The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online

listeth…. We fall in love, we fall out of love: the experience of “love” overtakes us, conquers us, and occasionally (though not always) drifts away. It can’t be retained, called back. It may come back of its own accord—but it cannot be called back, certainly not forced back. Emphasis upon the will, upon the activities of the ego, is misplaced in things of the spirit, though probably relevant in life. I don’t “believe” in my own “beliefs”—does anyone?
     
    November 15, 1974. Lunch at a local pub-restaurant with R. and friends—members of the department—following a departmental meeting. Ungodly boredom of the meeting—yet fascinating, that others should be so absorbed, so vitally connected. Thirty or more intelligent men and women—seated in a windowless room—fluorescent lighting—curriculum report dutifully presented—one’s mind tempted to wander,to flee—and yet the presence of others (seated beside my friend C.) argues that one could take these things seriously . But—at what price?
     
    Do I differ from my colleagues at all? But how? In degree? In kind? Am I simply more scrupulous, or less?
     
    Jammed together at lunch. Not a drinker, nevertheless I experience a distinct alteration of consciousness in the presence of others—socially, but even in the classroom or seminar—a heightening, livening, intensifying sensation—a kind of euphoria. (Would the drinkers attain the same heights, without drinking? But they never make the experiment.) The process is deceptive: one feels oneself fulfilled, with these shreds and bits of other people, but at the same time one is being drained.
     
    The temptations of the world: to go on forever out there .
     
    Recognition of excellence in a young student—twenty-three-year-old from the East—pleasure, awe, some little envy for his material (ah, what I could do with it!—but it isn’t mine). For some writers, mere existence—survival—will assure them success of a kind. They are born writers, they cannot miss. For others, “success” must be forced—each story or poem or novel worked at—worried and teased into being—for they sense, quite correctly, that they have no natural destiny, they will have to create it…. Joy certainly belongs to the former; they have merely to live their art. The latter—? Joy may be forced, perhaps. I wouldn’t know.
     
    In offering all of oneself, one of course disappears. The perfect disguise: transparency. In clumsier terms, promiscuity of a physical sort allows anonymity, refuge, a possible sanctity. But it is undiscriminating: therefore unintelligent. One chooses, chooses constantly, one is always choosing, one cannot not choose, for the pose of helplessness, of inertia, is also a choice. My “choice” is the transparency of an “I” predictable in the social context in which it is found—therefore disguised, camouflaged against the landscape. People call this “the personality”—but of course it is a form of behavior, conscious in some, in others unconscious. Most people indulge in apotropaic ritual-behavior: this, they call socializing. And imagineit is only a habit, a way of passing time—when in fact it is time itself. Nor are we generally out of it.
     
    Returned from the University in the late afternoon, exhausted. Already it is winter—the roses in our back garden covered with snow—everything harsh, dripping, unfamiliar. Only mid-November…. To fight fatigue, went to work on my novel at once: but little progress. The narrator, who must die, does not want to die—keeps talking, dancing about, begging for life—but who will win? But I have already won. I have won innumerable times. The struggle should get easier, but in fact it gets more difficult: my characters too have grown, are more sophisticated, more cunning and inventive. They do not always want to be folded into an art-work, into a tapestry. They want their individual lives. And yet—without the tapestry to present them, to