitement. Am fearfully nervous now.
All because I have been away for 3 days, on a neighboring island, working frantically on this novel. Which looks so bad. But here: you see, what you say in these letters—most specifically this last—upset me because the pictures you draw, the facts you offer, are just as this novel is growing. It is a good novel, terrific, the whole thread of the story, the happenings, the franticness. The man who (metaphorically) sells himself to the devil, the young man hunting so for father figure, chasing the older to his (younger’s) death. And the “girl”—who finally compleatly loses her identity, she who has tried to make an original myth is lost because her last witness (a fellow who takes heroin) is sent to jail—the young man (‘hero’) the informer. Here the frantic point: that it all happened. Not really, maybe, but with the facts in recent life and my running, it happened. All the time, every minute the thing grows in me, I “think of” (or remember) new facts of the novel—the Truth About the Past (alternate title). (The title is Ducdame, called ‘some people who were naked’). But this growing fiction fits so insanely well with facts of life that sometimes I can not stand it, must burst (as I am doing here). And then I ruin it by bad writing. Like trying to be clever—this perhaps because I am afraid to be sincere? But I watch myself ruin it. And then—because when I was writing in college I went so over board, now it must be reserved, understated, intimated. Or bad bits of writing just run on. Look: “There are few instances when we are not trying to control time; either frantically urging it on, or fearfully watching its winged chariot ragging by, spattering us with the mud that we call memory.” Isn’t that awful. You see, it just happened, was out of my control until the sentence reached the period. To be facile can kill what must be alive.
That’s why I hated Wolfe—that he cried out so. Because my point is, no crying out, no pity. We are alone, naked—and nakedness must choose between vulgarity and reason. Every one of us, responsible. Still those lines you quote (Wolfe) excite me horribly. Not to have Forster’s understatement. No room for Lawrence’s lust. Perhaps Flaubert, or Gide. But I am not good enough as they. It is sickening this killing the best-loved—work.
Now I should like to see you, if you could look at this thing, flatly condense (parts of) it—the writing, exposition. God I know all this fear, but have no sympathy with it. Fools. I can not afford to be one.
As though your letter anticipated what I am just putting down as fiction.
I can’t come home before June. Because of money. Always that. After June I can live on Long Island, not before summer though, you see? Must work on this goddamned canal until April, hope to save around 600$, enough to live on until June and get home. I hate it, paid 12$ a day—or night—to waste. Now it is 10:15pm—and I must be at the canal at 11, “work” until 7am. But I have to because of money. Perhaps good I don’t have money, crazy in love with the daughter of this local island’s governor—not Mex, Panamanian, but Spanish. Splendid nose. Good Werther love, doesn’t trouble her. It is hell not to have either the time nor the money to live.
Then there is a man here with a sail boat going to Sweden. And if the novel suddenly looks too bad I may go, he needs someone to work, a very small boat, sail boat.
God the running, running. You understand it, don’t you? I almost do. But if I can’t make a good novel then I must keep running, until I know all through me—not just as a philosophical fact, as truth which I “believe” and am trying to sell—but can sit down and know without having to try to sell it (writing) to everybody.
Thanks. I shall write you.
W.
