270
DAVID BRONSEN
Sleep
I came to regard myself as a disciplined writer who could tum
his hand to whatever literary task he cut out for himself. I knew that
the flow of creativity would not be uniform, and I had come to expect
resistance from my material, but I felt that by working at it I could
resolve all the difficulties I encountered. My self-confidence approached
the point of arrogance in those years. I remember in a moment of in–
trospection reviewing in my mind the authors and literary works that
I considered important and that had personally affected me. At the
same time, and with a good deal of pride, I felt that I was consciously
fighting literary influences and going my own way.
T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Eugene O'Neill were the writers of
major stature that interested me back then. Eliot's
Waste Land
had a
devastating effect on me, I felt stunned by the vastness of its conception.
I had been introduced to the work by Eda Lou Walton, a professor of
literature at New York University.
It
was to her that I dedicated
Call
It Sleep.
She was a woman twelve years older than I, who was very
devoted to me and who for a time supported and sponsored me. Our
relationship had certain parallels to that of Thomas Wolfe and Aline
Bernstein, although I do not stress the resemblance.
Some of the plays of Eugene O'Neill left a deep imprint. I went
to see
The Great God Brown
with Eda Lou and came away feeling
that I had been listening to the inner voice of a man.
I had already read Joyce as a freshman in college, and a copy of
Ulysses
which Eda Lou had brought me from France introduced me
to an entirely new way of seeing things. I felt I could see doors swing–
ing open on untried possibilities in literature.
But during the time I was writing the novel I was trying to estab–
lish a demarcation between myself and other authors. As far as I was
concerned, no one could teach me anything and nothing was too big an
undertaking.
I started writing
Call It Sleep
in 1929, worked on it for four years
and finished it in 1933, when I was twenty-seven. A substantial part
of the book was written in Maine, in the small town of Norridgewock,
in 1932. I learned of a farmhouse where an elderly widow, a woman of
seventy, boarded the local schoolmistress; and since this was summer and
the room vacant, she agreed to take me in as a boarder. For seven
dollars a week I got room and board - and was fed royally. I had
nothing to do but work on my novel, which I did from June till Novem–
ber. It was a happy stay, and years later, when I was casting about
for a place in which to settle down, it must have been the memory of
those satisfying months that made me decide on Maine.
