GESTATION
Early in the morning of October 19, 1960, I walked across the patio to my study, took out my outline and supplementary notes, sat down before my thirty-year-old rebuilt typewriter, rolled a sheet of white bond into it, thought a while, and slowly I began writing The Prize. Throughout the day, with increasing intensity, the periods of furious writing alternated with long halts and interminable pacings, during which I lit and relit my pipe—I yanked out pages, discarding them and doing them over again, and then once more over again. By midafternoon I had finished five double-spaced pages. Pulling my swivel chair up to my desk, I reread them:
“Night had come early to Stockholm, and that meant that autumn was almost gone and winter was near. For Count Bertil Jacobsson, as he walked slowly through the lamplit park, his lionheaded straight cane barely touching the hardened turf, it was a happy time, his favorite time of the year. Soon, as this cold night promised, the winds would come, and the mists sweep in, and eventually the snow and ice, and there would be no guilts about locking himself in his apartment, hibernating among his beloved mementos of a half century, and working on his encyclopedic notes.”
I read on to the fifth page. From the Nobel Foundation, old Jacobsson had, that night, sent off five telegrams notifying five persons that each had been voted one of the Nobel Prizes for that year. Within the hour the telegrams would be transmitted to Swedish Embassies in three nations, and then be relayed to the winners themselves.
1 read the concluding paragraphs of this opening section of the book:
“The winners themselves, Jacobsson thought. He knew their names well now, since the long months after the nominations, the investigations, debates, haggling, and voting. He knew their public names and records. But who were they really, these men and women he would be meeting in less than four weeks? How would they feel and be affected? What were they doing now, these pregnant hours before the telegrams arrived and before their greatness became public glory and riches? He wished that he could go along with the telegrams, with each and every one, and see what happened when they reached their destinations.
“Ah, the fancies of an old man, he thought at last. Enough. He must join his colleagues in the upstairs apartment for a drink to a good job done. Still, it would be something, something indeed, to go along with those telegrams …”
I finished my rereading, and while, in over-all feeling, I thought that I had captured the essence of what I wanted to say, had it the way I had visualized that the novel should begin, I was not satisfied with some parts of the first section. For my opening, the style was too tight. It wanted more ease in the writing, sentences more in tempo with Jacobsson’s leisurely stroll. Also, it was too general. While I had mentioned Stockholm in my first sentence, I suspected that I had not evoked the mood of a Swedish city on an autumn night nor had I really made it seem Stockholm, nor had I offered a foretaste of the dark and chilly events to come. And somehow, the first paragraph should become two paragraphs.
I returned to my typewriter, and slowly I began to rewrite.
“The northern night had come early to Stockholm this day, and that meant that autumn was almost gone and the dark winter was near at hand.
“For Count Bertil Jacobsson, as he walked slowly through the lamplit Humlegården park, his lion-headed brown cane barely brushing the hardened turf, it was a happy time, his favorite time of the year. He knew the promise of this cold premature night: the winds would come, and the mists sweep in from Lake Mälaren, and eventually, the snow and ice; and there would be no guilts about locking himself in his crowded, comfortable apartment, hibernating among his beloved mementos of a half century, and working on his encyclopedic Notes.”
Better.
It was coming closer to what I wanted, and so I wrote on, carefully reworking the five pages of the opening section. Reaching the last page, I considered the two closing paragraphs. Jacobsson was speculating about what would be happening when the notification telegrams reached their destinations and immediately thereafter. “What were they doing now … what happened when they reached their destinations?” Jacobsson could not know, of course. Only my readers would soon know. Still, there was an invitation here to bring in new material that might improve the section. After all, Jacobsson had known previous Nobel Prize winners personally, and I had already stated that he was an informal historian of the Nobel Prize awards and that he maintained ‘encyclopedic Notes’. As an old man, a lover and student of the past, would he not at this point remember what had happened on other occasions after he had sent out his telegrams? Certainly he would. Furthermore, the use of such facts at the outset could anticipate and alleviate any disbelief a reader might feel in the dramatic circumstances under which I would have my characters receive their notifications. I thought about it, and then I began to rewrite, expanding my closing two paragraphs into the following three paragraphs:
“The winners themselves, Jacobsson thought. He knew their names well now, because he had heard them repeated regularly in the long months after their nominations, through the investigations, debates, haggling, and voting. But who were they really, these men and women he would be meeting in less than four weeks? How would they feel and be affected? What were they doing now, these pregnant hours before the telegrams arrived and before their greatness became public glory and riches?
“His mind went back to his Notes, to what others in past years had been doing at the moment of notification: Eugene O’Neill had been sleeping, and been pulled out of bed to hear the news; Jane Addams had been preparing to go under ether for a major surgery; Dr. Harold Urey had been lunching with university professors at his faculty club; Albert Einstein had got the word on board a ship from Japan. And the new ones? Where and how would the prize find them? Jacobsson wished that he could go with the telegrams, with each and every one, and see what happened when they reached their destinations.
“Ah, the fancies of an old man, he thought at last. Nog med detta. Enough of this. He must join his colleagues in the upstairs apartment for a drink to a good job done. Still, it would be something, something indeed, to go along with those telegrams …”
This was closer to what I wanted.
I pulled the last page from the typewriter. I made a photocopy of the opening pages, as a security copy to secrete in another room of the house, lest a fire (there are recurrent brush fires in the hills near us) destroy my study and my original manuscript.
Dropping the original copy of those first pages into a file cabinet drawer, I felt no sense of achievement yet. But I felt good. For this was a beginning, a start. And now The Prize was a living thing that was a part of me. As I left my study and went back to the house for a drink, I wondered how long it would be before this brainchild emerged full-born, and I wondered what shape it would have and whether it would be attractive and interesting to me and to all men.
How can I recount the pain and pleasure of the actual writing of this book? I can recall the preparations for it in detail. Notes exist. I can, and shall, tell of what happened after it was completed. Correspondence, rewrite memorandums, clippings exist. But of the central act of creation, the writing of the book, there is little raw evidence left afterwards except for the final manuscripts of the novel and the published novel itself.
What is there of the experience that still remains stored in the bank of memory? Little that is apparent, and what is stored is mixed with memories of books written before and since. It is as if there were some psychic healing tissue that grows over the mind and memory of a writer, covering any visible signs of his despair and depression and exhaustion (even his ridiculous and often premature exhilarations), just as nature has a way of making human beings finally forget physical pain or injury or sorrow. If this did not happen to a writer—if, instead, all of the agonizing creative process stayed vivid in memory—it is unlikely that any author would be able to undertake, to face, to endure the thought of a next book.
So, then, what does exist to help me re-create the writing of The Prize? There exists a very tiny lighting, on and off, of remembrance. There exist files of disorganized notes about characters or story points, made while I was in the process of writing. There exist a few notations kept in a personal journal in which I wrote at irregular intervals. There exist copies of my letters written to my research assistant, to my publisher, to my editor, to my literary agent, but not many of these for I was too tired writing the book to write letters, and I usually wrote the letters about other pressing matters, making only brief references to my work on the new novel. And finally, I still have my daily work chart.
I kept a work chart when I wrote my first book—which remains unpublished—at the age of nineteen. I maintained work charts while writing my first four published books. These charts showed the date I started each chapter, the date I finished it, and the number of pages written in that period. With my fifth book, I started keeping a more detailed chart which also showed how many pages I had written by the end of every working day. I am not sure why I started keeping such records. I suspect that it was because, as a free-lance writer, entirely on my own, without employer or deadline, I wanted to create disciplines for myself, ones that were guilt-making when ignored. A chart on the wall served as such a discipline, its figures scolding me or encouraging me.
I had never told anyone about these charts, because I always feared that their existence would be considered eccentric and unliterary. But through the years, I have learned that their usage has not been uncommon among well-known novelists of the fairly recent past. Anthony Trollope, author of more than fifty popular novels including Barchester Towers, was perhaps the greatest record-keeper known to literature. In his Autobiography, published in 1883, Trollope wrote:
“When I have commenced a new book, I have always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried on for the period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work. In this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour, so that the deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances of the time—whether my other business might be then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with speed—I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as 20, and has risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went … There has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.
“I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water-drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”
This revelation, as well as other confessions made by Trollope, indicated that “he treated literature as a trade and wrote by the clock,” and this offended literary assessors and damaged his reputation for years after. Yet numerous authors have been just as meticulous about their writing output and about recording it, and they have fared better in the eyes of the literati. Arnold Bennett, for one, devotedly charted in his Journal his daily progress, by word count, for each new novel. Here are some entries from Arnold Bennett’s Journal at the time he was writing The Old Wives’ Tale:
“Wednesday, October 9th [1907], Yesterday I began The Old Wives’ Tale. I wrote 350 words yesterday afternoon and 900 this morning. I felt less self-conscious than I usually do in beginning a novel … Wednesday, October 16th. I have now written 7,000 words of the first chapter of the novel … Monday, October 21st. Today I finished the second chapter of my novel … Wednesday, October 23rd. I have written over 2,000 words of third chapter yesterday and today … Saturday, October 26th. 18,000 words of Old Wives’ Tale in 2 weeks 4 days … Friday, January 10th [1908]. 5,400 words in 3 days—despite worry … Wednesday, March 18th. In two hours of work this morning (1,600 words) I absolutely exhausted myself. In 3 days 4,000 words of Old Wives’ Tale, 2 articles, some verse, and general scheme of long article … Thursday, March 19th. I have never been in better creative form than I am today. A complete scene of the novel (1,700 words) this morning in 2 ½ hours … Monday, May 11th. Since Tuesday last I have written an average of over 2000 words a day, including 12,500 words of novel. This makes half of the book, exactly 100,000 words done.”
Ernest Hemingway is an example of a word or page counter in recent times. According to the Paris Review:
“He keeps track of his daily progress—’so as not to kid myself’—on a large chart made out of the side of a cardboard packing case and set up against the wall under the nose of a mounted gazelle head. The numbers on the chart showing the daily output of words differ from 450, 575, 462, 1250, back to 512, the higher figures on days Hemingway puts in extra work so he won’t feel guilty spending the following day fishing on the Gulf Stream.”
As I have said, from the first day I began writing books, I kept private charts of my work progress. For The Prize I kept a chart posted on my study wall upon which I noted in pencil the number of pages I had written each day, and I found this acted as a conscience and a goad.
Let me sec if I can revive, even if sketchily, something of the four and a half to five months it took me to write the first draft of The Prize.
As on my first writing day on the novel, work began every morning around ten o’clock, and usually ended every afternoon around six, give or take an hour, with a one-hour break somewhere in between for a sandwich lunch and a glance at the day’s incoming mail.
How can a writer adhere to such rigid hours? Once, long ago, deceived by the instructors, professors, by an old romantic tradition, I had believed that a writer writes only when he feels like it, only when he is touched by mystic inspiration. But then, after studying the work habits of novelists of the past, I realized that most successful writers invest their work with professionalism. From Balzac, who worked six to twelve hours a day, and Flaubert, seven hours a day, and Conrad, eight hours a day, to Maugham, who worked four hours a day, and Aldous Huxley, five hours a day, and Hemingway, six hours a day, these authors were uniformly industrious, and when they were once launched upon a book they wrote regularly, day in and day out. While the story may be apocryphal—I should like to believe it is not—it is said that Victor Hugo sometimes forced himself to work regularly by confining himself to his study. To do this, he had his valet take away every stitch of his clothing, and ordered this servant not to return his attire until the hour when he expected to be through with his day’s writing.
In short, no matter how they effected their routines, the vast majority of published authors have kept, and do keep, some semblance of regular daily hours. Indeed, if they did not, the libraries of the world would stand nearly empty. Occasionally, the hour- keepers were inspired when they went to their desks, but if they were not, they simply wrote as well as they could, as craftsmen, and hoped for the best.
For myself, I have found that the writing of a long work of fiction is so demanding upon my mind and emotions—so much a life lost in the processes of creating fictional people who become more real than the real people around me—that I do not wait for the Muse to lead me to my desk nor, once writing, can I stop. In doing The Prize, I kept long hours. On the best days, the inspired days, I knew that I was delivering to the limit of my capabilities, and every page produced was usable. On the worst days, if what I had turned out after seven or eight hours of writing was flat, dull, wrong, undeniably bad, I would discard the pages, and start at the beginning of the same section the following morning. These were the long days I worked. These were six-day weeks, sometimes seven. And most of the evenings, after wife talk and children talk, were devoted to making notes on scenes that lay immediately ahead, thinking them out, developing them, making rough drafts of them in longhand, and then going to books for my ever-continuing research.
There were some terrible, empty, wasted days—horrible days and dreadful nights when, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, “in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” Those were the times when I wanted to give up, when I felt that I did not have the gift needed to transfix the brilliant fancies lodged high in my brain upon the blank sheets of paper so far below, that what left my teeming mind became misshapen and ugly in space and thudded down on paper strangled by the limitations of words, cloddish and leaden words, words barely reflecting the marvelous imaginings in my head. I felt the frustration that so many novelists have felt throughout history, the frustration so exactly expressed by Gustave Flaubert in a letter to his off-and-on mistress Louise Colet: “I am irritated by my writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sounds he hears within.”
Those were the times, also, when I reached dead ends, when my plans proved faulty and led into black walls, when there was no light, so that the characters could not walk ahead, where nothing could move, where all thought was stifled and I was helpless. Those were the times when the novel was not the novel I had meant to write or hoped to write, when it went its own way, not naturally, not recognizable or right, somebody else’s bastard. Those were the times when, late at night and alone with it, I wondered if there were not better ways to spend one’s time on earth, better livelihoods and careers, better areas for self-expression. Then it seemed to me as if every other man was sensible and normal, since he could shut the ledger on the workday at five o’clock and seek hedonistic rewards, whereas I could not shut anything off for even one of twenty-four hours, because a whole new damn demon planet, inhabited by people that I had created, was orbiting around in my skull and wouldn’t let me have peace or pleasure. Those were the worst times. But in the soothing distance of retrospect, they were the exceptional times.
For, as I recall, far more of my working days were difficult but productive days, filled with the exciting new life I was living on paper. The choicest of these were incomparable days sweet in memory. I had fascinating new friends in my head and on paper, friends all my own that no one else knew, friends who were so close as to be part of me, and if they were troubled or in trouble, they would do my bidding so that I could help them. With these friends I enjoyed refreshing new adventures, more exotic and intense than any I had known in my own life, and we were sharing them together, and it was thrilling and each day with them was vitally alive. And sometimes, at the end of a strange absorbed day—where had the swift hours gone?—I would sit back and glance at the small pile of pages I had written, and know that what I had written was the best writing I could do, that the words had come out almost exactly as I had dreamed they would, and the accomplishment of the day was not nebulous, was very real, had substance, could be touched, could be read, might please others as it now pleased me. Not too many of such choice days, but some, enough to sustain me.
The inner creative process, in that period, was of two kinds, assuming that it can be accurately described at all. Sometimes 1 would consider my characters and a scene I had planned for them, and the end that should grow naturally out of the scene, and I would sit and think rationally, logically, of how these characters would behave in this situation. Or I would rise, and pace my study floor, as I consciously, objectively, considered what should be done, could be done, or what these people of mine might have done.
But more frequently a different kind of creative action took place inside my head. It was a process over which I had little control. In this process, I would study my sketchy outline of what might follow after what I had already written, and gradually the characters and background and situation would drift from outline into my mind, and there the characters would behave on their own, moving as they wished, speaking to one another as they liked, behaving in the manner that best suited each one of them. These mental playlets, staged in my head, seemed not to result from the conscious me, and I would sit in my chair and watch them with my mind’s eye as if I were merely a spectator. Then, suddenly realizing that I was more than a mere spectator, realizing that I was the recorder of the emotions and dialogues and activities of these people, I would grab up a pencil and try to capture what I had just witnessed inside my head. And then, from these hastily scrawled transcriptions, I would write, with care, applying as much art as I could to these episodes.
Few authors have been able to explain the miracle of these near-spontaneous, unprompted inner playlets, but most novelists I’ve asked have confessed that this was the way it happened to them when they wrote their books, too.
Recently, in rereading The Literary Situation by Malcolm Cowley, I was pleased to find that he understood this kind of creative process but had explained it in another way: “The writer … is a person who talks to himself, or better, who talks in himself. Usually when alone, but sometimes also in company, he conducts a silent conversation that is often described as a solitary monologue; in most cases it is really a dialogue … One of the speakers is the writer himself, and the other is his inner audience. The writer does most of the talking; perhaps he starts by presenting a situation in what he thinks are the right words to impress the audience, which seems to consist of a single person … Often—perhaps in most cases—the finished story is a transcription and revision of what the writer has already told his inner audience.”
Or, I might add, at least in my case, the finished story of The Prize was a transcription and revision of what I had seen and overheard of my characters as they performed on the stage of my brain for an inner audience consisting of one person—me.
Much of this unconscious, as well as conscious, creating of my novel took place after my daytime working hours. Late at night, perhaps an hour or two before going to bed, I would sit alone at the dining room table with notepaper and pencil, and think of what scenes I wanted to do the following day or in the days thereafter. I would jot down ideas, emotions and behavior of this character or that, fragments of dialogue, notions of how to develop story twists and turnings, all of this forming notes for prose as yet unwritten. Also, more consciously, on those late evenings, I would take up my seven-page single-spaced typed outline, and see what I had planned ahead for the next day. Then I might take three sentences of that basic outline and think about them, and accept what came to me from the inner playlet, and expand the terse three sentences to perhaps three scribbled pages, which enlarged and defined and dramatized what had earlier been only literary shorthand.
These crude nightly notes on The Prize, many of which I have saved, are reminders of much that went on inside me, and, indeed, offer some evidence of how the novel developed from one day to the next.
Let me illustrate by showing the actual development of several scenes while I was engaged in writing them.
In Chapter I, I planned a scene where the hero, Andrew Craig, was to be notified that he has won the Nobel Prize in literature:
Character Notes, October 6, 1960: “Telegram comes on wire to Miller’s Dam, Wisconsin, but girl busy in back room with a boy. Meantime, comes in on local AP wire, and young reporter sees it, telephones, then queries for interview, and tries to rouse up someone. (No, not this way. Instead, end on telephone call.)
… Sister-in-law on phone. As she hangs up, Dr. Lucius Mack comes downstairs, says has put Craig to bed. She tells of call. How could this be—not written in years. Mack says could be—GBS got for year didn’t write. Suddenly, official wire comes … Upstairs, Craig not asleep. Lying, thinking. Just fragments. Maybe nods off. Someone at door. They wake him now, tell him news. Wants to sleep. Force black coffee … An interview for AP. Then visitor, publisher or head of state library, deal offered—but he has passed out.”
Final Outline, October 18, 1960: “In Miller’s Dam, Wisconsin, Andrew Craig passes out drunk, then Leah awakens him with the news.”
Notes Before Writing Scene, November 2, 1960: “Lucius Mack puts Craig to sleep, goes downstairs. Leah waiting, drink milk, a scene. Phone or visit from Binninger of Mack’s paper. News of prize. AP and UPI and others on way … They wake Craig. Tell news. Dress him. Downstairs fill him with black coffee. Leah finds him attractive … Craig has informal interview with Mack. Then AP arrives for formal interview. Finally head of library near Madison comes down. Offers honorary job like Archibald MacLeish had with Lib. of Congress—board meeting Jan. 2. Craig must perform well. No scandal. (Midwestern Historical Society.) $12,000 a year—time to write … When come back Craig has passed out. Leah worried.”
Further Notes Before Writing Scene, November 2, 1960: “Binninger in kitchen. Leah kisses Craig … Drinks coffee. Mack starts interview with Craig, oddly never knew many facts on friend … Doorbell. Mack: If it’s press, tell them has flu. I’ll talk for him. Let them stay over, see him tomorrow or later … Inglis arrives—congrats—lists immortals—has big job offer … Call from NY—lecture agent—Hollywood agent—publisher—everything going for him if prove sobriety by good show in Sweden, appearing sober … Mack resumes interview … Craig feels self slipping away—GBS and life belt and self—then he passes out cold.”
The following morning I began writing the end scene of Chapter I, where Andrew Craig is notified that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. I had my notes, but the scene was difficult because I wanted to show my hero in a drunken state, thus underlining the depths to which he had fallen as contrasted with the high honor that he was about to receive. Because he was drunk, and asleep early in the scene, I could not write it from inside him, from his point of view. So I wrote it from the point of view of his closest friend, Lucius Mack, the editor of the local weekly newspaper. I tried to establish Craig’s situation with a further scene between Mack, representing hope for Craig, and Craig’s sister-in-law and caretaker, Leah Decker, representing hopelessness for Craig. After the stunning news came that Craig had won the Nobel Prize, I brought Craig, half drunk and sleepy, back into the scene, and tried to show the exciting things that immediately start happening to a laureate. I tried to project the uneasy feeling that each person involved with Craig has about his future performance, to set up a strand of suspense about his visit to Stockholm, and finally I tried to keep Craig in character by showing his defeat and cynicism. This last I dramatized at the close of the scene and of the chapter itself, and this is how it came out in the published draft:
“Leah signaled Inglis, and he quietly rose and tiptoed out of the kitchen after her. Mack followed them.
“Andrew Craig was alone.
“He felt a thousand years tired, and his head felt stuffed and heavy, and his deadened, sodden nerves begged for unconsciousness. He circled his arms on the table, and laid his head in his arms, and tried not to think of the turn of events. But his fatigued brain did not sleep. He thought: I was only trying to die slowly, peacefully, unobtrusively, like a forgotten old plant in the shade. He thought: Why did those Swedes expose and humiliate me by forcing me to die in public? He thought: I’m an immortal now, in the record books, but I’m as sickeningly mortal as I was when I awakened this morning. He remembered George Bernard Shaw’s sardonic remark, when he received the Nobel Prize at sixty-nine: ‘The money is a life belt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore.’ He thought: Only in my case I’d rewrite it … a life belt thrown to a man after he’s drowned. He thought: Nothing.
“Andrew Craig had passed out.”
In Chapter IV, I planned a joint press conference in Stockholm at which Dr. John Garrett was to appear with Dr. Carlo Farelli, who Garrett believed had stolen his medical discovery and whom he hated for sharing half of his Nobel Prize in medicine:
Character Notes, October 11, 1960: “In Stockholm, Magill [as I called Garrett before starting the book] and Italian give joint press conference. Magill speaks over their heads—and Italian interrupts, explains grafts in common terms, and takes over whole conference. In papers next day quotes are from Italian—and Magill feels reduced to status of lab technician.”
Final Outline, October 18, 1960: “The Count looks in as Garrett and Farelli being questioned, with Farelli taking over as Garrett steams. Garrett obtuse, Farelli popular, full of analogies.”
Notes Before Writing Scene: “Jacobsson sees press concentrating on Farelli—can see why—wonders whether Garrett senses this … Garrett also overwhelmed by Farelli. Expected monster, finds him charming and friendly, is speechless—Farelli gives him credit, like tolerant parent … Farelli tells—History of transplants and grafts, Basic Problem, How overcame, His own discovery (Istituto Superiore di Sanita). Then Garrett’s discovery, but he makes it his own so Garrett can’t top him, only weakly repeat information … Asked if worked together? Farelli: No, this was like 1950 award to Kendall and Reichstein … Future of transplants—Garrett equivocates, speaks of only few cases. Farelli quickly promises immortality, the ‘improved’ man of future … Garrett speaks of other heart surgeons. Farelli plays up Dr. Öhman, Garrett’s Swedish friend. Garrett tries to prove Öhman is his friend and not Farelli’s … Most-overlooked medical men? Garrett can think of none. Farelli suggests an American and Freud—Garrett jealous, furious, because Italian thought of not only his countryman but someone in his preserve of Dr. Keller and his group therapy.”
In the next few days I had written the actual scene in first draft. In this confrontation between the two Nobel Prize winners in medicine, I tried to heighten the conflict, at least from Garrett’s paranoidal point of view, by showing the American overwhelmed by Farelli. At the end of the scene, I had a Swedish reporter ask Garrett whether he could think of any great medical names of the past overlooked by the Nobel Committee. In what follows, as it appeared in the published version, I carefully used researched facts not merely to parade information, but as a realistic means by which Farelli could prove himself a formidable foe for Garrett, and as a bludgeon to hurt Garrett in order to build his resentment and thus motivate a bigger showdown later in the narrative. Could Garrett think of any medical names that had been overlooked? I wrote:
“Garrett could think of several such names, but his natural timidity prevented him from putting them forward. The Nobel Foundation had been generous to him. He did not want to insult its judges. ‘No,’ he said, at last, ‘I can’t think of one great name your committee has ever overlooked. I concur with their decisions completely. Since 1901, they have honored all who deserved to be honored.’
“He relaxed, satisfied with himself. He had accomplished what Farelli had tried to accomplish—he had given the Swedes pride in their judgment—and he had done a better job of it.
“ ‘Dr. Farelli.’ It was the Expressen reporter again. ‘Are you in agreement with your fellow laureate?’
“The Italian smiled at Garrett, and then at the press. ‘I believe Dr. Garrett and I are in accord on most matters, but I am afraid we are not so on this one. You wish to know if your Nobel Committee has overlooked any great doctors, deserving of the prize in the past? Yes, indeed they have. Two unfortunate omissions come to mind. One was an American. I think Dr. Harvey Cushing, of Boston, deserved a Nobel Prize for techniques he introduced in brain surgery. The Caroline Institute had thirty-eight opportunities to reward him, and failed to do so. The other omission, that of an Austrian, was even more serious. I refer to Dr. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. I find his neglect by the Nobel Committee, between 1901 and 1939, incomprehensible. I cannot imagine why he was not honored. Because he had once dabbled in hypnotism? Because organized medicine in Austria fought him? Because psychoanalysis was not an exact science? All mere quibbling. He remains the colossus of our century. His original discoveries in the field of psychology and mental disturbance have enriched our medicine. Those are the only black marks against the Caroline Institute in an otherwise brilliant record of judgment. I am proud to belong to their honor roll.’
“Garrett had listened to all of this with an increasing sense of shame at his own dishonesty and lack of candor. With envy, he watched the scribbling pencils among the press corps. He glanced at Farelli’s profile, and hated its Latin smugness more than ever before. He hated Farelli for his own weakness and the other’s unerring showmanship. He hated Farelli, an Italian, for extolling the virtues of an American, Dr. Cushing, and thus marking Garrett’s own lack of patriotism. He hated Farelli, an extrovert, for robbing him of Dr. Freud, an introvert’s property, a property that was justly his own every time he paid ten dollars to Dr. Keller for another group therapy session.
“He hated Farelli, but it seemed useless, like abominating an overwhelming force of nature.”
In Chapter V, I planned a scene at the King’s Banquet in the Royal Palace, where Craig would first meet Emily Stratman, niece of the prize winner in physics:
Character Notes, October 6, 1960: “Cocktail party. Craig meets other winners—French couple, American and Englishman physicians [a week later, I made latter an Italian], German and niece.”
Final Outline, October 18, 1960: “Go to Royal Banquet; action at cocktail hour. Craig has been drinking heavily. Sees Emily, dimly, alone. Attracted by her. Makes advances. She withdraws, after rebuffing him.”
Notes Before Writing Scene: “Craig goes to Royal Palace. Describe Palace on tour … Craig introduced to Norwegian peace rep and industrialist Hammarlund—by Ingrid Påhl—they argue Peace Prizes … Craig sees Emily—follows her—scene between them, he rebuffed. Leah breaks it up.”
Further Notes Before Writing Scene: “1. Craig had been watching Emily—saw her leave, heading for waiter and last drink. He goes, orders one, too … 2. Introduces self. Yes, she says, he was pointed out. Is she Stratman’s daughter? No, niece … 3. She seems upset. He doesn’t want say wrong thing. She repeats what happened to upset. Tells about herself … 4. Drink comes to him. Studies her. Feels uncomfortable, against entire room. Explains Leah. Emily knows, has read about him. Also read his books, rereading one now … 5. Discuss his books … 6. He questions how she lives, if ever married. She pulls back … 7. She questions him. He wants to impress her, makes it up, lies … 8. He gets her in next room, says she is beautiful, acts extravagantly, crazy, wants to kiss her … 9. She tightens up, tries to leave. He stops her. Apologizes, senses her inner damage, like his own. Apologizes for drinking, he is not ordinarily like this. She not interested. He pleads … 10. Leah comes in—watches—breaks into scene—King coming—Emily goes—Leah and Craig go in to meet King.”
Based on these notes, I wrote a first draft of the scene. My purpose was to bring the hero and heroine of the novel together, to show that Craig could be seriously interested in a woman again, to suggest that there is something strange about Emily, to end their first beginning in disagreement, and to establish Leah’s antagonism toward Emily. In the published version, Craig notices the girl across the room, and when he sees her approach a waiter for a drink, he quickly heads for the same waiter. Then Craig introduces himself:
“‘Well, if we haven’t met—we might as well. I’m Andrew Craig. I’m—’
“‘I know,’ she said. ‘You were pointed out to me when you came in. Congratulations.’
“‘Thank you. Are you Professor Stratman’s daughter?’
“‘I’m his niece.’
“’I see. He’s a bachelor, isn’t he?’
“‘Very.’
“‘And you take care of him?’
“‘Probably the other way around.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘My uncle is self-sufficient. I’m not.’
“He regarded her closely. She was taller than he had expected. The short black hair shone as it caught the lights. The curls along her cheeks enclosed her maiden’s face and gave it piquancy. The words ‘vestal virgin’ crossed his mind, yet the slanting eyes, Oriental emerald in color, made ‘vestal virgin’ impossible. Her serenity enchanted him. Here was the picture of self-possession, yet she had just remarked that she was not self-sufficient.
“‘I was watching you, a few minutes ago, in that group with your uncle,’ he said. ‘I was impressed by your poise—the gift of sang-froid, which the French so admire—until you suddenly seemed upset and broke away. Are you still upset?’
“She considered him, for the first time, with wonder. ‘Yes, quite upset. Don’t let the façade deceive you. It took years to build, to have a place to hide.’ She paused, as if astonished with herself. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I must be drunk. This is my fourth champagne.’
“‘I’m the one who must be drunk, to have even brought it up.’ He was compelled to go further. ‘I only asked about your being upset because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing to you. I can’t explain. It suddenly seemed important, that’s all.’
“‘I don’t mind. It’s all right.’
“‘You know my name. I don’t know yours.’
“‘Emily Stratman. Birthplace Germany. Naturalized American citizen. Raised in New York City since fifteen—or was it sixteen? Now resident of Atlanta, Georgia. Have I left anything out?’
“‘Yes. Marital status.’
“‘Aggressively single.’
“‘The result of a broken marriage?’
“‘Is this how writers get their material? No marriage. Not past, present, or future.’“
As I wrote scene after scene, I particularly looked forward to undertaking Chapter VII. I had never forgotten the material that a director of Collier’s had censored, in the article I had written thirteen years earlier, and constantly, in the back of my mind, there was the idea of using some of this censored material to help advance Andrew Craig’s personal story in the novel.
For the novel I had created the character of Gunnar Gottling, an eccentric, scandalous, bombastic, bitter man, one of Sweden’s best writers who had been denied the Nobel award because of his background, behavior, and belligerence. Gottling was based one part on what I knew of Strindberg, one part on a writer friend of mine now dead, and one part on what was conjured up in my imagination (stimulated by my feelings about the material that had been censored by Collier’s so long ago). I knew that Gottling must meet Craig—an obligatory scene—and out of his profane bitterness toward, and knowledge of, the Nobel committees, he must give Craig some secret information about how Craig had won the award. This information would, in turn, cast Craig into deeper despair, compel him to perform a certain way, and prepare him for the showdown confrontation with the politically involved Nobel judge, Carl Adolf Krantz, in the climax of the book.
Where to set this scene? I remembered an evening outside of Stockholm on my last visit, and immediately I consulted my iournal. My Swedish publisher had taken me for a drive in his Mercedes, and under ‘July 19, 1960’, I had recorded:
“Drove to a tavern—Djurgårdsbrunns Wärdshus—Royal Deer Park Inn—reception room—to left, restaurant—to right a bar—in bar as you entered, to left a bar with stools and some people seated, to its right, set high, a TV with children being interviewed on the single gov’t channel, and below it a pock-marked old dart board—tables and chairs, many covered with plaid or checkered horse-blanket material, although leather seats along wall. Cognacs and liqueurs served by bartender who spoke crisp and perfect English.”
I had the characters and setting and story point to be made, and at last I had the proper place in the book to integrate with my fiction those facts that I had been unable to publish thirteen years ago. I began to write the scene. Craig and Gottling had been introduced to one another in the Grand Hotel. They had driven to the Wardshus for some drinks and writer talk. But soon Gottling was telling why he himself had not won the Nobel Prize, and elaborating on the nepotism, prejudices, politics that infested the award-giving. Here is the manner in which I went on to develop the scene, or a portion of it, in my first draft:
“‘I don’t think that’s a secret,’ said Craig. ‘Jacobsson took me up to the Academy yesterday, and he was damn honest about the literary voting. He said there was good and bad.’
“‘Jacobsson,’ Gottling muttered, rolling his glass on the table. ‘Count Bertil Jacobsson? That old stuffed parrot, he should have been put in a time capsule years ago. He lives in the past. He has nothing to do with breathing people. Why do you think the Foundation supports him? Because he’s a front—he’s got blue blood, he knew Nobel, he makes with the erudition and history—and part of his gambit is to anticipate criticism. I wager you ten to one, he gave you the old routine—why Tolstoi and Ibsen and Hardy didn’t get it—but reminding you of all the big names that did. It’s all technique to disarm visitors and send them off beaming. Studied frankness to strip you of your objectivity. And another wager. I’ll bet you he wasn’t frank enough to confess how the Nobel committees have always sucked around the Germans—like that turd, Krantz—and looked down their noses at the Americans, at least until the Second World War, and how they got a permanent boycott going on the Russians.’
“The whiskey had gone to Craig’s head, and the room reeled. ‘I like Jacobsson,’ he said.
“‘You Americans love everybody,’ growled Gottling, ‘just to be sure somebody loves you. What crap. So you like Jacobsson. But did he tell you how his Nobel crew ass-licked the Germans and put the knife in the Russians?’
“‘No, he didn’t. I better have another drink.’
“‘Me, too … Hey, Lars, refills!’ He turned his bloodshot eyes back to Craig. ‘You like this old Wärdshus?’
“‘Greatest place on earth,’ said Craig thickly.
“‘You’re damn right.’
“‘What about the hun?’ asked Craig.
“‘Germans? Forty-nine prizes in sixty years. Russians? Seven prizes in sixty years, and lucky at that.’
“‘I’d say that shows courage,’ said Craig, ‘thumbing your nose at Russia, when they’re looking down your throat.’
“‘Courage, ha!’ exploded Gottling. ‘Every Swede is scared stiff of Russia, and when it counts, Sweden crawls. Why do you think we didn’t join NATO? Because we’re afraid of Russia, that’s why. I wish we had half the guts that Norway has. They defied the Nazis, when we didn’t, and now they defy the Communists, when we won’t … So we’re yellow, a yard wide, and we know it, and we don’t like it. So how do we salve our national conscience? We make believe we’re men by childish crap—by sticking our tongues out and keeping the Nobel Prize from Russia. So where does that put the holy Nobel Prize? It puts it in local politics. It makes the prize a political instrument that you dumbheads in America—except the Polacks—consider an honest honor. Christ, what crap.’
“The new drinks came, and Craig spilled part of his before he brought it to his mouth. ‘You said something about the prize being anti-American and pro-German—’
“‘That’s what I said. Cold figures. I may be looped, but I got it all in my head. Take chemistry. Only one American, Richards of Harvard, won it in thirty-one years. Take physics. Only one American, Michelson of good old Chicago, took it in twenty-two years. Take literature. Only one American, Red Lewis, in thirty-five years. Take medicine. Only two Americans, Carrel and Landsteiner, in thirty-two years. But the Germans—oh, our Nobel boys worshiped them. Fifteen winners in the first ten years, not counting the peace prize, which isn’t worth spitting on. In Sweden, if you could show a degree from Frankfort on the Main or Heidelberg, you were practically nominated. For forty-some years, those krauts were the superior race over here, Nordics just like us. But when you kicked the hell out of them in the Second War, and when you came up with the atom bomb, there was a fast shuffle in all the Nobel committees—and now they pour prizes at you and Great Britain like it was confetti. Don’t ever talk to me about impartiality, when you talk to me about that lousy prize you won.’
“‘What’s wrong with the prize I won?’ Craig peered at Gottling with owl eyes and spilled his drink again.
“‘What’s wrong? Haven’t you been listening to me? You plastered or something? I told you about Russia—’
“‘I forgot.’
“‘Seven Russians in sixty years in five categories, and not one of them a clean-cut award. It’s not just anti-Communism. It’s plain anti-Russianism. We been shaking in our boots since the time of the Czar. What happened in physiology and medicine in the first sixty awards? Old Pavlov should have carted off that first award hands down. But no, the Committee kept snubbing him for four years, until there was so much pressure they gave in. And they had to give half of Ehrlich’s prize to a Russian in 1908, because it was on the record he deserved half the credit for advances in immunity. Two stinking medicine awards to Russia in sixty years and none in a half century of that sixty years. Take a look at chemistry. One-half of the 1956 prize, and that’s it, brother, that’s all in sixty years. What about physics? One prize, divided among three Russians, in sixty years. There’s your science awards. I’m not a Russky lover. I told you before, they stink. But what’s that got to do with accomplishment? That’s a country where they’ve done the best work in longevity and genetics and stuck a Sputnik and a guy named Gagarin in the sky. That’s a country where they invented artificial penises for soldiers wounded in the war. That’s a country where Popov demonstrated radio transmission before Marconi, and where Tsiolkovsky had multistage rockets in 1911. But not according to our Swedish Academy of Science—no. According to our Nobel idiots, Russia is the land without scientists. And those idiots in Oslo are just as bad. Russia didn’t get a single Peace Prize in sixty years, but Germany—Germany!—got three and France eight and you Americans twelve. And now, my son, we’re home again—literature.’
“‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ mumbled Craig.
“‘Ivan Bunin and Boris Pasternak—two Russians in sixty years. Ever think who lived and wrote in Russia in those sixty years? We all know about Tolstoi being turned down nine times. But what about Chekhov and Andreyev and Artsybashev and Maxim Gorky—Gorky was around until 1936. Nothing.’
“‘Bunin and Pasternak,’ repeated Craig.
“‘Phony!’ bellowed Gottling, but no one in the Wärdshus bar so much as looked up. ‘Bunin was a White Russian refugee, an anti- Communist, who lived in Paris and translated Longfellow’s Hiawatha. He hadn’t been in Russia in fifteen years, when you Americans pitched for him and put him across in 1933. And old Boris Pasternak, the matinée idol with good guts, out there in his dacha—who gave a damn about him when he was writing solid poetry? Who honored him then? Not the spineless Nobel judges, I assure you. But the minute he put out that novel that criticized communism, the minute he had the nerve to say what every Swede was afraid to say, they crowned him with the prize he couldn’t accept. Someday, I got to write advice to writers all over the world. I got to tell them, “Writers, Arise! If you’re Russian, if you’re American, no matter what, grind out an anti-Russian potboiler and get it translated into Swedish, and you’re in. You get the Nobel Prize and the big boodle. Just like Andrew Craig.”
“Craig squinted at Gottling through bleary eyes. ‘What in the hell does that mean?’
“‘The facts of life, kid,’ said Gottling, belching, and swallowing his gin, ‘the facts of life. Why do you think you got the Nobel Prize? Because you’re a hotshot author? Because you’re the best this year? Because you’re the leading idealistic literary creator on earth? That what you think? That what Jacobsson and that bag, Ingrid Påhl, told you? Because you’re somebody, in the league with Kipling and Undset and Galsworthy and O’Neill? Crap! You’re nothing, and the Nobel boys know it, and everyone in Scandinavia on the inside knows it. You’re here on a phony pass, because they wanted to use you, and that’s all. And, brother, that’s the truth. Have another drink?’
“‘What are you talking about?’ said Craig. His brain and mouth were fuzzy, but a distant alarm registered. ‘Is this some more of your sour grapes?’
“‘I’m the only guy in Sweden with guts enough to level with you, Craig. I got enough pity for that. I don’t want to see you making a horse’s ass of yourself. The Nobel Prize for literature to Andrew Craig? Ha! Crap. The Nobel Prize for anti-Russian propaganda, that’s what it should be. You won because the Swedes have been having a diplomatic squabble with the Russians over two islands in the Baltic Sea—you never read about that, did you?—and the Swedes are going to lose, and crawl, and eat crow. But they got to keep face—that’s our one Orientalism, keeping face—and so, knowing they got to lose, they unloaded a rabbit punch at the Commies by honoring your little anti-Communist fiction, The Perfect State. That’s to show we’re big boys, not afraid of anybody, even when we crawl.’
“‘You’re making it up, Gottling. You’re bitter, and you’ve got to get your jollies some way. If the Swedish Academy wanted to blast Russia through an award, they could find novelists in a dozen countries who’d written stronger anti-Soviet books.’
“‘Oh, no. You’re blind, man, you don’t see at all. An award to a writer of a work overtly anti-Russian would be too dangerous—they don’t want Pasternak all over again. That was too much of a sweat—they don’t want to stand up and body-punch. Like I said, they just wanted to sneak in a quick rabbit punch, for face, for conscience. Your novel is anti-Russian, all right, but you got to cut away the sugar coating to know. If Moscow gets sore, and they have—I read Ny Dag, that’s our Commie sheet here—the Swedish Academy can just look surprised—and they have, too—and shrug and say they were honoring a pure historical novel about Plato and ancient Syracuse. You see? But everybody knows different. Only the way it is, nobody can prove it. It’s a scared gesture, like whistling in the dark, just like yours is a scared book.’“
Thus, The Prize was being written.
As I built momentum, the story came out, occasionally rolled out beyond my control. At the start I had pushed my people, my story, but at some crossroad they had suddenly started pulling me with them, after them, and it would surprise and confound me, when I went to dinner after my day’s work, that only my son David, my daughter Amy, my wife Sylvia were seated there, and that Andrew Craig and Denise Marceau and Max Stratman and John Garrett were not also at the table.
The chart that I had posted on the wall behind me began to have a busy look. Following that first working day, October 19, where I had noted ‘Pages—5’, there was a run of eight consecutive productive days. There was a faltering on my second day of work, October 20, ‘Pages—1’, my chart said. But after that I was writing hard. The chart describes it: October 21, ‘Pages—7’, October 22, ‘Pages—7’, October 23, Sunday, day of rest; October 24, ‘Pages—6’, October 25, ‘Pages—8’, October 26, ‘Pages—6’, October 27, ‘Pages—10’, October 28, ‘Pages—3; [made research] notes’.
Reviewing this work chart now, I see that in November of 1960, there were five out of twenty-six working days when I produced nothing, nary a page, whereas in the last five days of that month I wrote fifty-four first-draft pages. In December, in the week before Christmas, I wrote forty-two pages, then took off two days for the holiday.
And now it was 1961. On January 3, I noted ‘Pages—6’, and I was well into Chapter VI of a twelve-chapter book. On January 10, when I finished Chapter VI, the chapter ran ninety-eight pages long, and I had reached page 540 of my manuscript. Ten days later, I had written the 114 pages which composed Chapter VII, and I had arrived at page 654 of my manuscript, which, as it would turn out, meant I was past the midway mark and into the last half of the book.
As I came nearer and nearer to the climax and to the end, I wrote more and more steadily, entirely absorbed, totally pulled, and I started passing up meals, limiting my time with my family, canceling social engagements. On February 18, 1961, I started Chapter XII, the last chapter of The Prize, and I wrote with such intensity that I completed 127 pages in six days. Early in the evening of February 24, 1961, I reached page 1,115 of the novel. I wrote the last sentence: “And so, at last, at last, he could go on …” Then I typed in caps THE END, and the first draft of The Prize was done.
But a chart can tell only the mathematical history of a book.
What had gone on behind the written pages? I’ve already recounted, from memory, some of the despair and joy of the writing in general terms. Now, to flesh this out, to learn what it was really like behind the number of pages, I must consult my journal for 1960-61, and my copies of letters written in those years.
In my wretched journal—in those days I jotted down sum-ups of activity about six times a year (since then I’ve kept a daily Journal)—I find only two meaningful references to my work in progress:
“December 27, 1960, Tuesday: Today I have 444 pages and it may run to 1,200 pages. Some is very good and some mediocre and I can’t tell what it will prove to be yet, except I think it will be true for me and readable for others …”
“May 22, 1961, Monday: Five months since my last entry. Of course, I was busy day and night writing and finishing The Prize. What has brought me back to the journal is to look up how long it took, in 1959, to sell The Chapman Report to films. Eight days. Well, today is the sixth day The Prize is out to the studios … It has been an excruciating year of hard work. By the end of last December I had 540 pages of The Prize done. By the end of January, I had 820. And on February 24, 6:29 in the evening, I had typed page 1,115—in that last five days I wrote 124 pages in a frenzy of determination and inspiration—and the book was done. I lived wonderfully and badly in that long period. Wrote from morning at 10, with short lunches, never saw people in the day, usually wound up around 5:30 or 6 in the evening. I exhausted myself physically—smoking more, drinking whiskey and cognac more, sleeping only four or five hours a night, no leisure, no exercise. Yet, it was worth it to me to do this book into which I poured so much of myself.”
Most of my correspondence in those months was devoted to the book I had recently finished, The Twenty-Seventh Wife, a biography of Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young’s last wife taken in polygamy. But in many of my letters I made passing reference to the progress of The Prize. These letters were written to Paul R. Reynolds, my literary agent, and his partner, Oliver G. Swan; to Peter Schwed of Simon and Schuster, my publisher, and Michael V. Korda, of Simon and Schuster, my editor; to Victor Weybright, my reprint publisher at The New American Library; to Elizebethe Kempthorne, my research assistant. The following extracts from these letters start while I was working on the final outline and before the actual writing began, and they end with remarks on the rewriting after the completed first draft.
To Swan, October 15, 1960: “Now that The Twenty-Seventh Wife is done—not that a book is ever, ever done, God help us—I am full time plotting The Prize. It can be marvelous. I spent last week tracing each major character’s life and his story in the book—tough, but what developed was thrilling. During nights I have been doing further research in depth, adding to all that I started in Sweden fourteen years ago. Monday I resume on The Prize. Now I will try to integrate characters and work up a better plot in terms of a book outline for myself—to learn where it is strong and where weak. I should think that in about a month I will begin writing the key first chapter, which is clear in my mind and extremely strong. More on the joys and pains of this later.”
To Kempthorne, October 22, 1960: “I am now my third day into The Prize going full steam—did seven pages yesterday—and realize I will require far less detailed scientific research than originally expected.”
To Kempthorne, October 29, 1960: “Am fifty pages into the novel already! It is going wonderfully. It will be the longest work I’ve undertaken to date. Suspect it may run 700 or so mss. pages. Fascinating subject, but requiring much background information. For example, other day I was writing about one character of mine, German refugee physicist with niece saved from concentration camp—and I had to stop to get books on concentration camps and what German physicists did during war, for names of places, feeling, so forth. Same on two chemists in French section preceding this one—had to stop and, though I was just there, pump myself full of France again. Today I am in Pasadena where our doctor will get medical award.”
To Swan, October 29, 1960: “I am snowed under with research on The Prize—the characters and story are sufficiently worked out by now—and I am fifty pages into the book itself. As I told you earlier, I’m extremely enthusiastic. It seems to be moving well.”
To Weybright, October 29, 1960: “I began writing The Prize and am well into it and pleased. I know the characters, I know what is going to happen. I have most of my research—which is tremendous at this point—and if the story continues to unfold as it has, we may have something important. We shall see. I hope to have it done in a half year or so.”
To Kempthorne, November 5, 1960: “I’m a hundred pages into The Prize, and researching nights, so I defer most correspondence for weekends … I’m glad you found the sperm information and are now abstracting, most promising. When you have anything good, give me in detail, for easier use and for clarity—remember I’m dim on science, so don’t shorthand the stuff too much.”
To Kempthorne, November 17, 1960: “I’m moving hard on The Prize. Reached 140 pages this afternoon. On my other books that would have been a lot, but whereas Wife ran 580 in mss.—this new novel may go to 1,000 pages in mss. So I have a long, long half year or more, I’m sure more, ahead. But it goes smoothly.”
To Reynolds, November 19, 1960: “It is going wonderfully—a strong book, I feel—very difficult, with all those characters and that international background and the behind-the-scenes stuff, but it is coming off. The important thing is that the people are developing, I’m fascinated by them, and they’re so diverse and distinct they should carry me through without too many major problems. I’ve been working long, long hours and have nearly 200 manuscript pages, nearly 50,000 words I should guess, and I’m only beginning. I can’t even imagine how many pages the novel will be. I sensed quite some time ago that it would be a fat one. This is proving to be so. Perhaps it will run to 1,000 mss. pages, a little less or perhaps a bit more. Certainly it will be over twice the length of Chapman. But how can I know exactly at this point? I’m merely giving you a progress report. All that matters, I feel, is whether it is good, whether it is right—and I think it is both. We shall see.”
To Reynolds, November 24, 1960: “I thank you for the comments, encouraging, on the length of The Prize. The characters are thoroughly laid out—although they take surprising turns as I write—and I have a fairly comprehensive idea of the plot line. Perhaps there is some over-writing—I will comb for that when I am done—but the book is long because it is an enormous story, many, many-peopled, many levels of drama, and a fresh kind of background. I remember when I was in Sweden in July, several press representatives told me there had never been a major novel told against a Swedish background by a foreigner. Graham Greene wrote a mystery once using Stockholm, but, according to the Swedes, my book would be the first one in this century to try to tell a serious story with that background. Of course, as I am beginning to see, the background is finally the lesser thing—for the characters dominate the canvas, and if I am successful, you won’t care where they are. If lucky, I should have a quarter of the novel by the end of the year—which would be heartening.”
To Korda, December 3, 1960: “Forgive the silence—which you may welcome anyway at the Christmas season—but I have been out of touch all around because I am putting everything I have to say these days into the novel. When you have a new book in the works, or at least this is so in my case, you isolate yourself from the rest of the planet. I have been working night and day on The Prize.”
To Reynolds, December 10, 1960: “I had been toiling feverishly on The Prize, because it has taken hold and I want to get it down while I’m in the mood and before any possible dry spell. But I’m going to slow down for the holidays. I have high hopes for this one. I think it is my best yet. I have it one-third done now and I have words.”
To Korda, December 26, 1960: “Well, here I am at one o’clock in the afternoon of a holiday. I watched the pro football title game on television with my son, my daughter is wallowing in her Santa toys, Sylvia is dressing for an afternoon open house somewhere—I have the faintest hangover—the weather is mild and the sun out bright—and I want to speak to you of the past year. But what is there to add? We had a best seller and big sales, and what more could we wish for than a bigger best seller, bigger sales, and better reviews. And now, looking back, we could wish for a more artful, more expert novel—but these will come, I hope, with time, with experience … The Prize goes well. I am over one hundred thousand words into it and nervous but mostly pleased.”
To myself, in my journal, a summary, December 27, 1960: “The busiest and most hectic year of my life is drawing to a close—so busy I have not been able to keep up this journal … The Chapman Report dominated the work year, of course. It was officially published May 24, a Tuesday, in New York. On May 23, Simon and Schuster had 12,000 reorders in a single day. Doubleday Book Shops in New York sold out time and again during the same day. Wouk once had a higher day of reorders on The Caine Mutiny but I was told mine was second highest in modern publishing history, although I have since read that Sinclair Lewis also surpassed me in a single day of reorders … The best thing about the year was that it gave me temporary security—and opened the door for my next works of fiction. My publisher now says I have a public, whatever that means. Before, as a screenwriter and author of nonfiction, I had been either a nonentity or curiosity, perhaps both. But so widely was Chapman read that now all manner of people are interested in me. I had made that odd and terrible thing—an overnight success (‘overnight’ amuses me, when I read it, remembering all the hours of days of years that came before—as Guy Trosper [the screenwriter and sports fan] put it—I’m ‘the oldest rookie-of-the-year’). Quite honestly, I think I have accomplished a great part of what I’ve wanted since boyhood: to be independent, to write as I please, to be read, to be an entity on earth. In high school journalism class it seemed an improbable dream, but still a hope, to be a Somerset Maugham, to be read. As I grew, I desired it—always writing books, inexpert ones, unpublished ones—always increasingly sure I would hit, I would make it, and never making it. Mostly, I avoided fiction, preferring truth and reality and facts, avoiding it for many reasons, but mostly because I feared it, feared I was not perceptive enough, and also I was frightened by the standard set by modern classics I had read. Chapman came with little pain, and was to be just one book of many, a brief expression and a modest livelihood—and then it caught on and became part of the language and something surprisingly special … As a result, I have changed and people have changed toward me. First, it was the people who changed—envied more, grasped more, showed more malice. Then, imperceptibly and not in major ways, I changed, from seeing people and seeing what they made of my work. I became surer because I was more secure, and because people were interested in what I did. But I am a writer and I know the way it is out there and I know myself—at the core nothing has changed, finally, except that along with bewilderment came greater happiness and the first feelings of fulfillment …
We returned home from France on September 9, a few days before school. Adjusting to the return was difficult. I did a month of rewriting on The Twenty-Seventh Wife. On October 19, after completing the research and plotting, I started The Prize … Today I wrote 8 pages of The Prize and finished Chapter V. I live rather as a hermit, and except for occasional parties, no lunches out, compulsively working every day.”
To Weybright, January 6, 1961: “I am half through The Prize and living in a kind of Thoreau-like seclusion.”
To Korda, February 18, 1961: “No other news, as it has been twenty-four hours a day, it seems, on The Prize. I’m very close to daylight now and it is a question of no last problems and of a reserve of stamina.”
To Korda, March 7, 1961: “You will be interested to know that I—yes—I finished it. I refer to The Prize. This first draft, it really might be called a second draft, ran to 280,000 words, and now, reading it as a whole, I’m extremely excited. As a work of fiction this is such a great step forward for me over my other novels that—well, let’s wait and see. I hope to have you and Peter reading The Prize early in June.”
I can see now that these excerpts from letters I wrote during the sustained act of creation do not fully reflect the actual writing process. That is to say, they do not entirely reflect how I felt as I wrote. They are more optimistic and enthusiastic than I was as I put my thoughts on paper for the novel. They fail to reveal the blocks, the periods of despair, the difficulties. I can think of only two reasons for this not-entirely-balanced picture at the time: first, I rarely like to parade publicly anything personal that has to do with pain or inadequacy or weakness; second, quite possibly, the feelings I summarized were feelings I had after pages had been written, with problems overcome, doubts dissolved; they were reports after the fact of writing, and so they were usually cheerful.
I suspect that the best statement on how I wrote the book, how it went and how I truly felt about it, can be found in Thomas Wolfe’s superbly written and highly personal confession, The Story of a Novel, in which he tried to explain how he wrote a book.
“I cannot really say the book was written,” said Wolfe. “It was something that took hold of me and possessed me, and before I was done with it—that is, before I finally emerged with the first completed part—it seemed to me that it had done for me … everything was swept and borne along as by a great river. And I was borne along with it … For one thing, my whole sensory and creative equipment, my powers of feeling and reflection—even the sense of hearing, and above all my powers of memory, had reached the greatest degree of sharpness that they had ever known. At the end of the day of savage labor, my mind was still blazing with its effort, could by no opiate of reading, poetry, music, alcohol, or any other pleasure, be put at rest. I was unable to sleep, unable to subdue the tumult of these creative energies …”
That was it, and at last the work was done, yet it was not ‘done’ in the absolute sense of the word. Now the result of my labors had to be examined objectively, and improved upon by my own hand wherever possible, before it was touched by other eyes and hands. Three weeks after I had completed the first draft, I was writing to my editor:
“I took off only a few days, the lolling kind, no trips, because I wasn’t ready to be distracted or rested. My mind is still with it, and I have been daily reading and cutting and adding and rewriting, and will continue same until May, when the novel will be readied for the typist. For better or for worse, this new novel is a mammoth step beyond my last novel—it attempts more and possibly does more—and as a result of its content, I suspect we will have many people on our heads. No matter. Let us just hope that it is good.”
I continued to keep the manuscript to myself as I read and reread it and studied it line by line. After the first draft, there were three more drafts. While doing extensive cutting and tightening, I found myself also adding material that seemed necessary and building up scenes that seemed skimpy, so that what I added outnumbered what I subtracted, until the manuscript had grown to 1,213 pages.
During these rewrites, I was concerned with fact as well as fiction, with checking on minor details as well as improving the characters and story. I wrote revision notes to myself, such as the following:
“P. 19, describe Giselè’s Paris apartment more thoroughly … P. 67, how would the analyst actually reply to Mrs. Zane? … P. 118, write the Nobel Foundation to find out which winners did not appear in Stockholm in person … P. 297, improve Denise’s brown suit … P. 309, did I use Krantz’s ‘porker features’ once earlier? … Chapter XII, rewrite opening surgery to describe in more detail … Also, rewrite Emily’s confession to get in more authentic concentration camp detail.”
Some of the material required for my revisions had to be obtained long-distance. For example, I had a scene that was set against a Balenciaga fashion showing. The memory of my own experience of such an event had dimmed, and I felt that what I had written was too vague. So I rushed off a letter to the wife of a friend of mine who lived in Paris, Mrs. Shirley Katz, and asked her if she would visit a Balenciaga showing and take notes for me. She undertook the assignment, and the results were excellent. In writing to thank her, I explained the use I would make of her material:
“It is for my new novel called The Prize. One third of a million words. Forty characters. Now, finally, now that it is done and about to go out, I can speak of it. It concerns one dramatic Nobel award week in Stockholm, the week before the ceremony when all kinds of people are drawn from the ends of the earth to this northern place … The first scene is Paris. A French chemistry couple are about to be notified. The husband is on the town with a—yes—Balenciaga mannequin. They are in the early stages of an affair. At the end of the scene they go to bed, but then a phone call interrupts them—from the wife (who has just found out about the affair) to the husband—telling the son-of-a-bitch to get his pants on and come home, they’ve just won the Nobel Prize! There is no crudity. It is all done nicely and emotionally and truly. … I meant to tell you how I used your Balenciaga material. I did it in retrospect: French husband and wife take English visitors to a Balenciaga show. He sees mannequin for the first time. Later he runs into her on the Champs-Élysées. Gradually the affair begins. Later, when injured wife learns of it through a friend, and confirms it, she wants to set eyes on party of the third part herself. On pretense of buying a gown for Stockholm, wife goes to Balenciaga—and sees the mannequin—and measures her against herself. That was why I desperately needed that good descriptive material you were kind enough to send. Again, again, thanks.”
When my rewrite notes were attended to, when I realized I could do no more with the manuscript on my own, I knew that I had reached the point where I had to let it go, had to show it to someone. As usual, I chose the two persons close to me whose honesty and creative judgments I respected. I made a Thermofax copy of the entire manuscript and sent it to Elizebethe Kempthorne, my research assistant, and I turned the original manuscript over to Sylvia, my wife.
After several weeks, Kempthorne returned her copy, and almost every page bore a forest of suggested corrections and changes, most of them devoted to spelling, grammar, errors of fact, inconsistencies, omissions, lack of clarity, and so forth. Typical of her notes: “P. 635, Here I start to worry again. First off, how can Walther possibly be both a physicist and bacteriologist? Further, this whole use of bubonic plague seems shaky to me. Also, why an artificial germ when it’s easier to cultivate large units of the already available natural cause … P. 976, Damn French verb baffled me. Let me explain …”
Meanwhile, my wife was carefully reading the book and scratching down notes. Her practice on all of my manuscripts is to read her notes to me when she has completed them. The domestic scenes that follow are appalling, and while I fight her as if my life were at stake, I usually find I must concede to at least half of her suggestions. While I pretend to think that she is being hostile, I know that she is as emotionally involved in the manuscript as I am, that she is being completely honest, that she understands me and knows my work, and that she was once an editor (before I rescued her from a life of sin). On The Prize, here is a small but representative sampling of her notes:
“P. 12, ‘long stride’ sounds graceless … P. 21, Wasn’t the son-of-a-bitch at any time concerned about hurting her? … P. 46, Let’s work on this hairdo … P. 127, Only 1 hour 25 min. run from Paris to Stockholm? … P. 146, Straighten out this sentence … P. 200, Characters are always retrospecting. Can you get into Sue Wiley’s past without having her recollect it herself? … P. 257, Too much on the nose … P. 258, Cut. Why is this in—except that it happened to you? … P. 384, Wonderful description of Hammarlund … P. 406, A critic will pounce on you for this … P. 457-59, This is of no interest to anyone but ourselves. Cut drastically … P. 463, The Taj Mahal is delicate and beautiful, and anything that looked like it would not be called Thunder Palace … P. 509, The title of the song you want is ‘There’s a Cowboy Rolling Down Kungsgatan’ … P. 523, Is Emily dressed warmly enough for a December night? … P. 559, ‘friendly,’ then ‘taciturn’? A contradiction of words … P. 592, How could Stratman get the prize for anything so secret? … P. 710, Craig should not talk to Farelli or even to Garrett like this. Too high-handed … P. 755, Denise shouldn’t tell him she loves him. Not even a clod would believe that in such a brief meeting. On the other hand, he could worship her, since he has known her longer, by reputation … P. 764, Too explicit! … P. 873, Cheating? On whom? He’s free … P. 1006, You may have to condense this. Dr. Öhman is talking to knowledgeable scientists … P. 1086, You’re so all-forgiving. Maybe you ought to have Krantz marry Leah Decker … P. 1113, They didn’t rise for Dr. Stratman. Why would they rise for him—a writer? … P. 1086, Re ruminations on Krantz. Craig is overdoing the forgiveness-tolerance-understanding bit. Have him let Krantz go, but skip the pity.”
Bloodied, yet secretly grateful, I rewrote once more. But even as I rewrote, I made copies of small sections of the novel to show to experts—portions of The Prize went to a Lockheed physicist, a government chemist, three cardiovascular surgeons, and my Swedish publisher in Stockholm.
The response from these specialists was valuable. As I reported to Mrs. Kempthorne:
“I have redone all the Garrett-Farelli sequences so that they are consistent, dealing with one graft, and in redoing it I have worked from the last notes of Dr. Edward J. Berman and Dr. Harry G. Harshbarger. I believe it is close to correct now. I got my Stratman stuff to Lockheed’s top physicist, who read the extracts, made notes. I met with him in Burbank for lunch yesterday, and he was exact and excellent. The major thing I had wrong was that I gave Stratman the prize for solar propulsion—too improbable mathematically—and the physicist made suggestions—and I have solidly revised the technical aspects here, too.”
The two pages of suggestions from Stockholm were concise and specific. Here is a sampling:
“P. 122, The Count most certainly doesn’t use their first names this way, you don’t do it in Swedish—’Froken Ingrid, Herr Carl.’ He would probably just say ‘Good afternoon, good afternoon,’ without any names … P. 194, The name of the museum is Rohsska, not Rohass … P. 277, ‘Jag roar mig.’ You can’t say so. She probably said, ‘Det var mycket trevligt.’ … There are no trams on Norrbro, the bridge going from Gustaf Adolfs Torg to the Royal Palace. It should perhaps be Strömbron, the bridge nearest to Grand Hotel? … P. 461, There is much more in a ‘westkust-sallad’—shrimps and crabs and lobster … P. 535, The Orpheus statue is not golden, it is a very dark green … P. 725, ‘Schnapps’ before dinner? Cocktail, yes, but not schnapps … P. 1126, Never heard of anybody in Sweden using smelling salts.”
The last changes were made. The manuscript of The Prize went to the typist for copying. Finally, in late May of 1961, I packed the original or ribbon copy of the novel in three ream-sized boxes and similarly packed several sets of carbon copies, and sent them to my literary agent in New York City for distribution to my publishers. Nervously, I waited.
The first response from Simon and Schuster came in the form of a letter written on June 1, 1961, by my editor, Mike Korda:
“I have just received from Paul Reynolds our copies of The Prize and I’m looking forward to starting it tonight. Paul says it’s wonderful … P.S. I’ve just read the first two chapters now, before going home. It’s absolutely fascinating and compelling reading. The characters are just great! Congratulations.”
The next day, my publisher, Peter Schwed, wrote:
“The Magnum Opus, and I mean Magnum, is as you know in my hands, and I’m plunging through it at every moment when my time isn’t absolutely demanded elsewhere. Since I have only had it for one day, I have only knocked off three hundred pages, but I thought that Book One was absolutely brilliant. If it keeps up this way—and I have every expectation and hope that it will—this one will really be a winner.”
Shortly after, Schwed had finished the book, and now he wrote again:
“For the most part, it’s a staggeringly impressive and exciting job that you have done, Irving, and I can’t congratulate you too heartily.”
At once, Simon and Schuster supported their enthusiasm by offering a contract with a dizzy-making $70,000 advance against royalties. Their reaction to and approval of my work was thrilling. I could not forget, on that marvelous day, that not too long before—in January, 1954—I had received an advance of $1,000 from Alfred A. Knopf for my first book, The Fabulous Originals, to which I had also devoted years of research and writing.
But the wonder of it was only beginning. While I had already enjoyed my greatest pleasure, which came when I received my publisher’s approval, there was still ahead the adventure of learning how my work would be accepted by motion pictures, book clubs, and foreign publishers. The most important of these, financially, was motion pictures. I had written The Prize as a book, and with no other thought in mind, least of all the thought of its having value as a possible film. Yet, once my book had achieved its primary goal, through acceptance by a renowned publisher, I began to wonder what more it could achieve in subsidiary markets.
The sale of motion-picture rights is nothing an author can seriously anticipate or count upon. It it simply something additional and exceptional that one can hope for—like owning the right lottery ticket, or hitting the slot-machine jackpot, or holding a wager on a long-shot winner at the racetrack. And so now, as the time approached for a decision on The Prize as a possible framework for a future movie, I became anxious and then emotionally involved in a dream about this lottery, jackpot, long shot.
Evarts Ziegler, my West Coast agent in Beverly Hills, who was to handle the motion-picture rights, had received a carbon copy of the manuscript along with a note from me, reading:
“I’m extremely eager for your opinion of the book. Keep in touch.
“I’m not relaxed.
“I’m nervous.
“This
Is
Many
Years
Of
My
life …”
Ziegler’s response came by telephone, and immediately I was reporting his reaction to Paul Reynolds, my New York agent: “Zig read an unproofed copy literally overnight, with little sleep, and was ecstatic. He thinks it surpasses Chapman threefold, thinks it a tremendous and moving book as a book. And as a movie—well, one never knows, but he believes it has a good chance.”
As a matter of fact, Ziegler felt that, even though great segments of the book could not possibly be transferred to the screen since they were not cinematic, the central idea of the novel and the leading characters might be intriguing enough to make the book an excellent basis for a dramatic vehicle. He determined not to wait for galley proofs or bound books but to present The Prize to motion-picture studios in manuscript form. He convinced me that.I should have the manuscript mimeographed, and as soon as this had been done, he circulated twenty copies of the novel to motion-picture studios and independent producers.
A week later I was giving Paul Reynolds a progress report: “Motion picture rights to The Chapman Report were sold on the eighth day after its submission. Today is the seventh day since The Prize was submitted. What has held back responses, Ziegler learned, is the length of the novel—it demands more time to synopsize (for example, Twentieth Century-Fox and Columbia will have synopses ready only today)—but once a synopsis is out to each executive, decisions will come fast and furious, perhaps in a matter of hours … Movie interest in The Prize has advanced to the point where Ziegler now has what might be called three firm buyers—with no response, yet, from the rest.”
Two days later, there was sufficient interest from executives and producers for Ziegler to announce the price and terms he expected. The price he expected was $350,000. The next morning I wrote Paul Reynolds the details—and the result:
“On Thursday last, because of mounting interest, Ziegler decided to issue his terms. On Chapman he had sent a wire and it took four months of disagreements and wrangling to get a contract. This time he and his lawyers wrote a three-page contract covering all disputable points—and instead of a wire he sent the contract to nine interested buyers at four o’clock Thursday. As you know, two hours later one buyer had met the terms. However, Zig had to wait until the six o’clock Friday deadline he had announced, which was yesterday. He called me to his office at a quarter to six. Three hours before, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio had met our terms. Of the bidders, we selected M-G-M. Ziegler phoned them, concluded the deal at six, cut off all the phones, we had drinks, and that was that.”
That was not quite that. I was utterly exhausted. Nevertheless, I went on a letter-writing spree. First, I wrote my friend Jerome Weidman the news:
“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has bought The Prize … The purchase price equals Tennessee Williams’ sale of his new play to Seven Arts and John Steinbeck’s sale of his new novel to Metro. I’m really more pleased than words can convey—words can convey nothing because I had only a few hours’ sleep and I am now barely awake in the morning.”
Then I wrote my friends Betty and Leonard Slater:
“Sylvia and I are dazed, this occurring only 21 months after Chapman. It’s all so crazy. I wanted to write novels simply because I had things to say and liked to write them and wanted to be independent—but rewards like this besides—incredible.”
Then I wrote my friend Art Buclnvald in Paris and concluded my news with:
“So we’re mildly hysterical today and determined to celebrate this and our twentieth anniversary next week. What better gift than Europe? We will be in Paris … May we take you to dinner? to the Bois? to outer space? We are bringing our children. Groom yours … Art, that column you did on me was truly a sensation. I congratulate you for my wit. Write without delay. Leave 1,000,000 NF, unmarked, behind the entry booth at the Gare St. Lazare. or else … Did you know that Jackie and JFK told the press they read Chapman? Like our friend Bill Attwood. I now have the Good White Housekeeping seal.”
On June 23, 1961. under a two-column headline, The New York Times announced the news in a story filed from “Hollywood, Calif.”:
“Today Irving Wallace was very much the man who had returned to the small town after making good in the big city. For Mr. Wallace, who quit movie writing some time ago, was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to sign a contract … for the movie rights to his latest novel, ‘The Prize.’“
My excursion into Gettyland was brief. My novel required one more major rewrite. My agents believed it was needed. My publisher and editor believed it was needed. And, very soon, I knew that it was necessary.
My literary agent had informed me that my publisher, Peter Schwed, would have some editorial suggestions to make. Immediately, I wrote my agent:
“As to editorial suggestions, I told Schwed I would consider any he makes. I am not bullheaded. I want a good book. I will do what think is best and what I am creatively capable of doing. As to your idea that I tone down the explicit sex—I already did, because of Sylvia’s advice after she had read previous drafts—and may do more. I’ll consider it. In any case, this is not a sex book—it is simply that I am a strong believer in writing straightforwardly about sex rather than implying or using asterisks. I thought the sex in Lady Chatterley was beautiful and saved an otherwise tedious book. However, I will seriously think about this—for I know sex scenes, among other things, give me most of my trouble with critics.”
Next, I learned that Schwed was troubled most about one specific part of my novel. On June 13, I wrote Schwed:
“Paul tells me the major thing you do not like is something in the last chapter about Craig—I would gather, perhaps, the melodrama. Well, I won’t try to anticipate what you have to say. Simply tell me—”
Schwed responded at once in his usual direct manner. He told me:
“Yes—my major objection to The Prize as it stands is the final 150 pages or so. The bad East German scientist and the melodramatic chase is so out of keeping with the rest of the book that it struck me as violently jarring.”
The ‘melodramatic chase’ that my publisher referred to comprised two sections of my last chapter, and added up to 62 pages out of the 146-page final chapter of the original manuscript. As 1 had written it, Emily Stratman receives a telephone call that her uncle, Dr. Stratman, has suffered a heart attack. Arriving at the emergency clinic on Ringvägen, Emily is led not to her uncle but to her uncle’s former colleague, Dr. Hans Eckart, who is in Stockholm to woo Dr. Stratman back to Communist East Berlin. Dr. Eckart tells Emily that since her uncle has refused to defect voluntarily, she will now be used to induce him to change his mind. She will be sent by freighter, this very night, to East Germany, there to resume “the carefree life she lived at Ravensbrück.” If Dr. Stratman, once lie has been informed of this, is prepared to follow her behind the Iron Curtain, she will then, and only then, be released.
At the Grand Hotel, Andrew Craig, trying to find Emily, comes upon the tiny tape recorder that announces Dr. Eckart’s ransom terms. Realizing that there is no time to seek the help of the law, since Dr. Stratman will be expected to announce his defection at the Nobel Prize award ceremony in a few hours, Craig decides to act on his own. Craig follows a clue that leads him to the spy, Daranyi, who reveals that one member of the conspiracy is none other than the Nobel judge, Carl Adolf Krantz.
Immediately, Craig goes after Krantz, and reaches him just as the judge is leaving his apartment for the Nobel ceremony. Krantz tries to escape in his limousine. Craig, in a car driven by Gottling, gives pursuit, rams into Krantz’s limousine, and finally forces the Swedish judge to take him to the motor launch where Emily is being kept. Craig finds Emily alone in the launch, under sedation.
Having no desire to damage the Nobel Prize ceremony with news of a scandal, Craig permits Krantz to go free, to leave for exile in East Berlin. Then Craig rescues Emily, later hears out the terrifying story of her past, professes his love for her, and makes love with her, before going to Concert Hall to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.
This was the segment of the ending to which my publisher and editor objected. Now they were prepared to be more specific about their adverse reactions. On June 26, Korda wrote a key letter in which he elaborated on the major faults that he and Schwed had found with the story and suggested how he and Schwed felt the book might be improved. He wrote:
“Peter and I have three basic suggestions to make, and you might consider these on your way to New York. They concern the plot, which, on the whole, is marvelous. The reader is held on tenterhooks throughout the book, and the opening chapters are enormously suspenseful. In two places, however, it seems to me that the book is weak. One is the scene, at the end, in which Emily and Andrew Craig make love. The other is the melodrama of Dr. Stratman’s attempted kidnaping by the East Germans.
“I like the way sex is handled in the book. I don’t think any of it should be cut, or needs cutting. But I do feel that the climactic scene between Emily and Andrew is not needed or reasonable. It just isn’t in her nature or his.
“As for the spy plot, I think it’s by far the weakest spot in the book. The rest of the book is so much more realistic and powerful. Is it absolutely necessary? Couldn’t we simply have the East Germans trying to woo Stratman away from the Americans, putting on the emotional pressure, etc., but not going to the lengths they do in the present version? Frankly, it’s too much like The Thirty-Nine Steps, and out of place in The Prize, which is on a much, much higher level than this …
“What to do? Obviously we can only make very tentative suggestions, and I hope you will consider them as such.
“1. Eliminate the sex scene between Emily and Andrew …
2. Eliminate the spy story ending. This, obviously, leaves the book without a big scene to end it. In this connection, Peter suggests that Andrew, having won Emily and solved his own problems, should turn down the prize in his speech, saying that he is not worthy of it, that perhaps someday he will be … I think this is an excellent suggestion. It gives the plot a last minute twist …
3. Possibly have Stratman suffer a coronary, and have him operated on by Farelli and Garrett, instead of the King’s friend … The cutting is not going to present a problem. The important thing is the plot, or, to be more exact, the resolution of the Craig/Emily story and the Stratman story.”
This letter disturbed me. While I recognized that my publisher and editor had put their fingers on certain weaknesses in the novel that would need strengthening, I also felt that most of their suggestions for improvement were wrong. After giving it concentrated thought, I replied with a three-page single-spaced letter to Korda two days later:
“Now and always you must be as frank as you wish. The book—this or any book—must always come before sensitivity. If we can’t communicate properly, we will both suffer. All I reserve is the right to discuss, weigh, accept or reject your suggestions. And allow me, now and always, to be as frank with you as you want to be with me.
“You list three points. I appreciate your creative suggestions—invite them—but on these I specifically disagree. I think you and Peter are right that something must be done in the last chapter. I think you are completely wrong as to what must be done specifically. Let’s review your three points—
“1. Eliminate sex scene near the end. You have convinced me. I will handle it as you suggest.
“2. Eliminate the spy ending. Yes, okay. But we need a big scene. Peter suggests that Craig turn down the prize, and you think that an excellent idea. I think that is anything but an excellent idea. It has absolutely nothing to recommend it, except that it is big, a twist, a surprise—but nothing else, for it rings false. Not only does it smack of Boris Pasternak, where it was logical, but it has nothing to do with the book as it stands or with Craig’s past. Of course, Craig thinks he is not worthy, as other true winners have honestly felt, yet he knows, and I make this clear, that writers more inferior than he have been honored. Why should he turn it down, indeed? Because he drinks? Because he’s done only four books? Because he suffers guilts and remorse? Nothing in his past would motivate such a shocking action. It would be frivolous for him to turn it down—as GBS was made to see. No one has ever turned it down, except when forced to, i.e., Boris Pasternak and those Germans under Hitler. I say it is out of character. Worse, it somehow destroys Craig, it makes him a phony minor figure who may one day prove himself. No, he’s bigger than that—and he deserves the prize.
“3. You suggest ‘possibly’ having Stratman suffer a coronary and Farelli-Garrett save him. No, impossible. This was the obvious plot point I had a year ago which I immediately rejected. From the time the reader has read the first chapter, he must be saying—aha, one winner has a bad heart—two other winners know how to save people with bad hearts—aha, 1 know what is coming. I would never let myself walk into such a construction trap. Not only is it coincidental, self-serving, expected—but I don’t believe in it.
“On the other hand, once I drop more than half of the last chapter, I do need something important to supplant it. I need and want something simple and uninvolved that grows logically out of the people in the story and the condition of the novel at that very point. The last two weeks I racked my brain—made a half dozen notes—but all were wrong. Then I hit on something I have not yet developed but which appeals to me, for it contains the right values, and has drama instead of melodrama. Without prejudice, with love, hear me out—
“Eckart calls Emily to a meeting, invoking her uncle’s name. He tries to reason with her to influence her uncle to take the post in East Berlin. She refuses. Under no condition would she help. No condition? Eckart leads her into the next room—and there—there stands her father, Walther Stratman, the beloved father of her teens thought to be dead in a Soviet labor camp …”
And thus, I had come to grips with the last chapter of the book, in an effort to find a better climax.
In the summer of 1961, I went off to Europe once more, to revisit several sites important to the novel, to gather research for a later book, to rest and loaf when I could, but mainly to work on the final rewrite of The Prize. I carried voluminous notes and the last chapter in one of my suitcases. I also carried with me three pages of plot changes and broad suggested cuts which Korda had prepared for me under the heading General Observations.
In these observations, my editor once more stated his feelings about the book’s ending. “As already suggested, I think the spy plot at the end should go altogether. Krantz and Eckart should try to woo Stratman to East Germany and fail. But no kidnapping. It’s too melodramatic and the plot doesn’t need it. If this is done, Daranyi, the Hungarian spy, can be eliminated or reduced, and the emotional impact concentrated on Andrew Craig and Emily Stratman, and on the Farelli-Garrett relationship.”
From Paris, July 18,1961,1 wrote to my editor:
“Half of your last suggestions are based on ‘the spy plot’ going out or staying in. Mike, ‘the spy plot’ as a plot line cannot go at all. We’d have to have a new story top to bottom in its center. I love the spy plot with Krantz and Eckart and Daranyi and all the others involved. What I have agreed to change is the end or outcome of that plot—change it to something less melodramatic and perhaps more in keeping with the entire fabric of the book.
“At the moment I have made one full development of my idea of having Eckart bring Walther Stratman back into the story, and it works in the present structure. I fear I’ll be thinking of this damn thing the whole summer—I must—it is too important.”
From Venice, July 31,1961, to my editor:
“As to the last chapter, you simply have no idea how many new ideas I’ve had and rejected. At one stage I had Emily’s beloved mother, Rebecca, alive. At another point I toyed with Emily’s having had an illegitimate child by the Nazi commandant and the child is alive. Recently I’ve played with the notion that when Eckart sees Emily’s dossier, he finds a clue in it to something black in Nobel-man Max Stratman’s past … I could develop this in ten directions, and still keep Max sympathetic. Anyway, anyway, I’m still for the Walther idea, and now it runs roughly like this—
“Eckart summons Emily and begs her to use her influence on Max Stratman so that he will defect. She refuses. Eckart produces Emily’s father, Walther Stratman, whom she had always supposed dead. Emily faints.
“Craig goes to the Stratman bedroom to find Emily. Instead he finds the tape, addressed to Max Stratman, with Eckart’s voice indicating that Walther is alive, reunited with Emily, and both will be given freedom in the West in exchange for Max Stratman’s defecting to the East.
“Craig knows that once Stratman hears this tape, he will defect to give Emily back her father, his brother. Craig determines to look into this on his own before putting Max Stratman on the spot. He decides Daranyi is his man. Runs into Gottling, who takes him to Lilly who in turn gets him to Daranyi. And Daranyi, whose payment had been an attack on him by hired hoodlums (maybe he is only scratched, but frightened and angered), decides to spill everything and implicates Krantz.
“Craig catches Krantz dressing for the ceremony—makes it clear he knows facts that implicate Krantz—and Krantz, scared, begs off, shows how he was sucked in—says he will do anything not to be involved further or exposed. Craig says: take me to Walther.
“Krantz takes Craig to the launch in the canal where Walther is being kept before being returned to East Germany. Craig and Emily’s father, Walther, play a big climactic scene alone. Craig presses Walther, and when he offers Walther a chance to escape to freedom this minute without being traded for Max, Walther backs off—and Craig senses he had become a Communist and never meant to be traded—and Craig makes Walther inadvertently reveal the truth. This victory, admission, saves Max and Emily. After leaving the launch with Emily and Krantz—with Krantz along, no guard would bother to stop them—Craig finally lets Krantz go. Shortly after, Emily explains her horrible past (my problem still is to see that this integrates with the last chapter and is not merely character explanation) and Craig doesn’t give a damn about it and takes her in his arms.
“We go to the ceremony as I have it … and then Craig and Emily arrive … and Craig follows Max Stratman and accepts the award, the prize.”
My editor read my new outline of the last chapter, and on August 4, he wrote me: “I’m sorry that you’re having so much heartache with the ending of the Stratman-Craig-Emily story, but of course it’s important. I think the Walther Stratman bit that you outlined in your letter is good. It solves a lot of the problems and eliminates the chase scene, which, I think, was everyone’s major objection. As far as I can visualize it, it seems to work. That is, it fits into the book organically and is true to the original conception of the characters.”
I had gone down to Florence, and when I returned to Venice, I again wrote my editor on August 9:
“We got to the Lido. Adriatic water perfect. Bikinis perfect. Elsa Maxwell perfect. What did Jack Paar say of her? Yes: ‘just another pretty face.’ Anyway, nights hot, no air conditioning, so we moved back to the cool Hotel Danieli and commute. Last night we went to Harry’s Bar, then a concert in S. Marco, and when we returned to the hotel, there was a long-distance call from Hollywood. Dick Zanuck. He said George Cukor had reread The Chapman Report novel and wants me to do the polish of the latest script. Promised good money if I’d fly back to Burbank now. As I wrote Ziegler, that’s like asking a man to leave Eden for Dachau. But I told Zanuck, honestly, I was really through with films forever and even if I were not I still would be busy on revisions for The Prize …
“In Florence I think I licked the missing elements of the Walther last chapter of The Prize. It will work now.”
Six weeks later I was back at my desk in Los Angeles, and I was writing again. I took time off to report to my editor:
“You can imagine how hard it is to get to work again after all these months. Also, actual rewriting is very hard for me. I don’t mean cutting and pruning and small changes. That is routine. But actually creating new scenes for old, as I’m doing in the final chapter. It is hard because a book like The Prize is such a prolonged emotional outburst, and when you are done and have rewritten it several times while still in the mood, you seem to have said all you have had to say in the way you hoped or planned. It is done in a larger sense. Then you sell it to the publisher and paperback, and to films if you are lucky, and it begins to solidify in your mind as a finished piece of work that has been read by many and is ready for the public. Suddenly, the realization comes that something is wrong and you must or should rewrite something major—and it is wrenching, very much so. Suddenly, you have to get back in the mood of Emily and Craig and Krantz and so on, and you have to summon up the creative energy to build a new person like Walther, and you sweat blood at the pores. Well, after much poking about, you finally get to work. And so I did last Monday. And by today I have a third of the last chapter written. Walther is now in the story—a person.”
Two weeks later, the major rewrite was completed. But there was more to be done, still.
There remained endless smaller queries that hovered over me like swarms of bees. Earlier, neatly typed on five sheets of yellow paper, Korda had made fifty-five “suggested cuts and changes.” Accompanying these had been a three-page letter from Schwed adding, “Here are my comments about Mike’s specific suggestions so that you can evaluate any conflicting opinions, one against the other, and come to your own decision. In the comments below, 1 am following Mike’s memorandum and only making my own comments where I more or less disagree with Mike. If I make no comments at all, the inference is that I agree.”
These two suggestion letters, one from my editor, the other from my publisher, pleased me, reinforced my belief in the independence and honesty of the people I was working with at Simon and Schuster. Here there were no company men kowtowing to one another or, indeed, to an author. Here were men speaking their own minds. I had been with other publishers. I had never participated in anything quite like this before.
I weighed Korda’s suggestions, and Schwed’s comments, and I returned to my typewriter. Two more weeks of work, and I had six pages of notes—in which I agreed to certain changes, refused to make others—to brandish at the bees. Here is a sampling of our three-way exchange:
Page 27:
Korda: “Suggest cutting out ‘you rotten son-of-a-bitch.’ This will come up again. My feeling is that Denise should avoid profanity. She just isn’t the type. Gottling, yes. Märta Norberg, yes. Denise is an educated Frenchwoman, and unlikely to express herself this way.”
Schwed: “Agree completely with Mike, but do think that Denise should swear at this point. Not ‘you rotten son-of-a-bitch,’ however, but ‘you rotten pig (cochon?)’.“
Wallace: “There is, as you know, an exact and provocative and oft-used French phrase meaning son-of-a-bitch. I disagree with you and Peter that this is out of character. A woman even of this class, so shatteringly insulted, is capable of saying anything. I could tell you of a lofty French Ambassador’s daughter I knew … but I compromise by conceding to Peter’s suggestion. It is now ‘you rotten pig.’”
Page 131:
Korda: “Cut from ‘Because Jacobsson’ to end of paragraph.”
Schwed: No comment.
Wallace: “Okay, made your cut, although kept one line for smoother transition.”
Page 220:
Korda: “Cut from ‘There had been a handful of dim years’ to end of paragraph.”
Schwed: “I really don’t care. I think Mike has a point, but would side with you if you felt strongly.”
Wallace: “I simply could not bring myself to cut this out of Sue Wiley. Yes, I know we will later see what she is like—but here we learn, in advance, why—we understand her and she will be a less stereotyped bitch.”
Page 263:
Korda: “Cut from ‘Yes, curiouser and curiouser’ to end of paragraph.”
Schwed: No comment.
Wallace: “Okay, I made entire suggested cut.”
Page 312:
Korda: “Can Ingrid Påhl’s speech about liquor in Sweden be made a little shorter? It’s good, very good, but it goes on for a little too long.”
Schwed: “Another cut suggested by Mike, which eliminates some good atmosphere. Stet in my opinion.”
Wallace: “I could not figure how to cut this. I left it intact. It is sympathetic, I think it is interesting, and as drinking in Sweden relates to Craig’s problem in America, I feel it is even pertinent. My instinct says: don’t touch.”
Page 329:
Korda: “Cut from ‘Madame Marceau’ to page 330, end of paragraph, ‘… a promising one.’”
Schwed: “Disagree with Mike.”
Wallace: “Here is an important matter of judgment and feeling that runs the whole way through. I like this kind of intellectual sidelight, which after all is part of the Marceau background. I simply believe it belongs and should not be cut. Concerning the inclusion of factual information or atmosphere, I don’t say I am right to keep it in and you are wrong to want it out. I simply say this is a matter of highly individual taste. I like this materal, like to write it, like to read it (in other writers’ books), think it belongs in this kind of novel, think it helps the story—and if I took it out, it would be less the novel I had hoped to write. It might be a faster book your way, but, alas, not truly my book.”
Page 400:
Korda: “Cut from ‘There was a singsong exchange’ through second line on page 408. Too much information, which tends to block the reader’s attention.”
Schwed: “Another perhaps overlong atmospheric piece of writing, which I’d want to retain although I agree with Mike that it might be a shade too long.”
Wallace: “Now here we are, again, at a question of individual taste. You want eight pages out of the palace walk-through. It would speed the story. But, I tell myself, why speed the story at this point? I want to build slowly to the party scene, I wanted a look at the palace and its former inhabitants myself, I wanted this before meeting the present King. However—I have made some cuts.”
Page 499:
Korda: “I think the piece about the artist letting his mother starve is, in fact, from Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma. If Maugham used it, he must have taken it from Shaw.”
Schwed: No comment.
Wallace: “Just read GBS’s The Doctor’s Dilemma. What you refer to is not in it. Could you have meant another play? Anyway, Maugham did say this once.”
Page 548:
Korda: “Cut from ‘The spell of the evening’ to end of line 9 from bottom, page 549, ‘… perfect day.’”
Schwed: “Agree with Mike but the transition would be too abrupt if the cut were made exactly as suggested. You have to indicate that Craig has had a fine evening with Emily.”
Wallace: “I disagree with you and with Peter. I want to keep alive the mood of the first romantic meeting between hero and heroine, and also to keep sweetness and light in order to effect a contrast with the terrible scene that will follow moments later with Leah.”
Page 562:
Korda: “Cut from ‘The questions and now the answers’ to page 563, ‘… effects of the alcohol.’”
Schwed: No comment.
Wallace: “I was weighing the cutting of this when I saw I had it all wrong—and saw what was the matter—it gave away too much. So I rewrote it almost entirely. I think it is better now.”
Page 597:
Korda: “Cut from ‘What results?’ to page 598, ‘… in the next three years.’“
Schwed: “Agree with Mike that you don’t have to go into a full explanation of Pavlov’s experiment, but would retain the interesting material on page 598.”
Wallace: “I made the entire Pavlov cut.”
Page 695:
Korda: “Cut from top of this page to end of line 3 from bottom, page 698.”
Schwed: “Think that if Daranyi keeps his function in the book, this is good stuff. If he doesn’t, throw it out.”
Wallace: “No, no, Mike, all necessary to make any dramatic ending plausible. The Enbom case is a plant to show what is possible in the field of espionage in placid Sweden (just as current doings in East-West Berlin make any last chapter I write more acceptable next year).”
Before mailing my reactions to Korda’s suggestions and Schwed’s alternate comments, I had written my editor a long preliminary letter discussing some of the editorial points with which I was still wrestling. As I wrote him, in part:
“I find one thing fascinating. I find that the points about which you and Peter disagree tend to involve only two items—one, descriptive passages; two, factual information on the Nobel Prizes. You seem to feel these slow the story down and get in the way. Peter seems to feel the background color is helpful and the factual stuff interesting. Who is right? I do not know. There can be no answer now, of course. I suppose it is a problem of striking a delicate balance. Naturally, I put descriptive passages in for many reasons, and factual stuff in to give reality to my fiction, but overall they are in because I felt it was right. Still, your challenges give me pause—I see in places I may have gone too far, obstructed the How. How much of this I will pare away I cannot yet tell you. Some has been done, of course. I am reading and rereading the rest of it.
“My handling of Denise seems to have bothered you and Peter the most. The swear words. Her two love scenes. Well, that is interesting—I meant to discuss it with you earlier. Surely you have met as many young French ladies and middle-aged French ladies as I have—I don’t mean café girls—but women of good family and marriage. Well, some I have known have talked pretty loosely, to put it mildly. Recently I started reading The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir and right off one of her French white-collar girls tells a man he has ‘a brain at the tip of his prick.’ De Beauvoir? In short, your image of the French lady and my own simply differ. However, I am going along with you and Peter for two reasons. First, you feel strongly and I must respect this. Second, I think, right or wrong, the public here may have your image of the French lady and be jolted by my Denise and not accept her or believe in her, since she would not conform to their image. So, the strong language is out. Much more important, I completely rewrote the love scenes. You are absolutely justified here …”
To this, Mike Korda replied two days later:
“Your revisions sound fine. My feeling that some of the background passages slow the story up is, of course, just one person’s opinion, and Peter may well be right in thinking that they should stay in. I ought to point out that I find all of the background material fascinating! It’s just that there seem to be a few places where there is too much of it, and I was afraid the reader might find his attention diverted from the story for too long. I may be wrong, and I’m sure your decision will be right for the book.
“As to Denise, I don’t, alas, know Simone de Beauvoir (I wish I did know her!), nor have I ever met any French scientists, male or female. But my experience has been that strong language is rarely used by French women except (a) in moments of crises, and (b) in particular social sets, for example, the literary world, the arts in general, high life and the sporting world. In Denise’s case, I just can’t see it. She is essentially a bourgeois Frenchwoman (as Mme Curie was), who believes in the sanctity of marriage and in morality. That is why her husband’s affair is doubly shocking to her, it seems to me, and why her own seduction of Lindblom is such a painful experience for her. If she were really a hard-talking bohemian, she might not have such a strong reaction to her husband’s love affair. But she does react strongly (and she should), and that’s why it seems to me to be more in keeping with her character to have her language toned down …”
On October 14, 1961, I was writing Korda, “Today—selah—I finished with the revisions of The Prize. I delivered the entire new last chapter to the typists several hours ago, and will deliver about a hundred more new insert pages in a few days.”
Two weeks later I was writing Korda, “I am mailing this airmail at the same time that I am mailing, under separate cover, two revised versions of The Prize. I am also enclosing here a six-page memo explaining some of my major cuts and changes, and why I chose to retain other sections.”
The rewritten, revised, tightened manuscript of the novel was on its way to New York, and now I suffered a week of anxiety as I awaited the reactions of my editor and my publisher.
On November 6, 1961, my editor gave me his reaction:
“1 reread The Prize over the weekend, and I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time around. I think that’s a good sign. I checked through all the revisions, which seem to me fine. The scenes between Denise and Lindblom are much, much better. The Sue Wiley scene is fine, and obviously shouldn’t have been cut, now that I read it again. I think toning Garrett down has made him much more real a character … I got the feeling that the book now moves faster, despite the fact that it’s about the same length. This is especially true of Chapter XII, which, in its new version, has much more pace and excitement … In the new Chapter XII, by the way, Krantz emerges as a much more interesting person. This seems to me one of the happiest outcomes of the revisions. Anyway, I think we’re ready to go, and go we will.”
A day later I heard from my publisher:
“My feelings concur with those stated in Mike’s letter. Therefore, I’ll only say that I think the time and trouble you took with revisions was well worth while, and thank you. I must admit that I still have some reservations about the East German situation being mixed up in this book, and that it still seems to me a little out of place, but we’ve argued this out long and hard and it’s your book and I like what you now have done much better than I did the original version. So let’s go …”
But they were not quite ready to go, as it turned out. For now, from two copy editors and stylists, I was inundated with eleventh-hour queries. These arrived the week before Christmas. Accompanying them was an interoffice memorandum from the copy editor assigned to the book, Ann Maulsby, to the chief copy editor, Sophie Sorkin:
“Here is The Prize, at last. As you know, I found it a fascinating piece of work, and so full of suspense that it was a struggle for me to keep my mind on my work. I went through it twice, though, and I hope the author will understand that I did so with loving care. In a colossal manuscript like this, containing so many facts in so many fields, and so many words in so many foreign languages, it would have been a miracle if there had been no inadvertent errors. I would like the author to know that all changes in spellings, dates, etc., have been made in accordance with a recognized source: Webster, of course, in the case of many words and proper names. Mr. Lars Malmstrom of the Swedish Information Service was more than courteously helpful, and is my authority on Swedish matters in this ms. I checked French, Norwegian, Danish, and German information with the respective consulates, and the Italian words were checked with an Italian-born teacher of Italian. Mrs. Sienitzsky in the Russian library of Radio Liberation had all the Russian data at her fingertips.
“The attached list of queries to the author will seem very long to you—and to him. But I was careful to make no change in the ms. that he could possibly object to, and where there was even the slightest question, I listed it so that he could make the decision.”
A sampling of queries, and my replies:
Copy editor: “Page 33. ‘Kurfsdamm.’ The Kurfürstendamm is called Ku’damm, not Kurfsdamm, according to my German authority. Change?”
Author: “I have just phoned my German expert. Ku’damm is correct. Please change.”
Copy editor: “Page 170. Note change in re time shown by jewelers’ clocks. Time varies between 8:15 and 8:20; many are 8:18. O.K.?”
Author: “My line is ‘she would also remember reading somewhere.’ I suspect she read Nuggets of Knowledge by George W. Stimpson, NYC, Sully, 1932, who replies in detail to the question, ‘Why are dummy clocks set at 8:18?’ Legend has it that dummy clocks are usually set at 8:18, because that was supposed to have been the time of Lincoln’s death, which it was not. Actually done because it is the most symmetrical arrangement for the hands of a clock. Anyway, leave it as I have it—8:18 is stet.”
Copy editor: “Page 222. ‘Composed.’ This word implies that Key wrote the music for ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Since he wrote only the words, do you want to change this?”
Author: “Yes, change ‘composed’ to ‘written.’”
Copy editor: “Page 288. Is this true? Articles in Encyc. Brit, and Collier’s Encyc. do not mention Plato’s being sold into slavery and being ransomed by Anniceris.”
Author: “My source is Diogenes Laertius. More modern source is The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, ‘In the year 387 B.C. Plato received an invitation from Dionysius … to come and turn his kingdom into Utopia … Story has it that Plato was sold into slavery, to be rescued by his friend and pupil Anniceris, who, when Plato’s Athenian followers wished to reimburse him for the ransom he had paid, refused.’ Anyway, as to Plato’s being ransomed—truth is not necessary, only legend, for Craig is basing a work of fiction on a possibly true tradition.”
Copy editor: “Page 338. Author mentions Knut Hamsun snapping Selma Lagerlöf’s girdle. Can author substantiate?”
Author: “The tale of Knut Hamsun’s snapping Selma Lagerlöf’s girdle while in a state of insobriety is true and supported by the best authority. I obtained this in a letter dated 1949 from the head of the official Office in Stockholm. See enclosed Exhibit A, copy of original.”
Copy editor: “Page 480. ‘Indent.’ Not a Swedish name. There is a title, Intendent, and the head of a Swedish publishing house would have this title.”
Author: “Now we come to the case of Mr. Indent Flink—ah, if only Conan Doyle were here. Since 1946 I have always supposed Indent to be Swedish name. See attached Exhibit B, a copy from my 1946 journal. It says Sylvia had arranged to interview a Lapp expert in Stockholm whose first name is noted as ‘Indent.’ I loved the Indent for years and now have used it. Could I have got it wrong? A possibility. But there it is. If there is no Indent in Sweden—can I not create one? Blame it on his mother, a paragrapher. Should we leave it or no? I say leave it. But if you think it is absolutely wrong, then I suppose he will have to become Lennart Flink. What think you?”
Copy editor: “Page 482. ‘As baffling as the Rosetta stone.’ Is this the simile you want here, when it was the Rosetta stone that helped decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics?”
Author: “Ann is absolutely right. Change to, ‘And found them as baffling as the inscriptions on the Kensington Stone.’”
Copy editor: “Page 629. Author says Glogg is burnt brandy. Glogg is a Christmas toddy.”
Author: “My Svensk-Engelski Ordlista, published in Stockholm, 1937, supplied by the Grand Hotel, says, ‘Glogg … burnt brandy.’ William Sansom, in The Icicle and The Sun, says, ‘a glass of hot Christmas glogg, made from snaps and steaming spiced wine.’ Ma’am, that ain’t Christmas toddy to me—that’s a falling down drink. Stet.”
Copy editor: “Page 844. Author says Märta has ‘a concave bosom.’ Is that okay? It didn’t actually curve in?”
Author: “Well, no, her bosom did not dip inward. There is a type of female figure where, from shoulders down the chest bone, there is a hunched, concave area before the slight rise of the breasts. To be accurate, I should change it to read, ‘water sliding down her concave breastbone and slight bosom and sleek flanks and dripping to the poolside.’”
Copy editor: “Page 1038. ‘H.M. the King.’ O.K.? I don’t think ‘His Majesty’ is abbreviated. H.R.H. would do, but I don’t think H.M. will.”
Author: “I know it is curious, but keep it stet. In 1949, Pearl Buck and her late husband were kind enough to send me her original Nobel Prize schedule, entitled ‘Memorandum,’ handed her in Stockholm. I have followed this official Memorandum, except for altering to suit my fictional characters and their stories, and this Memorandum actually reads, ‘H.M. the King.’ See enclosed Exhibit C.”
Copy editor: “Page 1158. Here you have him ‘a hale and boisterous hostage.’ But on page 1157 you have him ‘this weak old man.’“
Author: “Thank you. I rewrite here to read now, ‘he found himself confronting a hale and boisterous hostage. Craig realized that the façade of weakness he saw was one he had built in his own mind and imposed upon Walther. It had no reality. Craig felt cheated.’”
Copy editor: “General note. In the purely literary department, I made no changes except to correct typos or other outright errors, of which there were few. The chief syntactical error was the dangler. There were several. Where the author had ‘Listening, Sue Wiley’s eyes glared,’ I changed this to ‘As she listened, Sue Wiley’s eyes glared.’ He certainly would want these inadvertent booboos corrected, wouldn’t he?”
Author: “He certainly would. Thanks for catching the danglers. Thanks to all of you for your wonderful help.”
I thought that I was through, but the sudden arrival of a legal letter forced me to go to work again. Simon and Schuster had shown the manuscript to their attorney, Ephraim London, and he wanted to be certain that none of the names I had given my individual fictional characters coincided with the names of persons living in the cities in which I had placed these characters. Especially was he concerned about John Garrett and the persons whom I had invented to participate with him in group-therapy sessions. More research and checking, and finally my reply to my editor and the company’s attorney, ran in part:
“There is no John Garrett, in fact no Garrett at all, listed under ‘Physicians’ in Pasadena or in the Los Angeles Central Telephone Directory. Sylvia went to her doctor and leafed through his medical directories. Again, no John Garrett, M.D., in this area … Re Mrs. Perrin. There are 37 Perrins in the Directory … Re Miss Dudzinski. None. The name is common in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where I come from—Polish-Lithuanian—and my high school yearbooks abound with Dudzinskis or variations. That is from where I plucked the name—from memory.
“I assume you will check out the other American names. I usually invent names as follows: for a German physicist I will make up, from five or ten sources (history books, political books, biographies, what not), a long list of common last names—and then, from memory or my set of baby-naming books, assign some different first name. Sometimes I will change spellings slightly. That’s how Max Stratman’s name was born … My Swedish names I got as follows: I had brought a Stockholm telephone directory back with me. I made list after list of last names, then list after list of given names, scrambled the two lists together, and in this way invented new combinations. Example, Lilly Hedqvist—invented—but both names common in Sweden, common separately. I took great care with Count Bertil Jacobsson. I felt he had a crucial role since I tied him in with the actual Foundation. I deliberately took a name which a Count could not have in Sweden—much to the distress of my Swedish experts—but this makes us absolutely safe—and anyway, Jacobsson for this man is so, so right.
“Tell Mr. London I made up Winston Churchill (although there are three Winston Churchills in Stockholm, all sleigh instructors). I also made up Hungarians, since it is obvious they don’t exist.”
At last, The Prize was being set in type.
With the coming of 1962—and with it came two weeks of meticulous and exhausting revisions made in the margins of the galley sheets—the novel was out of my hands, and my involvement with it was less all-consuming and more pleasurable.
At this stage, you have time, at last, to write your friends, and while you speak of your book, you can also speak of other matters. To Jerome Weidman: “Essandess are coming out with The Prize in April or May, big plans … I’ve been avoiding the Hollywood crowd pretty much. The town is having its miseries. Most everyone is in TV, which is often boring, so dinner parties are more boring unless you drink, which I do … What else is there to say? My mother can’t find a pill for her nerves. My father’s ulcer keeps acting up. Sylvia’s father is in the sanitarium and speaks of her old boy friends. My son is in 9th grade and working at French and speaking warmly of the night we took him to the Folies. My daughter is in first grade and watches Bonanza on television. Paul Reynolds will be out here tomorrow and we are dining … And there is always the sun, which is good but which I don’t see. (Also, one hamster died.)”
You await mail from your publisher. You see specimens of the paper stock and type face, sent by Helen Barrow, the production manager.
You learn what the retail price of the book will be. (To Korda: “$6.95? I cannot believe it. I think it is a grave error. There was a party last night with Kip Fadiman, Irving Stone and Ray Bradbury present, and among other things we talked about publishers’ book pricing …”)
You hear of the crucial reaction of the publisher’s salesmen at the semiannual sales conference. (From Korda: “We had our sales conference today, and presented The Prize formally to the salesmen. They were enormously excited, and the general feeling was that the subject of the book guaranteed better sales than we had for The Chapman Report. Anyway, great, great enthusiasm and conviction on their part. And that counts.”)
You learn that your publisher has decided to send out five hundred photocopies of the manuscript version of the first chapter to “our own salesmen, bookstores, and major accounts,” and you are ecstatic. You await the first proof of the book jacket (I had objected to the first jacket sketch, and happily another was designed which satisfied everyone).
You send off implausible exploitation ideas. You are worried your publisher might use the wrong approach when presenting the book to the public. You are quickly reassured by a letter from your editor: “We agree with you when you say that the Nobel Prize should take a second place to the story and characters, and I think we can devise some way of doing this that will still preserve the excitement inherent in the Prize itself, and yet keep the primary emphasis on the fact that this is a novel about people.”
You receive an advance copy of the printed book, fresh from the bindery, and it is difficult to let go of it long enough to acknowledge its receipt. You write your publisher: “May 8, 1962. Dear Peter, IT ARRIVED! It looks marvelous. I love the color and feel of the binding, and the compact bulk of it, and all in all I’m pleased. This is a thrilling day. I’ve had six before, and this is the seventh, and the pulse still jumps as before. Luck to both of us! … Andrew Craig Irving Wallace.”
Then other things begin to happen, and you are manic and you are depressive, and you live on the peak of high hopes and you live in the vale of despair, and your wife wishes that she had married that nice accountant after all. The advance orders from bookstores are high, and you sing exultantly if off-key. The publisher invests $1,000 in an early three-page advertisement in Publishers’ Weekly, the book industry’s major trade journal, and you vow you will remember him in your will. Although you feel as if you were a castaway on a desert island, three thousand miles from New York (where civilization is concentrated, the publishers say), you are found by representatives of the New York press, and your Crusoe complex disappears.
You know there are two key trade reviews put out six or seven weeks before a book’s official publication, and you await them, and they come too soon: the Virginia Kirkus Service, a biweekly newsletter giving advance reviews of forthcoming books, says you have written “a long and popularly prefabricated novel” and that while “this will win no literary prize, it may cop a wide market,” and you sulk and morbidly study your razor, because all of your blood, sweat, and backaches, all of your brilliant inventions, perceptions, and researches, all of your dreams of literary glory, have been brought down and down to what the unknowing know as commercialism. Suddenly you have the second judgment; you have Publishers’ Weekly with its considerably more influential ‘Fiction Forecast’ by Jessie Kitching, and you learn that you have written “a gripping novel … tense … explosive … The reader will find the personal stories genuinely fascinating … expect large sales for this one,” and you are off again, in that high place where people walk only on ceilings, and hell is truly become heaven, and where Kirkus is a swearword and Kitching is your other wife.
What is left? Nothing but to sit back, armed with bottle and pills, and wait for publication day.