Steinbeck by John Steinbeck

not less than thirty dollars, and I can’t pay a dentist bill. There’s something silly about it. I don’t just know where it is, but it’s crazy some way.
    In a rougher age I would have been eliminated I guess. A saber tooth would have grabbed me while I looked stupidly at pond lilies.
    When I was sixteen or seventeen I spent a goodly time looking in mirrors bemoaning my ugliness, turning my head to see whether some position or other wouldn’t soften the coarseness of my features. None of them did. The people I admired and envied! If I could only have looked forward I wouldn’t have minded so much. The beauty of the school, at thirty-two,—baldness and astigmatism and the gin which society forced him to drink, have made him look like a slender pig. The lovely girl I didn’t dare speak to because my lips were thick and my nose resembled a wen, is sagging under the chin and her eyes have the worried look of half-successful people who only buy at the best markets and who will mortgage the house rather than keep a car two years.
    Then after a while I stopped looking in mirrors. It was safer. I didn’t see myself for a number of years, and when I finally did look again, it was a stranger I saw, and I didn’t care one way or another what he looked like.
    This was begun some days ago. It probably doesn’t mean anything. I am having trouble with my manuscript. Most of my troubles arise in something like that. Also I have a tooth-ache, two huge fever blisters, and the itch of departing novocaine. These are enough to disrupt any philosophy. In addition—this paper which was guaranteed to take ink, didn’t very well. I feel peeled of my skin and the nerve ends quivering in the air.
    I’m having a devil of a time with my new book. It just won’t seem to come right. Largeness of character is difficult. Never deal with an Olympian character. I think better times will come to me pretty soon. March is a curious month for my family. Every disaster of every kind—death, sickness, financial stress, during the last two generations of my family, has occurred in March. My mother goes through the month with her teeth set, fully believing it is an evil month for us. If a March passes without evil she celebrates.
    Aren’t you ever coming up again? This is the grand time of the year, and you didn’t even see the coast country. It is the most fantastic place. We have no car now, but I drive my folks places. They are enjoying it so much.
    [unsigned]

To George Albee
    [Pacific Grove] [Spring] 1931
    Dear George:
    I have been filled with a curious cloying despair. I haven’t heard a word from any of my manuscripts for over three months. It is nerve wracking. I would welcome rejections far more than this appalling silence.
    My new novel slumbers. I doubt myself. This is a very critical time.
    Carol’s business is growing nicely. She gets prettier all the time. I’m more in love with her than I ever was. Sometimes I waken in the night with the horrible feeling that she is gone. I shouldn’t want to live if she were.
    I wish you would come up. There are so many things I want to talk to you about.
    We are just as broke as ever. More so, if that is possible. Money would probably kill me as too rich air would.
    I shan’t send this today. I haven’t a stamp and probably I shall want to write some more tomorrow.
    John

To Amasa Miller
    [Pacific Grove]
[June 1931]
    Dear Ted:
    I had your letter this morning. Your house in the country at the place the name of which I could not read, sounds charming indeed. This country is becoming a desert. The ten dry years are on again and if they continue very much longer we will be conserving water. The usual dejection is falling over the country people and they are making plans to move. The farmer is the most chicken-headed of humans. Let one man succeed in a crop and the whole Valley puts in that crop and floods the market while