Book of a Lifetime: Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck

From The Independent archive: Owen Sheers on the American author’s one-sided correspondence that gives insight into a literary mind at the point of creation

(Getty)

John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel is a book I’ve kept on every desk I’ve written at for the past 10 years. I’ve rarely opened it when I’m not working on a book, and never when I’m writing well. But on those days when the engine room of a first draft feels claustrophobic or static, when the words have turned brittle and the whole endeavour seems either pointless or ridiculous, that’s when I’ll reach again for this idiosyncratic one-sided correspondence which comes together to form a rare map of a literary mind at the point of creation.

Every morning between 29 January and 1 November 1951 Steinbeck, “like a pitcher warming up to pitch”, would begin his day’s work by writing a “letter” to his editor and friend Pascal Covic on the left-hand pages of a notebook, the facing pages to be filled with the first draft of his masterpiece, East of Eden. The result is a three-way correspondence between author, book and editor: a privileged glimpse into Steinbeck’s writing at both its most mechanical and philosophical.