10:57 let cat in
10:58 hung up coat
10:59 put trash out
10:00 listened to news on radio
10:04 went upstairs and looked around
10:08 came downstairs and looked around
10:13 sat down and studied design in kitchen floor linoleum
10:20 looked outside for car to make sure I had not gone on errand and might not return
10:22 decided I should probably go down and get cigarettes; checked first, found 5 packs
10:24 brought typewriter in to kitchen table to be near ’phone
10:28 decided to have nap till suppertime when I could have corned beef
10:29 sat down in livingroom chair
10:33 woke startled by ghastly liquid snoring, decided I had horrible cold and should have drink
10:34 discovered snoring was being done by dog, very relieved
10:37 decided not to have drink, went to typewriter in kitchen to work
10:41 decided I should get some letters out of the way before settling down to work, got paper
10:50 could think of no one to write to
10:51 stacked wood more neatly on porch, checked newspapers to make sure they were well tied
10:57 returned to kitchen and listened to refrigerator hum
11:01 examined contents of refrigerator
11:04 thought I should probably go down and get milk; checked first, found a full quart
11:06 looked to see if mail had come but flag was still down
11:09 discovered memorandum WILLIAM THINGS TO REMEMBER and read carefully
11:29 put cat out
11:31 examined clam chowder from refrigerator
11:33 decided clam chowder looked thin, decided to add potatoes
11:34 peeled and diced 3 small potatoes and put on boil
11:51 heard mailbox, got mail
11:55 opened mail, one item from American Express with new card and literature which said read enclosed agreement carefully
11:56 read agreement carefully
PM
12:18 diced potatoes somewhat soft, added them to chowder; decided chowder looked somewhat thick, got spoon
12:22 served bowl of hot chowder, got spoon
12:23 ’phone rang: talked with Hy Cohen at agency who said check should arrive this week; who also said Aaron Asher is leaving Holt and was concerned that Asher’s departure would not or might upset me; I told him I was not unless Holt wanted their money back; he said that would be fine, certainly sell it elsewhere; I told him I was working hard on it right this minute; he said Asher might go to Dutton which would be logical following on Hal Sharlatt’s death; I said Dutton had no money; he said we will think about it, it could all work out extremely well especially if I finish the book soon; I said I would finish the book soon, was working on it right this minute; he did not answer; I told him my only real dismay at this moment was confidence and faith Asher has shown in me and my work over many years and would be a shame to part with him at this point; he said we will talk about it, that the Dutton possibility is only a possibility; I said I will not tell a sole; he said we’ll be in touch with you I said boy you better.
12:55 poured chowder back into pan to reheat
12:56 listened to news on radio
01:00 ate chowder, reading interesting article on Alaska in Swarthmore bulletin
01:21 checked upstairs, nothing changed
01:23 checked downstairs, emptied ashtray
01:26 looked at work spread out on table, noticed stamp for MIL’s letter
01:29 walked out with dog to mail MIL’s letter
01:42 returning from walk waved cheerful friendly wave to neighbor standing on corner
01:43 realised neighbor standing on corner was really Jack’s garbage can, hurried inside hoping no one had noticed
01:52 sat down at typewriter to work
01:58 ’phone rang, talked with Mr Cody a real estate agent who wished to be helpful if we wished to rent or sell our Saltaire house this summer; wrote reminder to call Savages
02:11 got notes for present sequence in book beside typewriter
02:13 suddenly realized I had better get cat food before stores closed; checked and found 2 full cans of cat food
02:19 decided to call Hy Coen back with some ideas
02:35 could not think of any ideas so declined to call Hy Coen back
02:36 reread notes for present sequence in book
02:39 reread notes for present sequence in book
02:41 decided to reread whole book through up to this point
02:42 looked at MS, decided not to reread whole book up to this point
02:44 reread notes for present sequence in book
02:47 began to type rough version of present sequence in book
03:05 dog passed through going east to west
03:07 dog passed through going west to east
04:01 began to type second page of rough draft
04:26 dog passed through west to east
04:27 dog passed through east to west
04:44 read two pages of rough version of present sequence in book
04:48 began to type third page of rough version
05:26 decided to have drink as Adrienne rang doorbell, told her to come back in the spring
05:26 fixed drink
05:28 sat down to read pages of rough version just written
05:31 laughed heartily
06:31 decided might be a good idea to start checking motels in Virginia, North and South Carolina
06:35 could not find Mobil guide to motels in Virginia, North and South Carolina; wondered where they were
06:44 wondered where they were
06:55 turned on oven to heat corned beef, dog passed through west to east; let cat in
06:57 reread pages of rough version just written
07:02 did not chuckle; wondered where they were
07:09 put in corned beef to warm; wondered where they were
07:16 fed dog; wondered where they were
07:18 fed cat; wondered where they were
07:41 served corned beef
07:42 ate corned beef
08:01 watched Benny Goodman Story did not know he was such a sap and wondered where on earth they were
Jack: Jack Hoffmeister, a neighbor.
Hal Sharlatt: Scharlatt, editor-in-chief of E.P. Dutton and the Dutton Review, had just died.
Benny Goodman Story: 1955 film starring Steve Allen as the legendary clarinetist.
To John Leverence
Piermont N.Y.
4 March 74
Dear John Leverence.
I have to disappoint your request for help on advance proofs of this novel J R since it’s simply not that close to that stage yet and I can’t make any predictions, especially in terms of a July date which seems to me almost down our throats. (I didn’t see the Antaeus ad, they have a very small 10 page or so not especially representative (if there is such) fragment of it.)
I appreciate your sending the Tanner piece which I find heartening even at this distance from the sort of reviews that greeted The Recognitions’ original publication. In contrast to those I enclose reviews from Le Monde and Figaro which may interest you; I find them* especially pleasing for their refraining from making Joyce’s Ulysses the book’s parent which it was not, that extraordinary Wisconsin review piece notwithstanding. A cheap edition of the book is being published by Avon which I hope to heaven will at last solve the longstanding problem of its unavailability. Inept as it may sound for me to wish you luck with your essay, that appears all that’s possible at this stage and so of course I do.
Yours,
William Gaddis
*excepting for the lapse in l’Express (manifestement!) also enclosed.
Tanner piece: British critic Tony Tanner (1935–98) included a chapter on R in his City of Words: American Fiction 1950–1970 (Harper & Row, 1971).
Wisconsin review: Bernard Benstock’s essay; see letter of 21 August 19
64.
To Judith Gaddis
[The Avon edition of R was favorably reviewed by Tony Tanner in the New York Times Book Review (14 July 1974, 27–28), accompanied by a photo of WG by Jerry Bauer rather than one by his old friend Martin Dworkin. His sympathetic biographer writes: “In the early fifties, Marty was crucially involved in Willie’s work on his first novel, The Recognitions. There are some thirty-eight conversations involving Willie and Marty that got into the book. They were of such importance that Marty remained convinced until the day he died that Willie should have acknowledged them in a separate essay” (Looks, Triumph through Adversity, 91).]
[16 July 1974]
Dear Judith.
[...] Last evening Martin called, did not seem at all put out that the Times had used the Bauer picture, elaborated a long discourse on the book including passing mention that it contains 38 conversations between him and myself, and on to shaded recrimination that we should get together: I threatened him with Joe and Heidegger, he retreated; regarding my coming in, I asked what evenings were best for him, he said he had so much work to do that any time was pretty bad, so we left it that I will call him sometime, once again. [...]
John (your father John) called yesterday pm with congratulations on the Times review; then 5 minutes ago (this is 9:05 am Tuesday) Henry Homes called, getting to the Book Review over breakfast, with similar warm words. So sooner or later my secret is discovered. Though I guess the Otto Premingers don’t read. This morning’s paper reports him making a movie in which John Lindsey will play a Senator. $4.5 million in bonds is missing from Mayor Beame’s city vaults. Jack has enough money to buy a car. And it is very hard to write satire anymore.
So I will return to this wearisome task, so far mainly cutting out what seemed clever 5 years ago and rather desperate to get up to the part that may still seem so: oh to be shed of it! Freed! And they all clapped when we arose for your sweet face and my new clothes . . .
I hope you are well, and must be brown and getting rested. We all miss you I most of all,
with love to Paz and everything to you always.
W.
Joe and Heidegger: the latter is the German philosopher, but the former is unknown.
Henry Homes: a neighbor of Judith’s parents in Scarborough.
Otto Preminger: prominent film director of the time (1905–86), then working on Rosebud (1975).
John Lindsey: Lindsay (1921–2000) was mayor of New York City from 1966 to 1973.
Mayor Beame: Abraham Beame (1906–2001) was mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977.
And they all clapped [...] my new clothes: from a poem in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay “Sleeping and Waking” (1934), included in The Crack-Up.
Paz: Judith’s mother, Ariadne Pasmezoglu, who under the pen name Ariadne Thompson wrote a memoir entitled The Octagonal Heart (1956).
To Warren Kiefer
[American novelist and film producer (1929– ), whom WG had known since the late 1950s.]
Piermont, NY
28 July 74
dear Warren——
it’s unfair to sit down to write you this God damned weary of everything, problem I get up in the morning and think any positive energy has simply got to go to this God damned book & by this time of day haven’t a kind word left for anybody including the attachment hereto which should confirm your worst hopes for Winning: at this moment I suppose because of the feeling that I’m doing the same God damned thing all over again with this book & will be 70 for the same idiotic reward, get your God damned picture in the Times and $5500. royalty on it while just your God damned teeth are threatening $8000. . . .
Try to start again. I ‘finished’ this book 1004 (legal size) pages am now on page 180 cutting ruthlessly nothing to make you wearier of yourself than artfulness when you were 10 years younger whole God damned proposition like living with an invalid real God damned terminal case you keep hoping will pick up his God damned bed and walk like the good book says, tobacco stained and full of whisky and an old dog heaving quietly on the floor behind me.
Try to start again. Really so God damned lucky splendid wife son and daughter own a house car the roof goes up and down had a boat too but it burned. Judith is still a marvel, went down to Florida to drive her mother back up here in a week or so never presses or blackmails but Hopes. Right now Sarah’s here with me working in a nickel and dime luncheonette for $400 toward her Swarthmore tuition (while I send her mother $300 support for her not being there) Matthew is though, keeps her busy enough destroying him so Sarah’s fairly free of that at any rate, worth the God damned $300 I guess.
Try to start again. well I took your advice before you gave it really, have Knopf in the hole for a fairly substantial amount of money (though of course, of course it’s in buying out contracts already previously bought out so come right down to cash it’s fairly comic) not fair as I said to open, mainly just the God damned day after dayness of this ‘second’ book which has just about devoured everybody close to me (see above) attended, as its completion is if not in grasp in sight by Eliot’s That is not what I meant, that is not what I meant at all . . . must be any honest man’s dying words when you picture the equal terms Eisenhower and JFDulles (not to speak of Allen) met their maker though I like to think that sublime son of a bitch Johnson got the message at the last minute and this poor shabby bastard we have now must be getting it.
Try to start again? Next letter then, honestly for what I’ve put in the whole God damned proposition (which is to say the crap I’ve shirked putting in) I’ve really been blessed by fortune so whine only in the decent terms that do not prevail, any day (like Sept? Oct?) you’ll have a cheerful picture postal from Sussex? Aix-? saying it’s all more, more than worth it but would hope to write you better before then, meanwhile if I don’t send you this another day goes that I send you nothing so this to fill the gap
[carbon copy: unsigned]
like living with an invalid: see p. 603 of J R, where Gibbs compares sixteen years’ work on his manuscript to “living with a God damned invalid.”
like the good book says: John 5:8. Cf. J R 603.
JFDulles (not to speak of Allen): John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s Secretary of State; his brother Allen was the head of CIA during the Eisenhower era.
bastard we have now: Richard Nixon; less than two weeks later, he resigned and was succeeded by Gerald Ford.
To Matthew Gaddis
Piermont
8 August [1974]
Dear Matthew ————here I am fighting Sarah’s electric machine, mine stopped abruptly with a strange whirring sound in the middle of a page and I am still not used to this one, touch a key and zing you’re typing, even when you don’t mean to be. And the sound of its engine running while one tries to think of the next word is a little nervewracking too. So I am being dragged by the heels into the 20th century . . . [...]
You can imagine I’m pretty sick of JR but spend every day with him and his friends and otherwise, the main comfort being that after this I’ll NEVER (except for galleys) HAVE TO READ THE INFERNAL BOOK AGAIN! Boy I can’t wait hey. Also maybe I can learn how to talk like an intelligent adult again.
But you can see that all this above pales before the attached letter and imagine Sarah is very proud as she’s certainly the right to be; and I was finally given the chance to read the story and think it is certainly good, very touching without taking advantage of any sentimentality and holds together so well and of course I’m very proud of her doing the whole thing on her own, as I am of you now the way you’re holding things together and most eager all of us to see you and have all your news. And views.
And much love of course
Papa
attached letter: from Seventeen informing Sarah she had won honorable mention in its short story contest for her piece “A Taffeta Dress,” along with a check for $50.00.
To David Markson
1206 Duncan Street
Key West, Florida 33040
24
Feb 1975
Dear David.
What ‘PW item about the book’! I didn’t see it, perhaps because I finally handed in page last to Knopf and fled forthwith pale, drained, and doubled with a cough—you may see to where, a place that’s been on Judith’s mind for 4 years (with my constant ‘not this year but I’m almost finished, certainly next . . .’) finally made it and now we both have real colour, get up in the am. without the daily tension of years of the God damned typewriter waiting like a terminal invalid in the next room for attention, don’t jump when the ’phone rings (since it’s almost always for Western Union whose number is 1 digit off ours—I didn’t even know people called WU anymore, am going to start to take messages).
At any rate of course you’re right, it is a vast weight removed, and not simply the book but at last being able to tell you and other kind wellwishers yes! when they ask that question . . . (though of course there’s a few things I’d like to squeeze in on galleys). That’s what I’m half doing here, mainly cosmetics to have ready when galleys appear so I can resist the obvious temptation to rewrite it from the beginning (“That is not what I meant at all . . .”). I assume galleys occur sometime in spring (speaking of the cruelest month) and we expect to be back sometime about then for a Fresh Start. Meanwhile thanks for your note and honestly your wellwishing throughout (curiously I had a charming letter in the same mail today from a lady in Venice thanking me ‘very much for writing The Recognitions’ —pried it loose from a friend of her son’s who’s 22 which is even more gratifying).
See you then?
best wishes to Elaine too from us both,
W.G.
PW item: in the 10 February 1975 issue of Publishers Weekly (39) there was a short item noting that WG had delivered the manuscript of J R to Knopf and that it was scheduled for fall publication.
To Judith Gaddis
Piermont, NY
[6 April 1975]
Dear Judith,
I wish I could be as articulate as you even in your brief letter for simply getting things said in terms of the kind of love and remorseful sympathetic understanding and helplessness I feel for you or think I do, the thought of you desolate and despairing is just very painful. But I can at least say you must not add to it with fears of hurting or losing me or destroying what we have—I’m not pressing and in no hurry for anything except you mended for yourself and I would hope me mended a little for myself and all of you too. And you surely didn’t ‘send me home alone’, I was hell bent on it with the kind of pressures I get built up, I wish I were the kind of person who’d simply been able to say Let’s just go over to Santabel and hunt shells for a day or two, but of course if I’d been that sort of person all along it wouldn’t have mounted up so.