On the count of that drawing for Bert Britton for your book an easy solution: I’ve somewhere the same drawing on an 8x10 page with a small splotch on one line which was why I put it aside & did the clean one for BB; the splotch could easily be retouched & I could send the thing to whomever/ wherever at Syracuse when the time comes, no BB &c permissions necessary.
Now I’d postponed the following but since you persist in your folly these observations on various items in the Reader’s Guide may be of interest or diversion. It is not exhaustive. [...]
Yours,
W. Gaddis
Fred Karl: Frederick R. Karl (1927–2004), American literary critic, and a neighbor of WG’s in the Hamptons.
new Kissinger: probably Years of Upheaval (1982).
his book on Conrad: Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives (1979).
these observations: these 3½ pages of notes are omitted because most of them have been incorporated into the online version of the Reader’s Guide at the Gaddis Annotations Website.
Top: Frederick Exley and WG, summer 1983.
Bottom: John Sherry, Donn Pennebaker, and WG, Sag Harbor, July 1995 (photo by Chelsea Pennebaker; taken at Donn Pennebaker’s 70th birthday party).
To Steven Moore
Wainscott
26 June 1983
JUST A BULLETIN: After 20 years of wrangling, & taking a hard look at cash flow, cost accounting, public reading habits & B Dalton et alia, the CHAIRMAN (Mr Jovanovitch) has decided to do the gentlemanly thing & return to me the rights to The Recognitions. Our (my & my agent’s) next step uncertain & I in no rush, just want to savour the thing as my own again for a while though of course it would be a pain to have any sort of demand created by your Syracuse Press (I’ve sent them the drawing) effort & the MLA with only the squat & speckled Avon available (though they now have notice of 6 months to get it off the stands).
I’ll let you know as things develop or do not,
Gaddis.
To Berte Hirschfield
[The wife of Alan Hirschfield, an executive in the communications and entertainment industries. “The book” was J R, in which Jack Gibbs drunkenly explains a divorce board game on the pages indicated. A. Robert Towbin was a neighbor in East Hampton.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
5 July 1983
Dear Ms. Hirschfield.
Here is ‘the book’ &, for openers, the game SPLIT imperfectly presented by an enthusiastic drinker on pages 410–12. I have elsewhere a number of further notes and thoughts on it which I would dig out if it provokes interest.
Very pleasant meeting you at Bob Towbin’s, as things generally are at the Towbin’s.
Yours,
William Gaddis
To William V. Alexander
[Arkansas attorney (1934– ) and Democratic member of the House of Representatives (1969–93). WG copied Senators Moynihan, D’Amato, and Representative Carney on this letter.]
Wainscott, NY 11975
23 July 1983
Dear Mr Alexander.
As one far removed from your constituency may I take this liberty to express appreciation for your succinct common sense analysis of the threats posed by current Administration policy in Central America, as it appeared in the NY Times of 21 July headed Schizoid Latin Policy.
Each day’s headlines provoke even further despair among those of us who had believed that McKinley era politics were well behind us and that, as you conclude, ‘tact and decency’ rather than a flood of weaponry are our only means of being true to ourselves ‘while protecting our security and fighting Communism the American way.’
In the prevailing fraud of ‘bipartisanship’ so reminiscent of President Johnson’s ‘consensus’—everyone buckling under to him—it is indeed heartening to have a clear voice like yours in the US Congress, among pygmies fearful for their political careers should it all turn out badly, of being accused of ‘losing Salvador’ by obeying international law and our own guiding principles; and while we in New York State are most fortunate in having Senator Moynihan’s voice raised against another blind Administration absurdity in the M-X adventure, it is a fine fine irony in the wisdom of these Founding Fathers you remind us of that I am obliged to write a Representative from Arkansas as a member of his real constituency in this crucial matter, and to express gratitude to those Arkansans who brought you to Congress.
Yours sincerely,
William Gaddis
McKinley era politics: those under twenty-fifth President William McKinley (1897–1901), which led to the Spanish-American War, the occupation of Cuba, and the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
M-X: the MX Nuclear Missile Program.
To Tomasz Mirkowicz
Wainscott NY 11975
16 August 1983
Dear Tomasz Mirkowicz.
Thanks for your long letter with its good news of a Polish publication, and your taking on the intimidating task of the translation. I did have a letter from the publisher stating the terms which I endorsed and returned (adding, as you suggested, the names of my son and daughter as eligible to draw on any funds when they appear).
To your queries: I have no preference regarding the book’s jacket; black/ red/white is I think the strongest combination of colours (Heil Hitler!), otherwise just sobre and simple as the artist decrees.
Regarding the translation itself I should, of course, want to leave it as entirely in your hands as possible. The Moore book should certainly prove a great help. Here is a further suggestion: there was as you may be aware a French publication by Gallimard in a very careful translation by (I believe) Jean Lambert about 10 years ago. Thus if you can get hold of that, and you or a colleague reads French, comparing the French equivalent of a passage to your interpretation in Polish might prove useful. (There was also an Italian 2 vol. edition (Mondadori) but I am a good deal less certain just how dependable that translation is.) The title in French was Les Reconnaissances.
The idea of notes does sound like a useful one. I would agree with your preference, simply at the end of the book following page and line number rather than cluttering up the text. I would think the manner of marking dialogue should be that most familiar to the Polish reader. I am always glad to hear of any errors or incongruities for the possibility of another edition of the book here.
As for other references, we will probably run into difficulties if we try to pursue them in correspondence, largely since it is so long since I wrote the book that many or most of them are not clear in my memory. For instance, the Byzantine eye? a round window sounds reasonable but I don’t recall. All I recall of the Frauenkirche is, if I recall right, it has 2 spires nearer domes & suggestive of ample woman’s breasts, the rest escapes me. Rides in the cistern has no more significance than as something tourists do, or did. And so, for all that, as well as the mistress bargained for in youth, I think the safest course is simply a literal translation throughout or we shall drive each other mad. (The ‘envirement’ is simply a reflection of illiteracy, just as at some point much later mention of filet de mignon.) Heaven knows what is meant by the ‘Poland has no seaports’: I think you must just take your chances!
best regards and good luck with it,
William Gaddis
Byzantine eye [...] bargained for in youth: details from chap. 2 of R.
‘Poland has no seaports’: Wyatt mentions that in Calderón’s play La Vida es sueño (1635) the protagonist falls off a balcony “into the sea, though there’s trouble there because Poland has no seaports” (R 876).
To Steven Moore
[Regarding what WG called the imminent “MLA spree.”]
Wainscott, NY 11975
[undated; ca. 1 December 1983]
Dear Steven Moore.
Thanks for your note. Dinner then on 29 December about 7:30 at 235 East 73rd street penthouse A. Of course come earlier yourself which we can arrange by phone, the number there is 988 1360. And if feasible please do ask Chandler if he can come for dinner, I
haven’t seen him in some years & would like to.
Given the ‘season’ I’m not certain when we’ll drive in, possibly not till that morning. The phone here is (516) 537 0743.
I’ll get a note off to John Kuehl & reach Fred Carl, you arrange with Miriam Fuchs* (also anyone anyone wants to bring along), we’ll probably just send out for lavish Chinese.
Nothing right now for publication, elegant reviews or elsewhere,
Gaddis
* also Steven Weisenburger? is he in it?
Chandler: Chandler Brossard; see 19 March 1983. As a result of that earlier letter, I had written to Brossard and developed an interest in his work. I had told Gaddis I was meeting him during this same trip to New York.
elegant reviews: I was in the PhD program at the University of Denver at the time, and had asked WG (at the instigation of editor Eric Gould) if he wanted to contribute to the Denver Quarterly, which I described as an “elegant” journal.
Weisenburger: he did not attend the MLA that year. As I recall, those of us who attended Gaddis’s party (his sixty-first birthday, as it turned out) included Walter and Cecile Abish, Brossard and his wife Maria Ewing Huffman, Jay Fellows, Miriam Fuchs, Frederick Karl and his wife, and Mike Gladstone. Muriel Murphy was our hostess, and WG’s son Matthew arrived toward the end. Illness prevented John Kuehl from attending.
To John W. Aldridge
[Aldridge had invited WG to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as guest speaker for the Hopwood Underclassmen Awards Ceremony, held 18 January 1984.]
235 East 73 Street
New York, New York 10021
20 January 1984
Dear Jack,
(as I understand the form is), many thanks from us both for all your kindnesses. The few times I’ve gone off on such adventures I must say that initial apprehensions have been dispelled by a real cordiality, but this excelled in its coming from all directions very much including the students. They are a nicely various assortment and their warmth and serious interest was very, very gratifying. And of course the members of your department who gave a refreshing touch of cheer to what must become the rather tiresome extra chore of carting visitors around in –8o.
We expect to be here through the next month or so at least, but have vague hopes of getting away in March if only I can get this book either to a point of publishing or destroying it, alternatives which at the moment seem equally attractive. [...]
with very best regards,
Bill Gaddis
To the Editor, New York Times
[In response to an editorial criticizing the United States Information Agency’s informal blacklist of speakers who shouldn’t be sent abroad, which targeted those unsympathetic to the then-current Reagan administration. This letter was published in the 5 March 1984 issue of the Times, p. 20, under the title “U.S.I.A. Blacklist Is Beyond ‘Stupid.’”]
New York, New York
21 February 1984
To the Editor:
Further to the point of your “U.S.I.A.’s Little List” editorial (Feb. 20), which seemed to me to stop short.
In 1976, I had published a lengthy novel about our free enterprise system run wildly off the tracks in the cheerfully ignorant hands of an 11-year-old boy and, with what must now appear as that quite dubious credential, was invited by the U.S.I.A. to speak in the Far East.
At the Washington briefing before departure, I was cautioned only that I might encounter sensitivity in the Philippines regarding our military bases there, and in Japan regarding contested territorial fishing claims, but I was left entirely free to comment on these and any other matters as I saw fit. (I recall talking largely about the Protestant ethic in American literature.)
The groups I met with in each country were well informed and appreciative, but the point I wish to stress here is the high caliber of the cultural affairs officers who shepherded me from Bangkok through the Philippines and the length of Japan. They were consistently on the most knowledgeable and forthright terms with the academic, journalistic and literary figures and circles in the countries where they were assigned. There was an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect they had worked hard to establish.
Thus while in the short term it is simply stupid to deprive friendly countries of “the 84 deemed untrustworthy” in this current, paranoid “blacklist,” a longer view holds the more painful likelihood of the loss of such seriously dedicated Foreign Service people to a blighted public relations policy that insults our bewildered friends abroad as the stunted targets of domestic partisan propaganda, and can only enhance our image as the “pitiful helpless giant” of yore.
William Gaddis
“pitiful helpless giant”: in 1970, President Richard Nixon defended his decision to escalate the war in Vietnam lest the United States be reduced to “a pitiful, helpless giant.”
To Sarah Gaddis
Wainscott
9 June ’84
Dear Sarah.
Well finally: my (your?) first letter at your new address . . . where of course I was so delighted to hear your voice & in such good spirit (A Room of One’s Own as Virginia Woolf had it, have you read that? read her? I recall liking best Mrs Dalloway (sp?) & just occurs to me we’ve never discussed her & she is Somebody for your examination, an unfraudulent perhaps antidote to however-good-she-is Jean Rhys). [...]
News here? well (Chinesely) thankfully none: mow the lawns, dine with Sherrys & a few pals—Gloria goes ON, Woods, others—within my whole context of My Patient: now ‘reformulating’ chapter VI of rewrite in my frantic effort to get an acceptable MS to Viking by July &c &c &c . . . all familiar to you. Half the house still unrented (since the “boys’” departure so that’s somewhat a financial sticker BUT: news in prospect! rental for 3 or 4 days to Joan Didion & husband (that’s rude, I should say Mr & Mrs John Gregory Dunn(e?) of the West (poolside) house; they’re apparently here for some number with Sidney Lumet, all about 2 weeks hence so that’s (obviously) the Event of the moment. [...]
much love always,
Papa
A Room of One’s Own [...] Mrs Dalloway: classic essay (1929) and novel (1925) by the British writer (1882–1941).
Jean Rhys: West Indian novelist (1890–1979), best known for Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which adapts Jane Eyre just as WG would do with CG seven months later.
Gloria: Gloria Jones (1928–2006), literary hostess and wife of novelist James Jones.
Joan Didion: married to novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003).
Sidney Lumet: American film director (1924–2011); see also 23 August 1990.
To Steven Moore
[In Recognition of William Gaddis was published in June 1984, with WG’s self portrait reproduced on the cover and title page.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
13 June 1984
Dear Steven Moore.
Well I’ve just got a copy of your & John Kuehl’s effort &, as I’m writing him (& Mrs Mesrobian) it is a class act: of course judge a book by its cover!
All I’ve read of it as yet is your piece once quickly for it’s probably painfully true, & the biographical introduction (do.), a few (I mean 2 or 3) most minor dislocations but it does pretty much set the relevant record straight, which is to say nicely avoids the wives & kids let alone the dogs (who will appear in another novel). As I just wrote John Kuehl, the most gratifying part of the whole thing is the life of both books for these young people which he, for so long, & you with more recent intensity, have done so much to encourage is hardly the word but I trust you have my meaning.
Hope against lazy hope I am trying to get this ‘new’ one out of my life by July (down our throats) & then sit down to the serious treat of these essays to write you then. I’ve wondered incidentally what did become of the efforts of that Polish girl bringing vodka & flowers & the conviction that I’d builded better than I knew (the True Believer in me); & the Belgian semiotics? constructionism? deconstruction? Marie Rose Logan, anyhow as I say for now, thanks fo
r a class act.
best regards
W Gaddis
Mrs Mesrobian: Arpena S. Mesrobian, Director of Syracuse University Press.
your piece: “Peer Gynt and The Recognitions,” pp. 81–91.
Polish girl: Teresa Bałazy; Kuehl rejected her essay.
builded better than I knew: from Emerson’s poem “The Problem” (1840): “The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, / And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, / Wrought in a sad sincerity; / Himself from God he could not free; / He builded better than he knew;—/ The conscious stone to beauty grew” (ODQ).
Marie Rose Logan: although invited to contribute, she did not respond.
To Steven Moore
[Having learned that the Bruce Peel Collection at the University of Alberta held several of WG’s letters, I wrote to them requesting copies, and was told I needed WG’s permission, which I consequently requested. In the same letter, I asked if he had written other letters to the editor like the one to the Times, whether he saw his picture in People magazine (see note below), and enclosed a copy of Alan Ansen’s poem “Epistle to Chester Kallman” (because it mentions WG in passing), included in Ansen’s chapbook The Cell (privately printed in Hong Kong, 1983). I also mentioned I was moving east, from Denver to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
22 July 84
Dear Steven Moore.
I enclose a note as requested to your people in Alberta regarding permission to see these letters whatever they (& whoever Mrs Kask) may be although as you’re surely aware it’s an entire area I’ve never condoned. Some of my reasons have been noted in relation to my reticence re interviews though here they go further: like many fledglings, my early letters were many times written with the vain notion of eventual publication & thus obviously much embarrassing nonsense; & of the later ones, those of substance will probably never be seen for equally fortunate if exactly different reasons. (I don’t know if you happened upon a review of Hemingway’s letters by Hugh Kenner, might have been in that same Harpers with my piece 2 or 3 years ago, but he does use them to flay the writer & point up frailties in his work as glimpses of the ‘real’ Hemingway, I think really these things go quite the opposite, the letters are the detritus &c).