I wish people were less demanding so as not to destroy my respect for them. So much of my time is squandered fulfilling the meaningless requests of others. I have my own work and almost instinctively know what I must do in order to satisfy my conscience. This does not mean, however, that I harbor a secret desire to become abnormally selfish or self-centered to the extent that I must repudiate all friendships. No, not in the least, for what this feeling really indicates is that I am strongly motivated to protect myself in some manner against intrusions which can easily become obstacles to my finding sufficient time for my writing. Hence anything that might be used as an instrument for prying open my solitude must be regarded with suspicion.

*
My whole existence moves at a snail’s pace. Whenever I pause amidst my usual preoccupations and consider my condition, I nearly always end up with a feeling of disgust. I am forever making resolutions to speed myself up.
*
Just exactly what is involved in one’s dedication to one’s art? How far can an artist go towards carrying on a normal existence without atrophying the alluring anatomy of his Muse?
*
It is difficult for me to think imaginatively in prose. It is as though I were being held in check by a leash of rationality.
*
The lesson which Adolphe (a novel by Benjamin Constant) expounds is that circumstances are nothing and character everything. Is this an exaggeration or simplification? Perhaps. If it is, then it is so only on the surface, for if life is only meaningful in its depths, the message of Adolphe is irrefutable. Giving this thought a more personal connotation, it turns all of K’s entreaties into excuses, thus making all his arguments unconvincing. One does what one has to do, regardless of what contrary pressures are brought to bear upon one, and what one does is an incontrovertible advertisement of one’s character.
*
While I admire H.’s partisanship, I nevertheless suspect that its source is the heart rather than the head. The persistent crescendo with which he asserts himself shatters the opposition long before it is able to formulate any initial counter-thrust. I also strongly suspect bunches of sour grapes inside the breech of his cannon. But one cannot be too severe with a person who merely carries the cross of a common human frailty.
*
Many of the passages in Emerson’s Journal are pedestrian. The reason for this is quite understandable. Since his primary function was as a writer, he had an omnivorous appetite and could never really be contented unless he had a pen in his hand. This is the reason behind the reason for keeping a journal in the first place.
*
O. seems to me to be a poet of desperation. He plunges body and soul into everything he writes and seeks compassion for his commitment.
*
S.’s philosophy: Never the easy way out. It is part of the Puritan sacrificial pattern. The weakness of this brand of poetry is that it often exudes the odor of opium, as though the poet performed any number of sense-provoking acrobatics in order to stimulate his imagination before actually getting down to the business of writing.The resulting poem can easily be detected as an artificial synthesis. Library poems frequently fall into this category.
*
From all sides I am pell-melled with barrages of blame which are not originally directed at me but at those standing on either side of me. How come? Well, it so happens that I am the man in the middle, the one frail barrier that stands between D. and G. as they carry on their perpetual warfare against each other. Because it is impossible to duck when their invisible projectiles come sailing through the air in my direction, I have no choice but to suffer the bruises and wounds they inflict with Christian composure. D. apparently has come to like nothing better than to thrust her critical saber through my midsection in order to reach G. with her envenomed point, while G. often steams up with equal vehemence over one of D.’s intentional insults I hear the word selfish flung back and forth as though the two of them were engaged in an unfriendly game of catch. And as a result of this constant bombardment I have attempted to form what I regard as a fairly accurate definition of the word as it is being used (or abused) by these two antagonists. In fact, I have already begun replacing it with another word, self-interest. Thus, its weight is considerably diminished because within its new framework it applies to virtually every member of the human race. Every man’s welfare is important to himself. Consequently, he spends most of his life doing all in his power to either advance or defend it. The fact that its enemies most of the time are a mirage or delusion makes little difference to the imagined scene which dominates as well as motivates his actions.
*
Fathers must die. It is natural. It is probably the only genuine piece of wisdom King Claudius conveys to Hamlet. It is hard to conceive their living beyond middle age. The rule is that fathers die just as sons and daughters are approaching the  periphery of adulthood, while mothers live on, dying only after they have reached a venerable state far beyond the illusory world of recall. Mothers die, in other words, when sons and daughters are well advanced into middle age. Their children’s children remember them, their wrinkled kindness, their philosophical tranquility and the bright, unencumbered recurring world of their imagined youth when events and people were simpler and hence easier to understand. It is rare for a mother and father to survive together to that enviable age when they can celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. An even rarer state of possibility is for mom and pop to survive into their seventh decade of married life completely devoted and duty-bound to each other, for generally if these advanced years are reached at least one of the partners will have become saturated with hate not only towards his long-lived spouse but towards practically everyone else within sensory range. He might reason perversely that he has wasted his whole life by spending it, or at least most of it, with that parasitic tormentor, his wife, the woman to whom he has devoted endless hours of labor and whose every grievance lies buried in his heart like an unextracted bullet. He tells himself that through the long years of their partnership he often secretly prayed that the serpents in her hair metamorphose into flowers. He recalls the many occasions when he eased the path upon which she moved by throwing himself down like a carpet. And only by tenaciously clinging to this single-minded goal of her happiness has he found the stamina to endure the physical suffering of his declining years. It has always been her happiness, her trivial entertainments which have been the primary concern of his life. With sighs of bitterness he asks himself if his philanthropic efforts, fruitless from the beginning (Oh, sigh, sigh, sigh!), have ever drawn the slightest sign of sympathy or approbation from her? No, not a whimper of recognition, not one iota of compassion, only more complaints against his inadequacy, his inability to bestow some fabulous non-existent gift upon her. Always she cries out with her hate-ridden shrill hysterical voice, “More! More! More!” while he gropes breathlessly in a dark room desperately trying to lay his hands on that invisible crowning gift. His energy gradually seeps from his limbs, yet still he gropes, his movements becoming increasingly pathetic in the wake of her echoing voice demanding her cottage by the sea or her journey to the moon. He sets aside mountains and bridges oceans with his calloused hands in frantic attempts to quiet her grating imprecations. Virtually all her whimsicalities are transformed into masters of his dwindling energy.

But finally comes the inevitable collapse: her world as well as his develops an irreparable crack in its foundation, and instead of Humpty Dumpty falling because he cannot keep his balance, the whole wall gives way and tumbles to the ground. Yet even this catastrophe does not silence her complaints, for he is still the instrument of her unhappiness, the culprit who has pulled the fatal lever in what might otherwise have been her golden universe. Crushed by the ruins, he dies while she lives on for a few more years devoting herself to the task of desecrating whatever memory of him has survived. Her children are the pigs of his creation and she must consecrate herself to their destruction as a means of revenge against the man who has been her life-long Judas.

These thoughts came rushing in upon me after D. whispered in my ear the fateful news of her father’s stroke.
*
I want to indulge myself in so many different things that I find it impossible to envision the complete accomplishment of any one of them. Yet I do far less brooding than I formerly did because this is a luxury that only men of leisure can afford.
*
G. confuses juvenile delinquency with beatnickism. The Beats are sensitive, often talented rebels who, though they may be wrong-headed about the target they are hoping to demolish, are not capable of the kind of criminal violence associated with juvenile delinquents. The latter are actually adolescent criminals young enough, I would like to think, to eventually be persuaded from the path they have embarked on. The basic difference between the Beat and the juvenile is that one is nearly always capable of thought while the other is too often merely a brainless hooligan. The enemy of the Beat is a legitimate adversary; the enemy of the delinquent is an innocent victim.
*
I am getting tired of always humbling myself, stretching my tolerance in any number of directions simultaneously in order to accommodate every demand that is made upon my goodwill. If one is easily imposed upon one can be sure those demands will never cease.
*
It appears that Michelangelo was never an easy person to associate with. He possessed the characteristic impatience a genius often manifests when confronted with mediocrity. He could not have been expected to attach himself with any degree of enthusiasm to another artist of his time being so many heads taller than anyone else, even in an age and place where brilliance and talent can almost be said to have been commonplace.
*
Nothing is a greater bore to me than the conversation of certain people. Frequently when I am being treated as a captive audience my distress becomes unbearable. The truth is that discussion is seldom possible with anyone. What we all do have is a point of view, though it is only infrequently, if ever, drawn from a source within our own psyche, which we enjoy ramming through the ears of anyone who is charitable enough to pay even the slightest attention to our words. The opinion we offer becomes the only feasible one for a man of intelligence like ourselves. If two people of opposite points of view meet and begin discussing a question lodged between their mutual antagonisms there is sure to be fireworks followed not by a conversation, but rather an increase in confidence on both sides that each partisan is even more justified in holding fast to his opinion. Actually what is usually proven is not that one is necessarily right and the other wrong, but that neither understands the question fully enough to make room in his own brain for any semblance of truth which might emanate from the other side. A genuinely thoughtful person should be above vituperative partisanship.
*
Can even good conversation become an avenue leading to the profoundest truths? Too often it is little more than an entertaining mode of thought and too fleeting to bear the weight of reliable accuracy.
*
Last week I was shown some of H.’s letters from California. Many of the opinions and descriptions they contain would be interesting were it not for the fact that they are so self-consciously literary. When one writes letters one should not deliberately write them with one eye on a possible reading public. Hence H.’s indignant spoutings are emasculated, while his opinions strike me as frivolous and unconvincing, for they are not derived from honest feelings even though they give evidence of a grasp of logic and style superior to Q.’s impressionistic horseplay. Nevertheless Q.’s missives exude warmth and the presence of a real person behind them. H.’s are merely a cold, bloodless mask which he attempts to pass off as reflecting the mind of a very intelligent human being. The intelligence is there, of course, but without body and soul.
*
D., A. and I saw the movie version of Sons and Lovers tonight. D. was disappointed. She thought the book was misrepresented. My main objection was that the director tried to cover too many events and thus was unable to delve into any of Lawrence’s depths. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie. The few distortions were not especially gigantic. The acting was first-rate and the Lawrencian message defined without flouting the censor, which probably weakened the movie in the eyes of those who are in love with the book.

D. came up with the idea that Sons and Lovers was not movie material since it was feeble in plot and strong in those elements which are virtually impossible to convey on the screen. Being the story of a young man growing up with no extraordinary events to crown his days it would naturally seem somewhat dull and pedestrian without the inner monologues, the exhaustive dialogues and exciting descriptions, all of which are in the untransferable category.
*
Individual habits are formed early, and tendencies in one direction or another are prone to follow without question a congenial and accessible situation. Tastes and appetites in respect to food, clothing, books, forms of entertainment, etc. have been recognized from earliest times. Then why, it may be asked, have men nearly always insisted on such rigid conformity in matters of sex? Some people are tall, some are short, some are fat and some are skinny. There is also a long list of diseases responsible for our mortality. And what a variation of organic weaknesses is built into our frail anatomies. Thus, in every aspect of life it can be shown that a wide variety of differences exist. Yet within the category of animal necessity, where variation should be most pronounced, sex remains a black sheep, a brother, let us say, for whom adherence to a narrow custom is demanded while all the other members of this categorical household are permitted almost unrestricted freedom to exercise their flexibility.
*
Lawrence attacked Joyce in a letter to Huxley, but I hesitate to believe he is on solid ground. I suspect his aversion to Joyce is the offspring of emotional temperament rather than critical intellect. Nevertheless, his critical style throws off sparks of real excitement which in turn may falsely persuade the unwary.
*
Not infrequently I have been obsessed with the desire to undo an event in my life that has already occurred.
*
I read Oliver Wendell Holmes’ essay, “Bread and Newspapers”, this eve. His impact is far below that of most of his famous contemporaries. His convictions are a little on the frail side. Perhaps his weakness can be attributed to the very characteristic for which he has most often been commended, his clear-headed rationalism . Even the cryptic pages of Emily Dickinson’s letters shine forth with a brighter glow. Although Holmes’ glibness has survived the test of time, his wit seldom makes the grade. In his own day it undoubtedly had entertainment value, and yet I don’t think the most perceptive of his contemporaries ever charged it with carrying any serious sting. In all the outward circumstances of life he was perhaps too well fixed. He was a Brahman among Brahmans. Thoreau, naturally enough, was not on his admiration list. Emerson too must have caused him a certain amount of consternation if not full-blooded embarrassment.
*
Boldness is everything. Only fearless assertions will convince the reader. A writer must learn to say what he thinks, insist that the truth which he has discovered is a truth capable of satisfying the conscience of every man. Time and place must not be allowed to restrain or hamper his honesty.