Here are my thoughts of what I raed in June:

Private Devotions/Preces Private by Lancelot Andrewes

Lancelot Andrewes was an incredibly influential Bishop and Scholar. He was one of the Caroline Divines. He was one of the leaders in the King James translation of the bible.

This book are his collection of prayers and devotions. They all heavily drawn on scripture, re-arranging thematically resonant scriptures. They also have very interesting enjambment and line breaks Reddit is not capable of rendering. Someone being so incredibly familar with scripture to where their mind can find these thematic and poetic associations, across hundreds of pages, is incredible.

one of my favorites:

>"Take away, o Lord, the veil of my heart, while I read the Scripture.
Blessed art Thou, O Lord; o teach me thy statutes:
give me a word, o Word of the Father:
touch my heart:
enlighten the understandings of my heart"

There is a essay by TS Eliot that was included in this version as a forward. The essay was both insightful to Lancelot, other prominent Anglican figures, and Eliot himself.

For example, where he writes:

>“It is an additional advantage that these sermons are all on the same subject, the Incarnation; they are the Christmas Day sermons preached before King James between 1605 and 1624. And in the sermons preached before King James, himself a theologian, Andrewes was not hampered as he sometimes was in addressing more popular audiences. His erudition had full play, and his erudition is essential to his originality.”

To me, this is very interesting . Its almost arrogant how this clearly is about Eliots feelings about his own writing , and it's reception into the public.

You see it again:

>“when the language of theology itself, under the influence of an undisciplined mysticism of popular philosophy, tends to become a language of tergiversation—Andrewes may seem pedantic and verbal. It is only when we have saturated ourselves in his prose, followed the movement of his thought, that we find his examination of words terminating in the ecstasy of assent. Andrewes takes a word and derives the world from it; squeezing and squeezing the word until it yields a full juice of meaning which we should never have supposed any word to possess. In this process the qualities which we have mentioned, of ordonnance and precision, are exercised.”

This sort of meta thing doesn't go away, but he does have some pretty interesting insights about Andrewes:

>“Andrewes’s emotion is purely contemplative; it is not personal, it is wholly evoked by the object of contemplation, to which it is adequate; his emotions wholly contained in and explained by its object.”

Further on he continues and contrasts Andrewes against John Donne:

>“his sermons, one feels, are a “means of self-expression.” He is constantly finding an object which shall be adequate to his feelings; Andrewes is wholly absorbed in the object and therefore responds with the adequate emotion. Andrewes has the gout pour la vie spirituelle, which is not native to Donne. On the other hand, it would be a great mistake to remember only that Donne was called to the priesthood by King James against his will, and that he accepted a benefice because he had no other way of making a living. Donne had a genuine taste both for theology and for religious emotion; but he belonged to that class of persons, of which there are always one or two examples in the modern world, who seek refuge in religion from the tumults of a strong emotional temperament which can find no complete satisfaction elsewhere.”

This part really jumped out to me because it both continues this dual conversation about writing but also becomes much more nakedly religious. It's such a sharp distinction that could easily be misconstrued. With more context about Eliots beliefs than I fully express here, it is clear he thought "no complete satisfaction elsewhere" was a pretty fundamental. That isn't unique to Donne, but what the world is like.

So then what is the distinction?

In my opinion, essentially, It seems Eliot values something so intimate with itself that, the reader, is pulled out of their subjectivity into it.  For him, if something isn't 'complete' it's a consequence of writers weaknesses.
Eliot famously criticized Hamlet for this exact logic:

>“...probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the "Mona Lisa" of literature"

and:

>“Hamlet, like the sonnets, is full of some stuff that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art. And when we search for this feeling we find it, as in the sonnets, very difficult to localize. You cannot' point to it in the speeches...

If you'd like to read more about this, you can here. The full text is linked in that page, also.

These are obviously pretty interesting and controversial remarks but with religion, this becomes much more an understandable distinction to draw, especially when the modern age he revolted against reveled in such ambiguities and passions.

Basically, if you regard Christianity as true, then how you organize yourself in regards to it becomes pretty important. Something being true doesn't really change our status as imperfect, flailing beings, though. But the balance between these things, its something really interesting to reflect on.

From the way he phrased it, it is easy to view Donne and Andrewes on opposite ends of some sort of emotional spectrum, but when you read Preces Private you see the majority of them are of a pretty 'tumultuous' register: 

>''Out of the deep my soul calleth unto Thee,
as a thirsty land unto Thee;
and all my bones
and all that is within me:
Lord, hear my voice"

__

>"There are many lurkingplaces in the mind and many nooks.
You must detect yourself or ever you amend yourself.
A sore unknown waxeth worse and worse and getteth past
cure.
The heart is deceitful above all things:
the heart is deep and full of windings:
the old man is covered up in a thousand wrappings.
Therefore take heed to thyself."

___

>"Prayer is colloquy with God."

__

>"Open Thou mine eyes
and I shall see:
incline my heart
and I shall fervently desire:
straighten my steps
and I shall walk in the way of thy commandments."

___

>"shameful falls,
often relapses,
daily wallowings"

What Donne cannot resolve is also something Andrewes struggled with. In some ways, it's more intense, as the failures are anticipated: even someone of this level of erudition and faith feels they are incapable of really staying unerringly on the path. It positions a world view where Donnes issues are not because of his individual personality, but what people fundamentally are, before whatever individuates them.

So again surely the distinction isn't chaotic emotional tumultuous individual personality and can be better expressed. I think what is really being expressed is deeper Lancelots immersion is. To read these prayers is to be brought into scripture. How he does not need his own words to express himself; how scripture anticipates every aspect of his turmoil, I think is something Eliot is very impressed by on artistic and theological levels (as am I). In terms of, for lack of better term, a role model, Anderewes represents a more appealing figure for Eliots temperament. More disciplined. He over extends that a bit, but its very insightful, his essay.

This sense of finding oneself anticipated by something meaningfully mysterious, with all that entails in terms of faith vs (in Eliots opinion) something ambiguous relating to your fleeting passions.

We see this sentiment expressed by Eliot in the poem Ash Wednesday:

>"Teach us to care and not care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks.
Our Peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

>And let my cry come unto Thee."

Thinking so much about this increased my understanding and feeling of intimacy with Andrewes, Eliot and Donne.

There are multiple translations of these devotions. Some are 'selections'. This would probably be best for most people. The structure of what Andrewes is doing is something that would be pretty overwhelming and perhaps redundant without familiarity with Book of Common Prayer and such practices.
The essay by TS Eliot referenced is often paired general anthologies of his prose writings.

___

Pierre by Herman Melville

One of the strongest quotes from it to me was:

>Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature. It speaks of the Reserved Forces of Fate. Silence is the only Voice of our God. Nor is this so august Silence confined to things simply touching or grand.
Like the air, Silence permeates all things...

This is a sentiment repeated throughout Melville. One of his best renderings of it.

Something that has struck me lately about Melville is he sits in an interesting spot in regards to how he handles this silence.

He doesn't really dwell so much contradictions of man in terms of like vice or such. Passionate stuff like that is generally absent from Melville. When you compare him to Dostoyevsky, who has so much to say about these exact things.
Additionally, Melville despite living through Great awakenings and clearly understanding the power of more Methodist and charismatic preaching (I'm thinking of Father Mapple from Moby Dick) doesn't really write about that moment of elevated spirituality. In general, he comes off as suspicious of that sort of thing. Direct, unmediated contact with God.
Yet, you get the idea that God's Silence is the absolute most significant thing to Melville, but what exactly would happen if there was some contact? What would change? How long would that change remain? What would it look like?

Additionally, Melvilles writings specifically revolve how things constantly change; he frequently questions if anything from the past can re emerge after said changes. Not so much as lionizing the past, but any desire to pull something from the past exposes some sort of fault in the present. He traveled quite a lot and saw many beautiful displays in nature, but doesn't really revere them are see them entirely as immations of God.

For instance, Here you can read on Melvilles impressions of the Pyramids.

So, when Melville writes "Silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature." I am really struck by the paradox of it. How essentially unresolvable this was for him because he's rejecting all other things except an answer. Whatever would satisfy him was not within himself, nature, or the structure of society.

There is a fundamental loneliness that is the issue, I think. That comes through very strongly reading:

>"... his very soul was forced to wear a mask..."

___

>"When the substance is gone, men to cling to the shadow."

___

>"Deep, deep, and still deep and deeper must we go, if we would find out the heart of a man descending into which is as descending a spiral stair in a shaft, without any end, and where that endlessness is only concealed by the spiralness of the stair, and the blackness of the shaft."

and:

>

>"I can not identify that thing which is called happiness; that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness; for I think I have a suspicion of what it is."

Experimenting with an Amen by RS Thomas

Part of why I love RS Thomas, is how he echoes this mindset of Melville and drills into. If the abscence is the prescence and Silence actually is God, what does this feel like? Because sounds it's quite a torturous thing.

Here, from the poem Questions:

>The priest lies down alone
face to face with the darkness
that is the nothing from which nothing
comes. ‘Love’ he protests, ‘love’
in spiritual copulation
with a non-body, hearing the echoes
dying away, languishing under the owl’s curse.

>What is a bed for? Is there no repose
in the small hours? No proofing of sleep’s
stuff against the fretting of stars, thoughts?
Tell me, then, after the night’s toil
of loving or praying, is there nothing
to do but to rise tired and be made
away with, yawning, into the day’s dream?

I tend to view RS Thomas through this sort of Melville logic. Here's someone who's made much more definitive efforts to be intimate with and sensitive to this Silence, but the result is quite similar. Fundamentally, he can't see darkness as meaningless. Additionally, if it were meaningless, it would not be liberating.

Another one:

>God, it is not your reflections
we seek,wonderful as they are
 in the live fibre; it is the possibility 
of your presence at the cone’s
 point towards which we soar 
in hope to arrive at the still
 centre, where love operates
 on all those frequencies
 that are set up by the spinning
 of two minds, the one on the other.

 I once read an interesting analysis about Thomas Hardys poetry by Delmore Schwartz. It also strongly appplies to RS Thomas and Melville:

>It is the belief and disbelief in Christ’s resurrection which not only make this poem possible, but make its details so moving. They are not only moving; the weary wain which plods forward heavily and the dead men in the graveyard are envisaged fully as particular things and yet become significant of the whole experience of suffering and evil just because the belief exists for Hardy and provides a light which makes these particular things symbols. Without the belief, it is only another rainy morning in March or April. In passing, it should be noted that both belief and disbelief are necessary; the belief is necessary to the disbelief. And both are responsible here as elsewhere for that quality of language..

This sort of belief is very essential to Melville and Thomas, I think.

You Don't Love Yourself by Nathalie Sarraute

This one is the hardest to talk about. Don't see any discussions about this online.

It's a long experimental piece on what happens after an unnamed person is told "You don't love yourself". The following 200 or so pages interrogate, reel from and process this.

Some of the stand out quotes from it:

>“But it must be delightful to love oneself... Is there any sort of love that is more reliable, more constant, comforting, than that.”

This one in particular really brought to mind Beckett. There is a section in Waiting for Godot very much of this mind. Sarraute and Beckett were friends. She gave refuge to him during WW2, even. The quote:

>“I think I shall get there, I shall rediscover that
sensation of Happiness, now, this moment, while I’m searching... I’m putting everything I’ve got into it... I’d give anything to experience it... I’m going to get it... I’ve got it... no, I haven’t got it... this isn’t it... not Happiness…”

What's also interesting,a natural consideration, hearing ““I love you’’ doesn't occur until half though the novel. Which is very fitting.

My favorite part was this:

>“But now we feel really wounded... the wound is
becoming deeper... enlarged... it hurts... Can’t we try to get another answer?
Why be content with that one?

>Perpetually menaced... We had to keep a constant
watch on it, keep it under surveillance... The thing that had always been there has disappeared, perhaps it’s been moved, no, it’s been removed, it’s been annihilated, and there, there’s a vacuum in its place now, but here, it’s cracked, it’s fissured, torn...
And we are cracked, fissured, torn... In an instant we have left all that, and how much
more than that—we could go on describing it for ever— we have left it behind us...
We’ve been dragged out of it, not proud of having
lived in it, rather ashamed of having been so softened, submissive, scared.”

I don't generally to say things are too long (in more than one context), but this went on a bit more than it needed to. I first started reading this after quite a challenging break up, so it was incredibly resonant. But even disposed to the subject matter and writer I got a bit exhausted toward the end. That isn't to say it actually dips in quality. For example, that last block is near the end. It is just somewhat tiring. If i'm not mistaken, this is her third longest novel. I do very much recommend it. Pretty unique experience. I would recommend reading it faster than I did. Maybe, as fast as you can, so it washes over more.

The Falcon and The Foe by AJ Truman

Not as much to say. I enjoyed it. Who doesn't like having sex in the woods? Especially hot bears. Hell yeah. This is my second book by this author. I like the cover.

David R. Slavitt was a writer, poet and translator. I am big fan of his translations, they tend to have a pretty strong energy to them.

Most relevant to this post, he has translated the Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, a collection of "minor prophets" in "The Book of the Twelve Prophets and also "Sixty-One Psalms of David", which is where the below quotes will be drawn from.

To learn more of Slavitt, here is an obituary from the New York Times.

Being that today is Pentecost Sunday, I thought it would be nice to share some of these. Again, Slavitt's translations are very warm and striking. They aren't always one-to-one translations. Moreso flourishes, inspirations. Strongly recommended for interested in reading literary translations of scripture.

6

>In righteous anger, Lord, do not
chastise me, but be gracious to
a man in torment. What I've got
is pain that goes from the bone right through
to the soul. You are my only cure.
How long, O Lord, can I endure?

>Deliver me, dear Lord, and save
my life not for my sake but Yours.
There is only silence in the grave:
no chorus of praise and gratitude pours
from the house of the dead. All night I weep
in woe and longing, never sleep,
but toss and turn while my tears soak
my pillow sodden. My eyes are red . . .
But my complaint may yet provoke
the Lords attention, so those who'd shed
my blood may learn to fear His name
and turn away their heads in shame.

39

>I will behave myself and watch
my tongue, whenever I am in
the presence of some evil wretch,
lest it betray me into sin.

>Let me not wish him ill, let me
keep quiet, even though I see
him thrive and prosper. Let me not
compare what he and I have got.
My heart's banked embers smoulder, then
will blaze up on occasion. When
this happens I turn to God to seek
His help. I feel abandoned, weak, afraid.
And then I pray: "Lord, you
have given me an inch or two,
but tell me how long is my span,
or rather how short. What is a man?
No more than a puff of wind? And is
the wealth and power he thinks is his
a shadow merely? Will a gust
of the breeze disperse it like all dust?
My hope — what hope I have, O Lord
must be in You, and I turn toward
my God for protection. Idiots, knaves,
insult me. I am mute. God saves
me anyway, forgives my many
faults He has corrected, when He
acted as strict parents should
who'd make their children wise and good.
Jehovah, hear the fervent prayer
of a nomad in dry desert air.
Over the endless lifeless dunes
my voice resounds in plaintive tunes
my father's fathers sang. We're here
for only a moment. Lord, give ear

51

>Mercy, Lord, have mercy! Show
how great Your love can be. My sin
forgive, and again forgive, although
transgression is what I wallow in.
Against Your laws and You, I have
offended mightily. You are right
to turn away from me, but save
one who adores Your name, despite
my failings and corruption. I,
conceived in sin and thus brought forth,
dream nonetheless of purity.
Remind me of my spirits worth.
Purge me with hyssop, and asperse
my soul to the whiteness of new snow
and hear as blessings every curse
I've uttered. Iniquitous, I know,
I'm not yet irredeemable. Make
me clean, revive my hopes, uphold
me for Your greater glory's sake.
My transformation may be told
among transgressors, who will turn
to You, as I did. I shall sing
Your praise. The flesh of sheep may burn,
but better by far is the offering
of a broken spirit, healed and restored
to what it always should have been,
obedient to Your holy word
contrite, and cleansed of every sin.

>Likewise, repair Mount Zion, too;
rebuild once more Jerusalem.
What You have done for me, then do
for Abraham s children — all of them.

63

>O God, you are my God! My whole
being longs for You. My soul
thirsts, and my flesh faints in yearning.
I am in a desert, dry and burning,
and in the distance, see a shimmer . . .
Mirage? Oasis? It is a glimmer
of what Your love is like. Sunstruck,
I stand erect to bless my luck.
In prayer I shall raise my outstretched hands
to praise Your name to the endless sands.

>My soul reclines at a banquet table,
happy and sated, where I am able
to thank and bless You with my dry
and cracked lips. Or else I stretch out late,
as if in bed to meditate
how in the darkness You will keep
watch and protect me as I sleep.

>My lids grow heavy and close, but I
continue, in dreams, to magnify
and sanctify my God. But those
who look to hurt me, or suppose
I am defenseless, let them be brought
abruptly low, as You know they ought.
Let them become the jackals' prey.
Stop up their lying mouths, I say
who shall testify to the endless glory
of God and recite His splendid story.

77

>My cries of pain disturb the gloom
of night: I stretch forth an upturned palm
to a pitying God who I assume
attends not only to prayer and psalm

>but inarticulate whimper and groan
or to those with sufferings so acute
that they are altogether mute,
desperate, beleaguered, bereft, and alone.

>Long ago, in happier days,
I lived in the Lord and with Him, but He
has averted His unblinking gaze
and forgotten what He promised me.

>It cannot be, and yet it is
precisely so: His river of
compassion has run dry; in His
wrath He now withholds His love.

>I will turn my thoughts to bygone days
to His holy works of word and deed,
and perseverate my songs of praise
for having, in our times of need,

>redeemed the sons of Jacob. Wave
upon wave breaks on the shore. The wind
howls. The thunder crashes. Save
your people, God, though we have sinned.

>Calm the gales and bid the sea
subside and part for us again.
Moses and Aaron's desperate men
and women You saved. O God, save me.

88

>O Lord, I call on You by day
and through the night. Hear what I say.
Let my groans and prayers arise
to You. Give ear to one who dies,
feeling his end upon him. It
is giddy here at the yawning pit.
My knees are weak; all strength is gone,
like corpses they heap dirt upon
and leave to moulder in their graves.
Your anger overwhelms me. Waves
break over me: I cannot draw
a breath. I founder, pitch, and yaw.
My friends desert me as I waste
away — they cant conceal distaste
and have exhausted pity. I
call out to You, my God. I cry
in fear and desperation. Do
the shades of the dead still pray to You?

>Do breathless voices whisper out
of Sheol and Abaddon devout
blessings upon Your name? Do they
remember language and how to pray?
All night, like a small child, IVe cried
to You in need, and yet You hide,
as if my helplessness and fear
were somehow pleasing to Your ear.
I lie in darkness and feel my life
ebbing away, as children, wife,
and friends near me dissolve — as I
shall do, when, presently, I die.

144

>I bless the Lord who is my rock,
who hardens me and trains me for
the ordeal I must face, the shock
of combat in the coming war.
He is my protecting shield
and ally on the battlefield.
What is a man, O Lord, that You
look down on? He is like a breath;
his days are the fleeting shadows You
scarcely notice before his death.
Nevertheless, the heavens take
account of us, for Your name's sake.

>You touch the mountain top with fire.
Lightning and thunder roll through the skies
for men to fear, if they cannot admire.
Save me from unbelievers' lies.
me, O God, and with Your hand
keep me from drowning. Bring me to land

>and I will sing a new paean
in praise of You.
My harp will ring to celebrate Your triumphs. On
deliverance and reckoning
I shall endeavor to rhapsodize.
Those who do evil and utter lies

>will gnash their teeth to hear me. You
will bless us with prosperity:
our sons will thrive and daughters, too;
our herds and flocks will multiply.
With glistening eyes, we shall turn towards
Your heaven, rejoicing to be the Lord's.

150

>Hallelujah! Praise God, you
in His earthly temple. Angels, too,
in their heavenly congregation, praise
His might and the justice of His ways.
Praise Him for what he does and is.
Praise with the trumpets' fanfares His
magnificence. With harp and lyre
praise! In your song and dance, admire
and praise! With cymbal and snare drum,
with every twangle, flourish and thrum,
praise Him. And let each living thing
praise Him with every breath and sing:
Hallelujah!

The Journal begins in the late 40's and ends in the early 80's. The quality of writing within is very high. Like, approaching the level of writers primarily known for this style such as Annie Ernaux, Michel Leiris and Witold Gombrowicz. Considering that these Journals were first published in 1991, it's surprising that within this span they haven't formed a higher reputation, something to be read even without an interest in Cheevers novels/short stories. Similar to how Kafka's Diaries are treated.

In addition to his sexuality, depression, family, the world as it changes around him, and such things, Cheever has quite a few passages commenting on his own writing and others. In general, he is quite negative about his own writing, but pretty aware of the strengths of contemporaries and influences, along with the wider context of their style or notoriety in general. Here are some of the most interesting comments:

Katherine Anne Porter

>So here is the day. What do you make of it? A brilliant morning, the light dealt out over the mountainous banks of the river. Cool. As I eat breakfast on the porch, my coffee smokes, the china cup is cold to touch. Last night I read Katherine Anne. How well she catches the essence of herself, the wit, the didactic style, the attractions of elegance. She fastens her slippers, shakes out the folds of her silvery dress, and fastens the belt as she goes out on a note of asperity and command. It is highly feminine, but a solid style. In some of the emotional scenes she strikes with exceptional accuracy that balance between the ritard of observation and the flow of feeling.

Truman Capote

>Lunch at the Plaza. Truman Capote is in the men’s bar. His bangs are dyed yellow, his voice is girlish, his laughter is baritone, and he seems to be a conspicuous male cocotte. This must take some doing, but on the other hand it must be a very limited way of moving through life. He seems to excite more curiosity than intolerance. Almost everyone these days drinks a special brand of gin— Beefeater, House of Lords, Lamplighter—and vodka. I hear the orders come over the bar. The bartender calls to a handsome Italian waiter and they disappear into a broom closet, to straighten out their racetrack bets, I hope. But to someone familiar with a rigorous and a simple way of life these scenes might seem decadent and final, like those lavish and vulgar death throes of the Roman Empire that we see in the movies.

Jack Kerouac

>My first feelings about the Kerouac book were: that it was not good; that most of its accents or effects were derived from some of the real explorers, like Saul; and that the apocalyptic imagery was not good enough—was never lighted by true talent, or deep feeling, vision. It pleased me to catch him at a disadvantage, to sum up the facts, which could reflect on my lack of innocence. Here is a man of thirty who lives with his hard-working mother, cooks supper for her when she gets home from the store, has a shabby affair with a poor Negress—who knows so little about herself that she is easy prey— wrestles, very suspiciously, with his pals, weeps in a train yard where his mother’s image appears to him, discovers that he is deceived, and writes a book. The style has the advantages, to make a rough comparison, of abstract painting. When we give up lucidity we have, from time to time, the power of broader associations. Life is chaotic, and so we can state this in chaotic terms. In trying to catch him at a disadvantage, I find him vulgar, meaning perhaps unsophisticated—his sexual identity, his prowess, is not much. He is a writer and wants to be a famous writer, a rich writer, and a successful writer, but the question of excellence never seems to cross his mind. The question of the greatest depth of feeling, of speaking with the greatest urgency. My life is very different from what he describes. There is almost no point where our emotions and affairs correspond. I am most deeply and continuously involved in the love of my wife and my children. It is my passion to present to my children the opportunity of life. That this love, this passion, has not reformed my nature is well known. But there is some wonderful seriousness to the business of living, and one is not exempted by being a poet. You have to take some precautions with your health. You have to manage your money intelligently and respect your emotional obligations. There is another world—I see this—there is chaos, and we are suspended above it by a thread. But the thread holds. People who seek, who are driven to seek, love in urinals, do not deserve the best of our attention. They will be forgiven, and, anyhow, sometimes they are not seeking love; they are seeking a means to express their hatred and suspicion of the world. Sometimes.

Ernest Hemingway

>The dog days go on. I read the Hemingway book. This arouses those mixed feelings we endure when some intact part of adolescence clashes with the men we have become. When I was a young man, my absorption in his work was complete. I imitated his person and his style. He writes with the galvanic distortion that gives the illusion of a particular vision; that is, he breaks and reforms the habitual rhythms of introspection. I think I think his remarks about Scott’s cock are in bad taste, as may be the quarrel between Stein and her friend. I am for some reason embarrassed by his references to walking home on the dry snow and making love.

____

>Hemingway shot himself yesterday morning. There was a great man. I remember walking down a street in Boston after reading a book of his, and finding the color of the sky, the faces of strangers, and the smells of the city heightened and dramatized. The most important thing he did for me was to legitimatize manly courage, a quality that I had heard, until I came on his work, extolled by Scoutmasters and others who made it seem a fraud. He put down an immense vision of love and friendship, swallows and the sound of rain. There was never, in my time, anyone to compare with him.

____

>A story by Hemingway, most of which involves a young man’s four-hour fight with a thousand-pound broadbill. Just as they try to gaff the catch the line breaks. There is courage, endurance, and blood, and the young man’s character is formed in the rigors of the contest. There is the old four-stress cadence—“We lived that year in a house on a hill”—sometimes beautiful and sometimes monotonous. I remain mystified by his suicide.

Vladimir Nabokov

>I open Nabokov and am charmed by this spectrum of ambiguities, this marvellous atmosphere of untruth; and I am interested in his methods and find them very sympathetic, but his imagery—the shadow of a magician against a shimmery curtain, and all those sugared violets—is not mine. The house I was raised in had its charms, but my father hung his underwear from a nail he had driven into the back of the bathroom door, and while I know something about the Riviera I am not a Russian aristocrat polished in Paris. My prose style will always be to a degree matter-of-fact.

Norman Mailer

>Very pleased and excited by Mailer’s book “The Naked and the Dead.” Impressed particularly with its size. Despaired, while reading it, of my own confined talents. I seem, with my autumn roses and my winter twilights, not to be in the big league. Particularly impressed with his description of one man, an Italian, watching Red, an old soldier, and thinking first, This man is comical; then, This man is brave and knowing; then that this man is stupid, reflecting perfectly, clearly a responsive and immature spirit.

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>Read “The Deer Park” and tossed it into the fire. Much better than most of what I’ve been reading, although I think he imitates Saul or I imitate Saul or he imitates me. I have written first-person slang long before “Augie March” appeared and I’m not sure who began it but there has been enough of this carefree fellow. Of the principal character Elena, I know only that she is sloppy and depraved. This is not enough. I don’t necessarily hold with my kind of old-fashioned fiction, but if you throw it out you have to pick up something else. The candor does not concern me, but I sometimes wonder where he stands—as a participant or as a voyeur. There is this danger. The climactic writing seems to me not eloquent enough. But he seems to me an estimable man.

Saul Bellow

>Dec. 5th. Partly at my wife’s suggestion I’ve given the Saul Bellow novel a thorough reading. Here is the blend of French and Russian that I like, the cockroach and the peeling wallpaper described with precision and loathing. The principal force of the work I think is poetic. Some of it (“I stand upon bones,” etc.) is bad poetry. I think some of it is very good. I have always been pleased with light and I am always pleased with descriptions of it. Through the desperate choices of my own unhappy mind I have developed, and struggled to discard, a detailed method, but I find Bellow’s detail impressive. It comes back to trying to find justification for the sentiment, carnality, and melodrama in my own work.

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>Every time I read a review of Saul Bellow I get the heaves. Oh this big, wild, rowdy country, full of whores and prizefighters, and here I am stuck with an old river in the twilight and the deterioration of the middle-aged businessman.

Philip Roth

>I have a drink, go to meet Philip Roth at the station with the two dogs on leads. He is unmistakable, and I give him an Army whoop from the top of the stairs. Young, supple, gifted, intelligent, he has the young man’s air of regarding most things as if they generated an intolerable heat. I don’t mean fastidiousness, but he holds his head back from his plate of roast beef as if it were a conflagration. He is divorced from a girl I thought delectable. “She won’t even give me back my ice skates.” The conversation hews to a sexual line—cock and balls, Genet, Rechy—but he speaks, I think, with grace, subtlety, wit.

___

>I read Roth’s continued accounts of jacking off in Jersey and elsewhere, and there is something intensely interesting about the three-finger squeeze, the full-fisted yank, the four-hundred-stroke orgasm, etc. His accounts of his youth are a universe apart from my limpid record of an artistic aunt and a cousin who played Beethoven. My parents were not Jewish, and our house was large and well appointed. In self-defense, and there is much of that in my thinking, I observe how my curiosity leaps, but that my best interest soon lags. F., sitting in the front row of a vaudeville show, noticed that the man beside him was yanking his prick. F. asked politely what he was doing, and the man explained that if you pulled it long enough white stuff squirted out of the end, and you had a wonderful feeling. F. went home and gave it a try and told me about it at school. Lying in bed that night I jacked off while listening to a philosophical radio commentator. The orgasm was racking; my remorse was crushing. I felt that I had betrayed the fatherly voice on the radio. F. and I used to pull one another off in theatres, rub one another off in the golf club shower. One rainy day at camp when the administration had broken down and we had nothing to do we all doubled up in bed. I first got an Irishman named Burke with a big prick and a very fatherly embrace. Then I switched over to F. for the second trip, but when we had come we dressed and, standing in the rain outside the tent, decided to swear off jerking off. I don’t remember how long this resolve lasted, but my jacking off was mostly a genuine extension of love. Roth is always alone, and there is never any question in his mind about his maleness, although he does say that he missed being a faggot by luck. So I come back to the bitter mystery, bitter and legitimate. I claim to enjoy some invincible maleness, and if I am mistaken I will stick to my claim. But I am frightened of colorlessness, the thought of being a homosexual terrifies me, and I am frightened and ashamed to recall that G. sucked me off, that P. doesn’t want to marry and have sons and a home, and I flatly deny that mine was a guise of sexual cowardice—that I didn’t have the courage to pit my homosexual instinct against the censure of the world. I didn’t find the world that contemptible.

Great Performance by Harold Pinter. In a play about the regret and loneliness of an older man, Pinters voice and presence ads quite a lot of to the performance. He would die a year later, at 78 years old.

A part that stands out to me:

>The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness round me I feel less alone. In a way.I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to ... me. Krapp.
The grain, now what I wonder do I mean by that, I mean . . . I suppose I mean those things worth having when all the dust has-when all my dust has settled.
I close my eyes and try and imagine them.
Extraordinary silence this evening, I strain my ears and do not hear a sound. Old Miss McGlome always sings at this hour. But not tonight. Songs of her girlhood , she says. Hard to think of her as a girl. Wonderful woman though. Connaught, I fancy. Shall I sing when I am her age, if I ever am? No. Did I sing as a boy? No. Did I ever sing? No.

Also this part:

>My face in her breasts. and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited. Here I end [KRAPP switches off, winds tape back, switches on again. ] -upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed . Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes. I asked her to look at me and after a few moments--after a few moments she did , but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. Let me in. We drifted in among the flags and stuck . The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved , and moved us, gently, up and down , and from side to side. Past midnight. Never knew-