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The Journal of Arthur Stirling: "The Valley of the Shadow", a novel by Upton Sinclair |
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Part 2. Seeking A Publisher - October 3d. -- October 29th. |
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_ PART II. SEEKING A PUBLISHER October 3d. -- October 29th. Their month is up. I walked down there to-day and saw them. "The manuscript is now being read--we are awaiting a second report." A second! That made my heart go like mad. "Does that mean that the first is favorable?" I asked. "It means that we are interested in it," the man answered; "we will let you know shortly." Oh this waiting, this waiting! * * * * * October 8th. Ah, God! I came home from the Park tonight, and I saw something that made my heart go down like lead. It hurt me so that I cried out! My manuscript! It was back again! O Christ! How the sight of it hurt me! There was a letter with it, and my hand shook as I opened it: * * * * * "We are returning you the manuscript of The Captive by messenger herewith, regretting exceedingly that we can not make you a publishing offer upon it." * * * * * Is not this awful? Oh, it is terrible! It is beyond belief! A whole month gone, and only a note like that to show for it! Four weeks of yearning and hoping--of watching the mail in agony--of struggling and toiling to forget! And then a note like this! Oh, it drives me wild! I sat to-night in a chair motionless, forgetting that I was hungry, forgetting everything. I looked to the future; I had a feeling that I do not think I ever had in my life before--a horrible, black, yawning despair--a thing so fearful that it took my breath away. Suppose you were standing on a bridge over an abyss, and that suddenly it gave way, and in one dreadful instant you realized that you were going down--down like a flash--and that nothing could save you! * * * * * So it is to be this, so this is to be my life! I am to send this book to publisher after publisher, and have it come back like this! And meanwhile to spend my time alternating between this room--and the wholesale-paper business! * * * * * Yes, I am getting to see the truth! I am a helpless atom, struggling to survive--a glimmering light in the darkness--and I am going out! I am losing--and what shall I do! Who will save me--who will help me? * * * * * I was talking to a friend yesterday; he predicted just what happened. "Make one rule," he said, "expect nothing of the world. When you send out a manuscript, _know_ that it is coming back!--Otherwise you go mad." But I should go mad _that_ way. Why, what am I to do? How am I to work unless I can get free? I can not live a single day unless I have that hope. And if these blind creatures that make money out of books keep on sending my poem back--why, it will kill me--it will turn me into a fool! * * * * * October 9th. I did not go to bed last night until nearly daylight. I was desperate--I was crazy with perplexity. This thing had never occurred to me as the wildest possibility. I would pace the floor for hours; and then again sink into a stupor. "They send it back! They don't want it!"--I kept on muttering.--And, poor fool that I am, I had pictured to myself how they would read it. I saw the publisher himself glancing at a line of it by chance, and then rushing on. I saw him declaiming it with excited eyes--as I used to declaim it! Poor fool! * * * * * --Well, I made another desperate attempt. I wrote last night to another poet that I respect--(the list is not very long). I wrote in the heat of my despair--I told him the whole story. I said that I was crying for the judgment of some one who had love and enthusiasm; some one who had another idea than making money out of it. I told him that I knew he had many such requests, but that he never had one from a man who had worked as I had. I pleaded that he need only read a few lines--I begged him to let me hear from him at once. --And now I shall wait. I can't do anything else but wait! * * * * * October 10th. I tried to read a novel to-day, but I could not fix my attention--I could not do anything. * * * * * October 11th. "I answer your letter at once as you ask me to. In the first place let me assure you of my sympathy. You are at a stage at which all poets--or nearly all--have to pass. Do not let yourself be disheartened--keep at it--and if you work as you write you will come out the victor in the end. "As to my reading the book, you must believe what I tell you--that I am simply crowded. I have no time to explain, but I could not possibly do it now, nor can I tell you when I could. Go ahead and try the publishers--there are enough of them. And take my advice--do not go on clinging to that book--do not pin all your hope to that--go on--go on! Maybe it _is_ young and exaggerated--what of it? Go on!--Meanwhile your circumstances seem to you hard--but in future years when you look back at them you will see, as all men see, that it was in that struggle that you got your strength." * * * * * It is a lie! It is a lie! It is silly cant--it is brutal stupidity! What, you try to tell me that it is in contest with these degradations--these horrors--that I am to find my enthusiasm and my hope! Am I a dog that you must kick me to my task?--It is a lie, I say--it is a lie! * * * * * If you could not find time to read my work, very well; but you did not have to sugar the pill with silly platitudes such as those. "Go on, go on!" My God, what a mockery! Is it not to go on that I am panting day and night--is it not with the hunger to go on that I am mad?--You fool--do you think I wrote to you because I wanted some one to admire me--because I had the need of praise and encouragement in my work? Give me a year's freedom--give me two hundred dollars--and I'll show you how much I care for your praise. But then you chain me here to your torture stake, and bid me "Go on! Go on!" --And it is in that struggle that I am to get my strength! That sentence burns in my blood, it stings me! What is this struggle that you prate about, anyway? And what do you mean by "getting my strength?" Did I get my strength to write The Captive that day when those fishwives moved in next door to me? Did I get my strength to dream of my new work that day when I was chasing after an express-driver to save a quarter? Do I get it now when I am sitting here panting and ill with a headache, and with despair, and with lack of food? Damn such asininity, I say! What do you mean, I cry--what do you mean? Would it have helped Kant to solve the problems of the universe to have had a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing about his face? Would it have helped Beethoven to compose his symphonies to have had a dance hall over his head? What ghastly farce it is! That a poet is helped to realize his dreams and his joys in this hellish, reeking, market-place of a city! Why, I tell you, sir, that every hour that I have lived in it I have known that I have paid out unmeasured powers of my soul! And I know now, as every other poet knows, that when I am out of it I come with what pittance of strength I have been able to save from the horrible ordeal. Do you think that I am a fool that I do not know what inspires me and what degrades me? Why, sir, I sit here and watch my spirit wither like a frost-bitten plant! Such things bring tears of indignation into my eyes. * * * * * --As a matter of simple reference, if any one wants to know what I imagine helps a poet--it is to live in the woods, to think and to dream, to read books and hear music, to eat wholesome food--and, above all, to escape from hot asphalt streets, cable-car gongs, and flaring advertisements of soaps and cigars. * * * * * October 12th. I had an adventure to-day. I woke up with a headache, dull, sick, discouraged. I cared no more about anything. I got out The Captive and made ready to take it to the publishers. And then I thought I would read a little of it. I sat down in the corner--I forgot the publishers--I sat reading--reading--and my heart beat fast, and my hands shook, and all my soul rose in one hymn of joy! Oh world, do your worst, I do not care! You may turn me off--but the gates of heaven are open! I will go on--I will bear anything--bear all things! I will wait and live and learn meanwhile, knowing with all my soul what this book is and what it must bring. So long as I can read it, I can wake my soul again. * * * * * It is at the publishers'. I will read books meantime and be happy. I saw a manuscript clerk this time. She was very airy. I fear I am a sad-looking poet--my buttonholes are beginning to wear out. "We never read manuscripts out of turn," she said. "It will take them three or four weeks." * * * * * --Yes, good poet, that is my answer to you. I can not take your advice--I will cling to my book--I will pin all my hopes to it! I will toil and strive for it, I will haunt men with it, I will shout it from the housetops. No other book--no future book--_this_ book! It is a great book--a great book--it is--it _is_! * * * * * I am not ignorant of the price it costs to do that; it is my fate that I have to pay it. I can see, for instance, how Wordsworth paid it--Wordsworth, our greatest, our noblest poet since Milton. He had his sacred inspiration, and the world laughed at it; and so, grimly, systematically, he set to work to teach them--to say to all men--to say to himself--to say day and night--"It _is_ poetry! It is _great_ poetry! It is--_it is_!" And of course at last he made them believe him; and when they believed him, he--Wordsworth--was a matter-of-fact, self-centered, dull and poor old man. * * * * * --It all rests with you, good world! How long must I stand here and knock at the door? * * * * * October 18th. I am reading, reading--and trying to forget meanwhile! When I get through my long list of histories I shall go back to my Greek dramatists again. My Greek is getting better now--I expect to have a happy time with Aristophanes.--He is the funniest man that ever lived, Aristophanes. Then I am coming back to read the French novelists. There are many of them I do not know. (I do not expect to like them--I do not like Frenchmen.) * * * * * October 22d. I was glancing to-day over a volume of Shelley's, and the memory of old glories thrilled in me. Ah, let me not forget what Shelley was to me in my young struggling days! Let me not forget while I am wrestling with a dull world--let me not forget what a poet is to young men hungering for beauty! Let me not forget! Yes, it is to such that my appeal is, it is by such that I will be judged! It is for such that I toil! For hearts upon whom the cold world has not laid its hand! For the poets and the seekers of all ages! Oh come to me, poets and seekers of all ages--dwell in my memory and strengthen my soul! That I go not down altogether--that I be not overcome by the dull things about me! * * * * * These thoughts are not becoming to a reader of history. But I am not a good reader of history--the old beasts are still growling within me. Something starts a longing in me--I cry out that I am getting dull, that I am going down, that I am putting off--I, who never put off before! And so the old storms rise and the great waves come rolling again! * * * * * October 25th. I read that over just now. Yes, it is this that I dread. I dread the habit of not striving! When that becomes my habit it is my death! And here I sit, day by day--doing just the thing I dread! "Let me go _now_!" something shouts in me. "_Now_--or I shall never go at all!" Oh, if I could find some word to tell men the terror of that thought! --It is my life--that is what it is! To obey this thing within me, to save this thing within me, to _find_ this thing within me--that is my life! * * * * * It is a demon thing--it is a thing that has lifted me up by the hair of my head and shaken me--that has glared at me with the wild eyes of a beast--that has beaten me like a storm of wind and struck me down upon the ground! It shakes me now--it shakes me all the time--it makes me scream with pain--incoherently, frantically. "Oh save me!--Spare me!--Let me go!" * * * * * I rave, you say--yes, I know. That is because I can not say what I feel. But what matters it? * * * * * Sometimes I say to myself, "I put all that in The Captive, and men have not heard it! And now, what can I do that they _will_ hear--shall I have to go out in the streets and scream? Or what other desperate thing is there?" * * * * * --Mark this, oh you world that I can not make hear me! Some desperate thing I shall do--I will not sit here and be respectable always! --I wonder what locusts taste like, and just where one could find wild honey. * * * * * October 29th. I sang a song to-day--a mad, mad song! I wish I could bring it back. It came to me unexpectedly, while I was kneeling by the bed, thinking. I have forgotten it all now--one always forgets his best songs. I have not a line of this one, except the chorus: For I am lord of a thousand dollars! So it is that my best songs go. I can count them on my fingers. But I have not yet learned how precious they are--that is why I lose them. --Do you remember that time on the great cliffs by the ocean? There was nothing left but the ending again-- |
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