Joyce Oates: The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Your (lonely) cousin

Lake Worth, Florida

November 24, 1998

Dear Freyda,

An evening of your time is too much to ask, I think. An hour? An hour would not be too much, would it? Maybe you could talk to me of your work, anything in your voice would be precious to me. I would not wish to drag you into the cesspool of the past as you speak of it so strongly. A woman like yourself capable of such intellectual work & so highly regarded in your field has no time for maudlin sentiment, I agree.

I have been reading your books. Underlining, & looking up words in the dictionary. (I love the dictionary, its my friend.) So exciting to consider How does science demonstrate the genetic basis of behavior?

I have enclosed a card here for your reply. Forgive me I did not think of this earlier.

Your cousin

Palo Alto CA

24 November 1998

Dear Rebecca Schwart,

Your letters of Nov. 20 & 21 are interesting. But the name “Jacob Schwart” means nothing to me, I’m afraid. There are numerous “Morgensterns” surviving. Perhaps some of these are your cousins, too. You might seek them out if you are lonely.

As I believe I have explained, this is a very busy time for me. I work much of the day and am not feeling very sociable in the evening. “Loneliness” is a problem engendered primarily by the too-close proximity of others. One excellent remedy is work.

Sincerely,

P.S. I believe you have left phone messages for me at the Institute. As my assistant has explained to you, I have no time to answer such calls.

Lake Worth, Florida

November 27, 1998

Dear Freyda,

Our letters crossed! We both wrote on Nov. 24, maybe it’s a sign.

It was on impulse I telephoned. “If I could hear her voice”-the thought came to me.

You have hardened your heart against your “American cousin.” It was courageous in the memoir to state so clearly how you had to harden your heart against so much, to survive. Americans believe that suffering makes saints of us, which is a joke. Still I realize you have no time for me in your life now. There is no “purpose” to me.

Even if you won’t meet me at this time, will you allow me to write to you? I will accept it if you do not reply. I would only wish that you might read what I write, it would make me so happy (yes, less lonely!) for then I could speak to you in my thoughts as I did when we were girls.

Your cousin

P.S. In your academic writing you refer so often to “adaptation of species to environment.” If you saw me, your cousin, in Lake Worth, Florida, on the ocean just south of Palm Beach, so very far from Milburn, N.Y., and from the “old world,” you would laugh.

Palo Alto CA

1 December 1998

Dear Rebecca Schwart,

My tenacious American cousin! I’m afraid it is no sign of anything, not even “coincidence,” that our letters were written on the same day and that they “crossed.”

This card. I admit I am curious at the choice. It happens this is a card on my study wall. (Did I speak of this in the memoir, I don’t think so.) How you happen to come into possession of this reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich’s Sturzacker -you have not been to the museum in Hamburg, have you? It’s rare that any American even knows the name of this artist much esteemed in Germany.

Sincerely,

Lake Worth, Florida

4 December 1998

Dear Freyda,

The postcard of Caspar David Friedrich was given to me, with other cards from the Hamburg museum, by someone who traveled there. (In fact my son who is a pianist. His name would be known to you, it’s nothing like my own.)

I chose a card to reflect your soul. As I perceive it in your words. Maybe it reflects mine also. I wonder what you will think of this new card which is German also but uglier.

Your cousin

Palo Alto CA

10 December 1998

Dear Rebecca,

Yes I like this ugly Nolde. Smoke black as pitch and the Elbe like molten lava. You see into my soul, don’t you! Not that I have wished to disguise myself.

So I return Towboat on the Elbe to my tenacious American cousin. THANK YOU but please do not write again. And do not call. I have had enough of you.

Palo Alto CA

11 December 1998/ 2 A.M.

Dear “Cousin”!

Your sixteen-yr-old photo I made a copy of. I like that coarse mane of hair and the jaws so solid. Maybe the eyes were scared, but we know how to hide that, don’t we cousin.

In the camp I learned to stand tall. I learned to be big. As animals make themselves bigger, it can be a trick to the eye that comes true. I guess you were a “big” girl, too.

I have always told the truth. I see no reason for subterfuge. I despise fantasizing. I have made enemies “among my kind” you can be sure. When you are “back from the dead” you do not give a damn for others’ opinions & believe me, that has cost me in this so-called “profession” where advancement depends upon ass-kissing and its sexual variants not unlike the activities of our kindred primates.

Bad enough my failure to behave as a suppliant female through my career. In the memoir I take a laughing tone speaking of graduate studies at Columbia in the late 1950s. I did not laugh much then. Meeting my old enemies, who had wished to crush an impious female at the start of her career, not only female but a Jew & a refugee Jew from one of the camps, I looked them in the eye, I never flinched but they flinched, the bastards. I took my revenge where & when I could. Now those generations are dying out, I am not pious about their memories. At conferences organized to revere them, Freyda Morgenstern is the “savagely witty” truth-teller.

In Germany, where history was so long denied, Back From the Dead has been a bestseller for five months. Already it has been nominated for two major awards. Here is a joke, and a good one, yes?

In this country, no such reception. Maybe you saw the “good” reviews. Maybe you saw the one full-page ad my cheapskate publisher finally ran in the New York Review of Books . There have been plenty of attacks. Worse even than the stupid attacks to which I have become accustomed in my “profession.”

In the Jewish publications, & in Jewish-slanted publications, such shock/dismay/disgust. A Jewish woman who writes so without sentiment of mother & other relatives who “perished” in Theresienstadt. A Jewish woman who speaks so coldly & “scientifically” of her “heritage.” As if the so-called Holocaust is a “heritage.” As if I have not earned my right to speak the truth as I see it and will continue to speak the truth for I have no plans to retire from research, writing, teaching & directing doctoral students for a long time. (I will take early retirement at Chicago, these very nice benefits, & set up shop elsewhere.)

This piety of the Holocaust! I laughed, you used that word so reverentially in one of your letters. I never use this word that slides off American tongues now like grease. One of the hatchet-reviewers called Morgenstern a traitor giving solace to the enemy (which enemy? there are many) by simply stating & re-stating as I will each time I am asked, that the “holocaust” was an accident in history as all events in history are accidents. There is no purpose to history as to evolution, there is no goal or progress. Evolution is the term given to what is . The pious fantasizers wish to claim that the Nazis’ genocidal campaign was a singular event in history, that it has elevated us above history. This is bullshit, I have said so & will continue to say so. There are many genocides, so long as there has been mankind. History is an invention of books. In biological anthropology we note that the wish to perceive “meaning” is one trait of our species among many. But that does not posit “meaning” in the world. If history did exist it is a great river/cesspool into which countless small streams & tributaries flow. In one direction. Unlike sewage it cannot back up. It cannot be “tested”-“demonstrated.” It simply is . If the individual streams dry up, the river disappears. There is no “river-destiny.” There are merely accidents in time. The scientist notes that without sentiment or regret.