The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates by Joyce Carol Oates

barely wake for hours the following day, and did he care?—did he know?—a routine examination that consisted of a few questions, a moment of listening to my heart, or seeming to listen—and nothing more. Took the sleeping pills for a few months, and one day threw them into the toilet—an instinct for survival—tremendous relief afterward, feeling I had escaped something dangerous. Hence my knowledge of, sympathy for, those who are addicted…but my ultimate disapproval…for this sort of thing is truly suicidal, as those of us who’ve been there can testify.The psyche can’t be manipulated, dreams should not be altered, consciousness itself not altered any more than is necessary….
     
    Odd meetings with Stanley Elkin, who advertised his various illnesses, physical and mental, transposing them into jokes—and a very funny man is he!—irresistibly funny—while I, at my lowest point then, tried to hide it all, assuming no one would be interested in my troubles—as of course they would not be—unless such troubles could be transposed into anecdotes or jokes, thereby socially acceptable. Antithetical beings, no two people more unalike, all the more surprising then that we should still be in contact—in a manner of speaking—years afterward. Memory of Stanley in that hideously depressing semi-detached house they rented, in Pimlico (of all places, so difficult to get to): parodying O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night , then playing in London with Sir Laurence Olivier, by falling repeatedly to the dirty carpet, moaning in self-pity—while everyone laughed delightedly—he is awfully funny. And yet wasn’t he parodying himself?—a part of the humor being our awareness of his mortal troubles, and his refusal to take them seriously. Except of course they were uppermost in his mind. Afterward, saying good-bye, he made Bob Coover laugh almost hysterically by acting out the triumph he, Stanley, would have when Coover was dead and buried—in a wheelchair by then (Stanley had, or has, multiple sclerosis—or so people said), he would gleefully ride back and forth over Bob’s grave—all very funny, hilarious at the time, particularly because everyone had been drinking. I certainly thought it was funny at the time. Afterward, less so: but who cares about “afterward”? The essence of a party, the essence of humor, is its livingness at the moment—it really shouldn’t be examined afterward—like love?—and yet one can’t help but remember the odd hysterical pathos of that humor, famously “gallows humor,” where mortality is ridiculed and jeered and made the subject of hilarity…. But to live with a man like that, how is it possible????? The solace of alcohol, for some people. The danger of seeming or actually being priggish, for those who dislike it. S. resented me more for not drinking than for being a more widely-read writer than he…“widely-read” a kind of exaggeration, in my case, but meaningful to him.
     
    Immense gratitude, returning to North America! To this house, this neighborhood, this job, these colleagues and friends! That sabbatical year was precious, richly enjoyed, and yet “one would not wish it longer”—not by one day.
     
    December 12, 1974. Lovely quiet days. Monday at the University, several days at home correcting exams; reading; working on the novel. Now after some difficult passages…the odd desire to write allegory before the novel is actually begun (when everything seems so powerfully clear) and the necessity to expand, give voice to, all that is not simple…. Despite my admiration for writers like Hawthorne and Flannery O’Connor and (even) Kafka, how were they able to resist giving life and therefore complexity to their people…? There is something so blunt, savage, cruel, otherworldly in the worst sense of that word, about the willfulness of allegory. Without tenderness there can be no actual violence, without violence no possibility of tenderness.
     
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