When I am dissatisfied with something I have written and find it impossible to make any alteration that will purge me of my dissatisfaction I generally put the piece of writing aside and move on to something else. Sometimes I come back to it later with a mind that has been refreshed by other pursuits. Occasionally a page, or even a sentence or paragraph, which is badly in need of repair and for which the right corrective formula cannot be found, will lie on my desk for months like a burr in my conscience. If I try again to set it right but fail even more despicably I begin to wish I had never written it and amidst further self-recriminations am even ready to believe that someone else did in fact write it but submitted it to me for criticism. Thus mirages and delusions are as common to those engaged in sedentary occupations as to those who wander across deserts.

*
I am one who sincerely believes there is a meeting ground on which all varieties of occupations and preoccupations come together. It is a place where all pain and joy are mutually experienced. To insist that the differences between men are far rarer than their similarities is but to identify one branch on the same argumentative tree. One of the saddest facts about modern life is the energy and time wasted splitting these hairs of human incongruities. Especially guilty are intellectuals, who apparently derive a great deal of pleasure from this game of distinctions. The real problem which should be occupying the minds of men is how to awaken themselves to an awareness of those characteristics within themselves that run parallel to those exhibited by every other form of organic life on this planet. Man cannot truly acclimate himself to an environment he barely understands. And if he has no real understanding of his environment, then his understanding of himself must of necessity be dangerously limited. It is the courage of new convictions that is needed, new convictions firmly planted in reasonable and observable fact.
*
Progress is slow. That is the impression I usually have of myself. Yet if I say progress is slow but steady the steadiness is hardly discernible except from a distance.
*
The news that Norman Mailer stabbed his wife at a party in New York, a party attended by Allen Ginsberg among others, raises eyebrows as to the lawless irresponsibility fostered by beatnickism. The argument of intelligent but respectable citizens runs as follows: When expressions of rebellion assume the aspect of physical violence, thus equally endangering both the innocent and the guilty, bystanders and participants, one must shift one’s allegiance to the status quo, at least for the time being until some more governable method of precipitating change in society is discovered. Mailer as a writer oozes with talent. His style has been described as being pockmarked with brilliant flashes. Ginsberg is a poet of mystical hallucinations in the minds of his non-poetic enemies.
*
As I come to the end of the day I attempt to think back on the past twelve or fifteen hours hoping to pinpoint some important or potentially significant happening. I don my thinking cap and make a deliberate effort to concentrate, but the effort is futile, for the time I am speculating upon is filled with nothing but blank spaces.
*
I envy James Russell Lowell’s love of books. When I read of the tremendous pleasure he received from hours spent reading in his own library I ask myself why I sometimes feel guilty for having devoted a half or even a whole day to nothing but reading. The New England Brahmins were a cultured crew. They were profoundly attached to the intellectual and cultural traditions of western civilization. Their understanding of their own era might have been partially blunted, yet they were humanists in a far more genuine sense than we, even the best educated of us, are today. The fact that they thought in a serious vein about religion puts them far in advance of us. They were the truer descendants of our deistic forefathers.
*
One advantage of living in the country is that one is not continuously confronted with a fatiguing variety of people. The country types conform to each other rather closely and so one knows what to expect from them. Of course the city has its surprises if that is what one wants. But right at the moment I have no stomach for these irksome contrasts. It is the freedom to be the master of my own thoughts, however frivolous or insignificant they might be, that puts me on the side of the bucolic angels. I can even envision a happy nation of men living so far apart from each other that they have actually learned to enjoy their solitude. What a healthy nation that would be and how disinclined it would be to commit aggression against any of its neighbors. The vision grows. Large landholdings would be impossible because the land would have to be cut into too many divisions to satisfy the need for isolation that each of its citizens would demand. Our cities might remain as centers of culture but not as places where people would want to live. Our once-congested metropolises would be areas entered only on special occasions. They would no longer be prison yards for vast hordes of overly-dependent human beings. But I wonder how truly visionary my speculations are, since the current trek of the world towards socialism is at the opposite end of the pendulum from self-sufficiency. If complete urbanism is the goal of socialism then at the very moment when this goal is reached the population of the world will find itself reduced to a sort of perpetually dependent childhood.
*
There has been an abundance of ink wasted over the duties and virtues of citizenship. We are perpetually being preached to about the necessity of conformance to certain definite responsibilities which identify our relationship to the State. Our minds are nearly always convinced but our hearts and consciences, if we are sufficiently sensitive, often balk. First of all, the benefits derived from being bona fide members of our particular nation are clearly outlined to remind us, in case we have forgotten, how well off we are in comparison to the bona fide members of other less privileged nations. Then we are reminded that this wonderful glorious life which we all lead cannot be had for nothing, though the price we must pay is relatively small considering the benefits that are showered upon us. Thus we arrive at our duties and obligations. Among these is the obligation to vote. Not a day goes by that the news media does not try to impress us with the fact that over half the population of the world lives at the mercy of rulers not chosen by a popular electorate. We, on the other hand, have achieved our enviable “political ideal” through our superior sense of reason. This is the characteristic tone by which we are simplified to ourselves despite a few disgruntled commentators who occasionally point out that our “ideal” is a kind of fool’s paradise because by believing in it so wholeheartedly we have blurred our sensibility to those many areas in our nation where the “ideal” has yet to be achieved.
*
P. is working on a new composition after over two years of silence. This will be his first attempt to write for a full orchestra. His theme is chaos. The differences among nations as well as various philosophies of politics and aesthetics are nothing more than the dialectics of a handful of silly men standing on a raft that will soon be engulfed by a stormy shark-infested sea. There is really no hope. It’s the eleventh century all over again but with the destructive potential increased tenfold. The only question that can be legitimately asked at this point is whether man can be saved. But is man worth saving? As long as there exists a single individual in possession of his essential humanity the case for man might be regarded as a holy cause.
*
I am not one who can confidently trust his memories of childhood, yet I feel almost certain that when I was younger I was more at ease with my own thoughts than I am now. Growing up often means growing away from oneself. While formal education inadvertently destroys individuality, the multiple mutuality of experience tends to compel everyone to walk down the same road of life. As the similarities of education and experience become increasingly unavoidable, the variations in thinking even among the intellectual minority also diminish. Many intellectuals today have convinced themselves that they alone are fighting a last-ditch battle for the preservation of individuality. Armed with his paperback books and computer the intellectual compounds his delusion by frequenting the company of those similarly armed. What he too often fails to recognize is that his lifestyle and vision are merely another kind of conformity, and in the long run perhaps no less deadly to the survival of his separate identity than the cruder machinations of the horde of philistines.
*
Human duplicity is only possible when men have ceased to adhere to any form of idealism. Fortunately the digression or self-imposed blindfold is only temporary, for the ideal lies like a beatific jewel embedded in the heart and perennially glowing though not perennially looked upon. With periodic regularity it sets a man’s mind off on flights of fancy. Thus if his feet begin to wander occasionally until quite by accident he steps upon a magic carpet and suddenly finds himself floating above white cloud puffs, is he to be charged with lacking sufficient discretion when the carpet just as suddenly is whisked from beneath him by an unexpected gust of wind and he comes tumbling down to earth, landing on the hard reality of rock or asphalt? And therefore, as a consequence, must he be balled and chained to keep him from any further indulgences in idealism?
*
When Karl Shapiro in In Defense of Ignorance calls Henry Miller the greatest living prose writer in America he is merely acknowledging the gusto, vitality, and irresistible propulsion which are the composite elements of Miller’s genius. Miller in his own arena is more ferocious than a starving lion. It was just two weeks ago that Walter Lowenfels over a beer and hamburger told me that Miller couldn’t write worth a damn when he first met him in Paris during the Thirties. His mentors at this time were none other than my informant and Michael Fraenkel, the latter being a sidekick of Walter’s during those carefree expatriate days. Working together against the future great man’s verbal ineptitude, they coaxed and wrangled, and chucked out the excess fat until their pupil’s muscles were sufficiently strengthened to take on his first masterpiece, Tropic of Capricorn. True, Miller can be as tiresome as the next author, but when he’s good, and he frequently is, he is capable of arousing the most lethargic reader into a fighting mood. To the prejudiced, intolerant, bigoted, and narrow-minded his opinions are nearly always offensive. If such people can be called his antagonists they must also admit that they were hit so hard between the eyes by his writing that they were propelled into their antagonism. Joyce is more subtle but goes after the same meatheads, yet affects them only insofar as their powers of intellectual concentration are equal to his demands.
*
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to think of myself as playing a role. If I were doing this I would have to be far more self-conscious than I am. I am thoughtful rather than impulsive, yet I am also able to maintain a certain degree of spontaneity. I almost never premeditate on the best way to produce a favorable impression on someone else. I trust to my intuition and perhaps am less fearful of what I say or do than most thoughtful people. G. has suggested that my ego is constructed of cast iron. This is true only in a superficial sense. The part of my personality that is vulnerable is that part which has little significance on the profoundest levels of sensitivity. It is the part of me that shows above the waterline. People who really do not know me have nothing else to base their judgment on. But there I go again, blaming other people for failing to understand me. Who has ever really understood another person? If one understands oneself it is enough, and probably more than most people can claim. Because it is probably true that we never see ourselves as others see us it is virtually impossible for us to learn anything useful about ourselves from others.
*
No rules. I have never attempted to live by a set of rules. Habits? Yes. But habits are generally not deliberately or even consciously acquired. They are ways of doing things that we virtually fall into because of our nature as well as the time and place in which we are living. It is the combined effect which these three elements have on us that results in a particular set of habits. Rules of conduct are sometimes quite different. A resolution to follow a particular list of new commitments is an indication that one is unhappy with the direction one’s life is taking. It is this unhappy concern that leads to rules of conduct. Although many people have attempted to live by predesignated rules which have been self-consciously devised down to the minutest detail, I doubt whether anyone can truthfully say he has never followed such a program to the letter of its demands. Human nature does not work this way. The intention may be stronger than that which is behind the traditional New Year’s resolution but the result is usually about the same.
*
I am periodically discovering how far removed I am from nearly everyone I know. Quite contrary to giving a boost to my ego this thought leaves me with a feeling of uneasiness. I begin to wonder whether many of my friendships are not founded upon my own patience. But really I am impatient. My patience is but a mask produced by a strong sense of propriety. But this is not the whole story of my success with friends, for I have an inherent capacity enabling me to like people for qualities which lie beneath the surface of the obvious. I have a genius for suppressing the critic in myself in my personal relationships. Actually despite my sociability my need for human companionship is not one of my overweening appetites.
*
Occasionally I become curious about myself. I want to know exactly what kind of person I am and why I am that way. But only rarely is the effort a conscious one. Tonight I entered one of those introspective moods. The revelation was that of a patient listener to other men’s words. But even more than that, for this patient listener not only listens with infinite endurance but gives his mind over completely to the speaker so long as the words are sounding in his ears. He believes wholeheartedly in what is being said until he walks away from the speaker. His legs seem to carry his mind away also and that thought just a few moments before he appeared to be so intensely interested in is, with a feeling of nonchalance, discarded, as though at best it existed once upon a time only on the periphery of his brain. My passion for seeing things for myself is so strong and so obdurate that my appearance of docile captivity in the face of an effective dialectic is in reality a gentleman’s mask, which, of course, is the reverse of a genuine conversion. Advice I will take on occasion, but only when I seek it.