“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(During last week Jane told me she’d picked up that my troubles had been set off by the death of Bill Crowder on October 2. Betts didn’t write us about the death until we received her letter of the 25th on the 26th—which date being the day before I became ill. I hadn’t paid more than normal attention to Bill’s death, I thought, beyond feeling sympathy, and speculating with Jane about the money he must have left. Not that we wanted any of it. I hadn’t thought his death could bother me that much, for certainly I hadn’t dwelled upon it consciously at all.

(All during this time, October–November, we’ve also been involved in a series of hassles with the foreign publishers Ankh-Hermes and Ariston. We’ve learned to our sorrow and rage that both entities have cut their versions of Seth Speaks, without our permission or knowledge, and have struggled to exert what force we could in order to rectify the situation. I thought it much more likely that these sorts of challenges were much more likely to be behind my problems. We do feel let down on the issue of foreign rights by Prentice-Hall, and the overseas publishers as well. As I’ve said to Jane more than once, “I wonder what we ought to know that Tam hasn’t told us”—meaning of course that every time a hassle develops with Prentice-Hall we find out a new batch of information that Tam has known all along but never relayed to us. This makes for a series of ugly surprises along the way of our travels with Prentice-Hall, since they always seem to involve money in a negative way, or royalties being withheld, etc.

(We’ve lost the old sense of freedom we had with Prentice-Hall, where we can just do our work, ship it to them, and expect it to be well handled, with royalties paid every so often and a trust both felt and expressed between the two sides. Now we’ve become suspicious of everything they tell us. Jane still has on hand the contracts for Mass Events and God of Jane waiting for these to be straightened out: amended with Tam’s promised “superamendment” that’s supposed to protect us in the rights departments, paperback covers, and all the rest; jacket copy, etc. Prentice-Hall even wanted to have Jane sign contracts giving them the right to take money from Mass Events to pay for God of Jane. I sometimes have the feeling that we’re little more than ciphers to them. I for one am in favor of taking a stand, as Jane well knows, but as I’ve told her, I don’t expect her to go along. I think she’d be too terrified to be without a publisher, if it came to that, whereas my fighting blood is aroused and I’d be perfectly willing to let the chips fall where they may.

(All of this material is on file in detail. Yesterday Jane confirmed with Tam by phone that we will take full control of foreign rights; not to try to make a lot of money, because we don’t think it can be done, but simply to prevent our being taken advantage of by any more foreign publishers. In all probability taking control of foreign rights merely means that there won’t be any. I’ve already written Ariston that we will sell them no more work after their dishonesty with Seth Speaks, and plan to do the same thing soon with Ankh-Hermes. At the moment we’re waiting to learn their reaction to correspondence from Prentice-Hall, demanding that the cut portions of the book be restored—a move I cannot see them complying with for economic reasons alone.

(I also think Prentice-Hall will go through the formality of protesting the cuts to the foreign publishers, without exacting much of any retribution, especially with all that money invested in plates. Jane and I will be left with the situation as it exists, then. Except that theoretically at least we’ll be able to prevent it happening any more if we control foreign rights from now on. There doesn’t appear to be any money worth mentioning involved, at least for us. I always thought the foreign sales were great for the foreign publishers, though, since they owe Prentice-Hall only 6%.

(The little I’ve worked with the pendulum tells me my troubles are rooted in money attitudes, as well as the production time I’ve lost on Mass Events for the last two weeks and more. I thought I was doing something by working hard on that book, to get it underway in an organized fashion, I told Jane as we sat for the session—so what happened? I added that I wouldn’t put up with the kind of hassles involving Prentice-Hall beyond a certain point—that I’d take some kind of drastic action in order to rid myself of the problems connected with dealing with someone I no longer respect. This would involve holding the sessions, but letting Jane herself do any work about producing books for the market. I would go back to painting, try to sell some, and possibly end up with a part-time job for ready money—anything to break the vicious mental pattern of distrust I seem to keep creating. I believe that Jane at last understands that I’m quite capable of reacting that way, that I would refuse to indefinitely put up with our present kind of hassles with Prentice-Hall, or any other entity. I explained that I had such thoughts when we moved to Pinnacle Road, and could easily revive them and try a different kind of life.

Your mother looked up to him because he made money. She held his money up to your father, and in many ways let your father know that she did not think much of him. Overall, as a male or as a breadwinner. To her he fell from an initial high estate—meaning his early success, that offered her the possibilities of wealth and social status. All of this was in the back of your mind. Your early financial success also pleased your mother, and she felt that you had fallen from a high estate, not having lived long enough to see your financial gains.

As she was in life, she would not have understood in any case unless the money definitely came from a recognizable, socially accepted output on your part. To some extent, the affair of Crowder’s death made you look at yourself through what you thought were your mother’s eyes. You were judging yourself, and have, with some regularity, according to those standards. This is at an emotional level, of which of course you do not intellectually approve.

Crowder, you think, left a large moneyed estate—far more than either you or Ruburt possess. At the same time, you are more than a little contemptuous of what we may gently call the mental culture of Bill Crowder’s life and mind. A part of you even thinks “Ma is that what you wanted me to be?”

In a fashion you see your father as inventive, creative, and highly vulnerable. These ideas merge with conventional beliefs about age, so that it seems you must take stock. But when you take stock with the feelings we are describing as the emotional yardsticks, those feelings consider valid only the beliefs that go along with them—a traditional male role: the accumulation of money through traditional means—and they discount as legitimate the accumulation of knowledge or wisdom as a pursuit of life. Your mother would say “posh.”

The issue of money has been important because of the conventional male values, and even with Prentice it seems you are not being a man unless you stand up to them. What you do is less important than what you think of what you are doing. Your painting is important. You should not abandon it—and that is also part of the problem.

Give us a moment.... Ruburt does not feel that you are amiss because you are not “making money on your own,” but he feels deeply your own discontent in that area, and he feels bewildered—for years ago you said so often that it would be great if you could just paint or write without worrying about money. He feels that you are highly dissatisfied. He would do anything that you wanted. You would do far better, however, to think of painting rather than a simple job, which would certainly seem like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Whenever you cut off your painting, you have difficulties—and that also involves this internal provincial concept of the male image, for you get upset about your painting because it does not bring in money, when a male’s pursuit should. At the same time, because of matters discussed before, you will not deal with the galleries. You go back to writing notes for my book because you do think you make some contribution despite yourself, and because you then feel you are financially contributing.

(9:47.) The idea of a simple job attracts you because it separates your ideas of art from money—but in order to content you it could not involve money at all, for even commercial art brings you to the matter of the artistic ideal and its practical presentation.

I would give some thought then to my self-image, and to the image of an individual who is highly gifted as a painter, as a writer, as a thinker, and I would endeavor to loosen myself from any bonds that prevented me from using those abilities—in particular any sexual ones that defined my identity in terms of money alone.