Charles Salzberg
426 East 58th Street
New York, N.Y. 10022
PI.5-7396
'I'he End
One day in the spring of 1951 Robert Giroux, then an editor at Harcourt, Brace, received a phone call fror;i Jack Kerouac who had been hard at work on his novel, On the Road.
"He was very high," recalls Mr. Giroux, "and he said, 'Bob, I've just finished my book and I have to come in and show it to you.' I could tell from his voice he was elated, which is very common among authors who have just completed their work."
The next day Kerouac arrived at Mr. Giroux's office with a large roll of paper-resembling kitchen toweling-tucked under his arm. "What's that?" asked Mr. Giroux, and Kerouac responded simply by yelling "Whee!" and unfurling the roll of pasted together legal-size teletype paper across the office floor so that it looked to Mr. Giroux '-'like confetti unrolling."
"Unthinkingly, stupidly," admits Mr. Giroux, "I said, 'Jack, how did
you do that?' He said, 'It never came out of the typewriter.' I said, 'Jack, how are you going to make corrections?' It was a strategic mistake, absolutely the wrong thing to say, but I said it and he was enraged. He said, 'There aren't going to be any corrections. This was dictated by the Holy Ghost."' Whereupon Kerouac packed up his manuscript and stalked out of Mr. Giroux's office. "He was very sore, so sore that he left the firm and I didn't speak to him for some time afterwards."
Mr. Girolux's error in judgment was simply that he'd failed to take into account Kerouac's delicate state of mind. After years of work on his novel he was finally finished and his mood euphoric. To be brought -down to earth by the merest hint of pragmatism or criticism, was akin
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to jolting a sleepwalker awake. Kerouac was, as are most writers at that stage of their work, in a raw, vulnerable place, a place where all sorts of glorious fantasies of success, both literary and worldly, dwell.
Of course, Kerouac's mood was not unique. Completing a book can be an exhilarating, draining, ecstatic, even traumatic experience for a writer. It is a time of fantastic hope and tremendous doubt. It is both a sad time and a happy time. It is what the writer looks forward to all the while he's writing and yet, paradoxically, it is also a time he dreads, in part, at least, because it means letting go, sending his work, his vision, out into a world which is not always hospitable.
As Kem Nunn, author of Tapping the Source, explains, "You're glad you're done, but at the same time you're a little embarrassed because you can't make any more excuses. You can't fool yourself into thinking you can still make it better. You're pleased you're finished but disappointed it's not as good as you thought it would be."
Completion itself, however, is a fuzzy area. When is a book finished? Is it, in fact, ever finished, or is it merely abandoned? As Richard Ford, author of The Sportswriter, says, "The point of writing a novel is not to get finished with it. It's not goal oriented. You want to stay in it as long as you can and write it as well as you can. There is an impulse to stay in the midst of it. It becomes your normal life, and when it's over, you try to minimize the change as much as you can."
For Joseph Heller, whose Catch-22 took eight years to complete, it's not over till it's really over. "I don't feel I'm finished with a book until it's remaindered. I seem to be involved with a book for at least a year after publication."
"I kept finishing and finishing and finishing," says Amy Wallace, about The Prodigy, her first effort without the collaboration of either her brother, David Wallechinsky, or father, Irving Wallace. "There was the first draft, then the rewriting, then the editing and copyediting, then the galleys. I kept asking, 'Is it really done?"' Or, as Richard Ford points out, "There are so many publishing deadlines and each gives you a sense of finishing. It's hard to detect when a book is actually finished, became you're constantly being asked to reconsider and make decisions."
Nevertheless, the end does come, but before it does there is that final drive toward the finish line. For most, this is the writing that comes with the greatest ease, as the words fly with startling speed from the mind to the page. "By that time," says Kurt Vomegut, "the book makes demands of its own. It becomes a personality, almost like a collaborator."
Irving Wallace, an inveterate chart-keeper, notes his daily progress on a manuscript. "Someone once did a study of the way I write and found that as I near the end of a book I double or triple my output to 15 or 18 pages a day. I think this is because I'm so intense about finishing."
Joseph Heller figures that "the last third of the book only takes about 10 percent of the time. "I don't know whether that's due to confidence or that the alternatives have been narrowed down."
"Near the end," says Geoffrey Wolf, whose non-fiction includes Black Sun and The Duke of Deception, his novel, Bad Debts and the Providencg, "I'm working at tremendous velocity, sometimes 15 or 20 pages a day, even up to 30, which I'm ashamed to admit. It's like carrying a rock downhill instead of up. There is a great deal of momentum."
Some who experience this phenomenom are frightened by or at least suspicious of it. "At the end," says Jonathan Kellerman, a psychologist and Professor of Pediatrics at USC and author of When the Bough Breaks and Blood Test, "I have a tendency to speed up and I try to check that. When I reach the resolution I always take a week off, because I don't want to screw up the ending. I stop and slow it down, treating it as a separate entity, almost like a mini-novel within the novel."-, Dominic Dunne author of The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, also fights the speed at which the pages threaten to come. "I slow down near the end because of the fear of letting go. It becomes so much a part of you, you think about it all the time..."
Sope authors experience what Larry McMurtry calls a "fatigue high," which allows them to work prodigiously, remaining surprisingly sharp for long periods of time. "I sometimes experience this as I get near the end of a book, it says Mr. McMurtry. "I wrote All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers in the wake of this high and I like this book better than any of my others, perhaps because I glided into it from the momentum of another book." Kurt Vomegut has had similar experiences. "On finishing Galapagos I felt I'd performed a difficult athletic feat and I still had the tension with me so I wrote a play. It's kind of like the German army who, after a soldier had done his tour of duty on the Russian front, would send him down to Africa to fight, sort of letting him use sane of the momentum he'd built up."
As a writer approaches the end, he often becomes obsessed. "Near the finish my consciousness is filled with the book," says Mr. McMurtry, "almost to an uncomfortable degree. In the last stage it will intrude on my sleep, as I sometimes dream my way into the book. Generally, it's revealed itself to you and you want to get to the end, and once at the end I fe6l like I've lost something." It is perhaps for this reason that Geoffrey Wolf says, "Finishing is not a time when I put a big grin on my face."
When a writer puts that final period on the final page his emotions are at a fever pitch. For many there is a feeling of omnipotence, a sense perhaps, that someone on the same level as Jack Kerouac's Holy Ghost was perched on their shoulder during the act of creation. On finishing 0, Lost, Thomas Wolfe was so sure of his future as a writer that he quit his teaching job. Geoffrey Wolf almost did the same. "My first book Bad Debts, came almost shamefully quickly, in only six weeks. I didn't really have time to feel all the anxiety that came with subsequent books. In fact, a friend finished his hovel at the same time and we had all these meglomaniacal notions of what was going to happen to us. I talked of quitting my job at the Washington Post. Our rockets were launched. The western world was waiting for literature from us. Certainly, I don't feel this way anymore."
"When I'm finished, I'm elated," says Mr. Vomegut. "I feel like I've swung from the heels and knocked one out of the park." Or, as Mr. Heller puts it, "There's a sense of accomplishment, elation and an exaggerated optimism as to the general acceptance of the book."
"On finishing," says Stanley Elkin, "I always feel pretty secure in
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the hope that I've done a good job. With George Mills, I thought I didn't have to write another novel. I thought I owned the language. But after a couple of months I realized there's not a whole hell of a lot a writer can do other than write, so I started another one."
This top-of-the-world feeling wasn't always the case with Mr. Elkin. "I had a contract for my first novel, Boswell, on the basis of two chapters. When I finished I thought of it as a fait accompli, but then I went back and read the contract and saw that phrase about acceptance of a satisfactory manuscript. I immediately began worrying and went from euphoria to deep gloom."
This kind of mood swing is not uncommon, especially with a first novel. "For me," says Ron Hansen, whose first book was Desperadoes, "there was a feeling of elation and anticipation, as well as a feeling of suspense: are other people going to like this as much as I do? With my second book, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, it was more like working a 9 to 5 job, since I already had a contract. There was a greater sense of relief once I finished, a feeling of having fulfilled an obligation, as well as a sense of having been unburdened after four years."
Rather than elation, some writers experience a profound sadness on finishing. "Normally," says Mr. McMurtry, "I get quite depressed and it lasts in direct ratio to the size of the book I've just finished. The characters become companions and I've become comfortable with them and when it's over I feel rather bleak because suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, they're gone. This isn't necessarily the case with shorter books, like Desert Rose, which took a month to write. I didn't have such a sag. And I don't remember being grieved to finish The Last Picture Shaw, because I wrote it very briefly, over a month, as a respite from working on something else. But usually there's at least a month or so of vacantness after finishing. I ask myself, 'what am I going to do now? How will I fill my time?"'
Irving Wallace, too, often experiences a sense of loss. "With The Prize, I had a double feeling: utter joy because you don't think you're going to make it, but also sadness because I missed the characters. They'd become more real than anyone in my family. I wondered what happened to them after the point where I'd finished the book."
Even some writers who don't think they've done a terribly good job, still feel much the same. "As badly written as the first draft of Clan of the Cave Bears was," says Jean Auel, "I still cried when I finished, I missed those characters so much."
"It's always the same feeling and it's getting more pronounced," says Joyce Carol Oates. "A sense of loss. I'm very bereft I do a lot of revisions and I actually look forward to going back and recasting and re-imagining the characters because I've grown to love them so much. I miss the voice, the rhythm, the musicality. I always think I'm not going back to writing a novel at all because it's so exhausting."
For Danielle Steel, author of Secrets, who says that "I never start a book without being terrified I won't finish it, and I never finish a book without being terrified I won't start another," there is a momentary excitement when she finishes and then a letdown once she realizes her characters have left her.
But some writers do not seem to get quite so involved with their characters, consequently their sense of loss is nowhere near as profound. "The notion,"says Richard Ford, "that characters are real is an illusion that passes very quickly. After all, it's just language. It's people who are flesh and blood." Judith Krantz, author of Scruples, has a novel way of looking at it: "I like to think all my characters go away and have a party together."
Writers who produce both fiction and non-fiction see a distinct difference in the feelings they have upon completion of their work. "There's more elation on finishing a work of fiction," says Irving Wallace. "It's a work of the imagination, a piece of yourself. With non-fiction the feeling is more of satisfaction, of coziness. You're pleased mathematically that you've found a solution." Says Joyce Carol Oates, "With non-fiction the feelings aren't as intense because the subject is out there, you don't have to invent it."
Geoffrey Wolf concurs. "When I finish biography I have far less neurotic thoughts. The person I've written about is apart from me. You can sort of put your hands around the book and say, 'I have done this as best I could.' There is the feeling of simple craftsmanship. With a novel there are far, far, more second thoughts. Have I made sense out of this world? Have I come up against the limits of my gift?"
The actual moment of completion is occasionally a memorable time for an author. Most often this is the case either on a first book or one that presents special difficulties.
Jean Auel, for instance, remembers well the end of The Mammoth Hunters. "There was pressure on me to finish because I was late. I got into a funny Zen state. I worked 32 hours straight. I was totally exhausted and decided to go to bed. But six hours later I was up and wide awake, so I sat down at the typewriter and was there another 28 hours until the book was finished. My husband saw that I was close to the end and put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. About three o'clock in the afternoon I stood up and screamed, 'The End.' My husband got the bottle of champagne, poured four glasses, and we toasted the book. Then I got very talkative. It was babble, babble, babble. Suddenly, I just stopped, said goodnight, went upstairs and collapsed into bed."
One might think that all writers celebrate when they finally reach the end of what may have been a long and arduous journey, but this is not necessarily the case, at least not on the scale one might imagine. Often the celebration, if there is one at all, is rather mundane, like the haircut Ernest Hemingway got when he finished For Whom the Bell Tolls.
"It's the stereotypical response," says Mr. Vonnegut, "but after finishing my first book, Player Piano, I think I probably went out and had one too many martinis and a steak, though I was very poor at the time." Danielle Steel usually gives her husband a gift, "because he's so instrumental in my getting the book done." Dominic Durme was taken out for a meal by his editor, "a wonderful lunch at the Four Seasons, though the main celebration is within yourself.' % Others, like Irving Wallace, take trips-"Usually outside the U.S.. But from that celebration usually comes another idea for a book." "My celebration," says Geoffrey Wolf, "is to hand the book over to my wife and children. That's fun. I look forward to them reading it."
Jay McInerney hardly remembers celebrating at all. "At the end of Bright Lights, after 6 weeks work at 10 to 12 hours a day, I was extremely wiped out. I think I went out to celebrate with some writer friends, but I can't honestly remember. I do know that the next day I couldn't get out of bed. I slept a good part of the next week, feeling somewhat dazed, unfamiliar with the outside world."
Not everyone who celebrates does it at the same point in time. Some do it immediately after the draft that is to go to their agent or editor is completed; others await official word of acceptance; still others wait longer. "The day comes when the book is out of your hands," says Richard Ford. "It's in a room you can't get into, and that's when I celebrate with my wife, Kristina, by sharing a bottle of champagne."
The comparison has sometimes been made between having babies and producing a book. On the surface, there might be a few similarities, but it appears to be seriously stretching a point. "It's much neater having babies than writing books," says Danielle Steel, who should know since she's written 19 books and given birth to eight children. "For one thing, with a book you're always worried whether you got it right, but with a baby you don't worry if you put the nose in the right place."
And yet there is certainly a postpartum depression that plagues most writers, though at different times and in varying degrees. "There's a delayed depression reaction," says Amy Wallace. "While I was involved in the book I was wrapped up in all the details, everything loomed so large I didn't really have a chance to feel depressed. But when it was over, it hit me."
For Stanley Elkin, depression comes only after the book is between hard covers. "When I see th, first copy of the produced book I open it at random. When I come across the first typographical error, I get very depressed, and I get even more depressed after I see the next. I wonder how it's possible that myself and all the other professionals involved could have missed it."
"No matter how interested and excited the publisher is," says Mr. Heller, "there comes a day when you go into the office and they'haven't got time for you. It's not so much a postpartum thing as it is that you're no longer an important person. There's another book coming out, so you don't get as much attention."
Some writers, like Irving Wallace, beat depression by having an idea for their next book while in the midst of the one they're working on. Others, like Mr. Vomegut, expect a period of depression and prepare themselves. "I know what causes it and now, after so many books, I'm able to work through it."
When the manuscript is safely at the publisher's, the writer's life changes. "While writing," says Mr. McInerney, "you have to make a world of your own and live in it, so the world beyond your desk loses its primacy and there is a certain amount of disorientation when you get back into the real world. You go outside and see what season it is. You savor the world beyond your study. Suddenly, you are released from your obligation, and there is the initial feeling of what am I going to do tomorrow?"
"Some men, it says Miss Oates, "go a little crazy. They have love affairs, or they drink, because they have so much energy that's left unchanneled. I have a writer friend who goes hunting and kills small creatures when he finishes a book. As soon as he finishes at his typewriter he reaches for his shotgun. I'm not a manic but more depressed person." Miss Oates is so wrenched by the experience of finishing a novel that she says she leaves "the study where I've been writing prose and move to another part of the house where I read and write poetry."
When it's finally over, the writer is left with something besides a finished manuscript and a check-time. The world is with them again. The period of sacrifice over. Things left undone can be taken care of; friends who have been neglected can be seen again; activities avoided for lack of time can be taken up again. "While writing," says Mr. Ford, "you are disabled from doing things. I don't take books lightly, so I don't want to jump into them too quickly. I was surprised at how long the days were when I finished The Sportswriter. I have to invent things to do-paint al.room, go hunting or fishing, see friends, read. When you write you cut everything else out and there is a huge pleasure in cutting them back in."
Irving Wallace catches up on shopping he's neglected. His daughter, Amy, catches up on the world. "During the three years I was writing the book I never knew what was going on. People would talk about 'Dallas" and I didn't know what they meant. Now that I have more time, I watch a lot of television. I also see friends, trying to make up for lost time. But it's also sad because I know I'm on the verge of saying goodbye again as soon as I get into working on my novel." Danielle Steel, who says her room "looks like a bomb's hit it," combs her hair, soaks in the tub, and greets the army of people "her family,"who await her return.
"When it's over," says Mr. Heller, "I tend to buy things. I bought an electronic typewriter, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and recently a word processor. I find myself with more time on my hands, which I like, by the way, so I clean closets and go shopping." Ron Hansen catches up on correspondence. "My desk area gets cleared and it begins to look more like a business environment." Geoffrey Wolf thinks "about things I should do but don't, usually physical things, like splitting wood. Or I try to go on a long, single-handed cruise, which keeps my mind busy."
Many writers have a rough time getting back into writing. "I'm not like Trollope who wrote every day, setting himself a time, let's say 9 o'clock at night, and then if he finished a book at 8:30 would start another one in the half hour left," says Mr. McInerney. "I have to unstring the bow for a while and not think about fiction." The same is true for Joyce Carol Oates, who needs about 8 to 10 weeks to decompress, Judith Krantz who needs a year, and Irving Wallace about nine months.
Some find it enormously difficult once they start writing again. "I have a tough time trying to shake the voice of the earlier book," explains Mr. Hansen. "It's hard to get out of character, so I write articles and short stories. With the novel I'm working on, I've had a lot of false starts. It's a contemporary story and I've had trouble ridding myself of the formal 19th century voice I used in Jesse Jams."
And so, when a writer ends a book he finds himself right back where he began, often a frightening place to be. Is the book he's finished any good? Will he ever write another? No one, least of all the writer, knows for sure. As Richard Ford says about writing novels, "I'm starting at zero and threatening myself with zero."