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 12  Ego Strength 1962–1969 I cannot even say: novel. It takes from all literary forms, but is its own. —Tillie Olsen, “On my ‘Work in Progress,’” 28 July 1965 As 1962 began, Tillie was torn between triumph and despair. She had written one of the best books of 1961, but now she was writing only patients’case histories as she trod the corridors of San Francisco General Hospital. Radcliffe forms, sent by Anne Sexton, included the promising news that fellowships would be awarded to non-Bostonians. Tillie called upon her “Old Reliable, Fall Back Upon” recommenders and a new one, Annie Wilder, a psychiatrist. In her application, Tillie promised to finish a “social novel” and lamented having only Tell Me a Riddle “to really plead for me.” Actually, she had Anne Sexton pleading to judges that Tillie Olsen’s tough life and profound writing excused the vagueness of her application.1 About the time Tillie turned fifty on 14 January, Dick Elman arranged for John Leonard to interview her on KPFA in Berkeley. Her powerful performance of “I Stand Here Ironing” and “Hey Sailor, What Ship?” testified to her recovery.2 She broached the idea of going to Boston alone and vowed to Hannah Green, “I will live east this fall.” But she then added “perhaps Jack Laurie also.” Among her recommenders, Annie Wilder wrote of her “remarkable ego strength and ego integrity,” but Scowcroft admitted that she had done “rather little” with her Stanford and Ford grants. Her KPFA recording brought an unexpected award of five hundred dollars from the National Institute for Arts and Letters, enabling Tillie to quit her hospital job.3 She told Scowcroft about her desire to live alone in Boston: she would say “I love you (that part no lie) [and will] come 224 ego strength 225 back, I’ll never leave you again—and try like hell to believe my lies.” Jack, however, did not believe her. She spent the five weeks her surprise payment had purchased in tearful wrangling. Finally, some combination of love, loyalty, and need prevailed. Tillie agreed that Jack would come east with her if she won a fellowship. They would sell their new Swiss Avenue house, pay off debts, and live on Jack’s probable salary of one hundred dollars a week and her probable Radcliffe income. Having made no progress on her novel, Tillie took another job. Then she heard, unofficially from Anne and officially from Constance E. Smith, director of the Radcliffe Institute, that she had won a fellowship. Kathie was resentful, Julie needful because she and Rob had what Tillie called a “little comanche—Julie’s new morsel of life.”4 But Tillie wanted to be free of motherly and grandmotherly duties. Enrolling Laurie in Putney School in Vermont, she insisted it was not a “class” school. A press release said that Tillie Olsen would work “full-time” in Cambridge on her novel. After the house sold, she and Jack quit their jobs and with Laurie piled into their old car for the drive east, pulling an overstuffed U-Haul trailer, thanks to five hundred dollars for relocation costs from Cowley and the Viking Press. They slept under a tent in trailer camps, visited in Omaha with Vicki and her children, and stopped in Media, Pennsylvania, to see Sam Lerner. Tillie made a dramatic entrance at the residence, embraced her aged father, and sang folk songs with Laurie, who played the fiddle to entertain the old folks. On 23 July 1962, Sam regretted that their “so called concert robbed our valuable time to be together,” an insightful observation that Tillie had substituted showmanship for intimacy. Sam now sounded as much a depressive as Ida had been, an inheritance Gene Lerner acknowledged to Jann, who was moving to Boston too: “depression seems to be a characteristic of many of the Lerners. I share it.”5 The three Olsens moved into an apartment within walking distance of the Institute. Jack became a printer at the Cambridge Chronicle. Tillie took Laurie to hear impromptu concerts near Harvard Square, watch rowers sculling on the Charles River, and copy inscriptions from tombstones in the St. Auburn Cemetery, which reminded her that lost “Jews in the Russian wastes” had no tombstones. Jann had entered Boston University, thanks to Gene’s help, so after Tillie and Jack drove Laurie to Putney, they invited Jann over. She told them about taking serious academic courses and even gym.6 Jann...

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