with much love always,
Papa
To the Editor, New York Times Magazine
[Regarding a film Matthew had worked on; unpublished.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
8 April 1985
In his piece ‘Louis Malle: An Outsider’s Odyssey’ (April 7), John Culhane notes that a number of viewers have found Malle’s new film Alamo Bay to be
‘“anti-American”—and, particularly, anti-Texan. In this view, the film showed white Texans as unsympathetic —racist and bigoted . . .’ as well might anyone with only Mr Culhane’s description of the film to go on, since nowhere in it is there even a mention that an essential tie binding these ‘Anglo’ fishermen together—their ‘belonging’, to use Mr Culhane’s word and theme—is the fact, established in the film’s opening hitchhiking scene and repeatedly borne out, that these men are veterans of the Vietnam war, which gives quite a different, credible, and far larger dimension to their outrage and that of the film itself.
William Gaddis
Louis Malle: French director (1932–95).
To Sarah Gaddis
[Wainscott, NY]
7 May 1985
Dear Sarah.
Terrible how the telephone monster (even transatlantic) breaks down the practice of writing, —I want to call her Thursday anyhow so I’ll just wait . . . till finally weeks have gone by without even a note.
Not that there’s that much to report & certainly nothing momentous though it is strange how one finally recognizes patterns emerging in one’s life: spring bringing moving stuff from pink house to barn in Massapequa; from 2nd Avenue to Saltaire, now from New York to here, patching, painting, the whole thing reversed in the fall, so it’s been that kind of back & forth for this last month, into town next week for the big annual Academy lunch & host to Bill & Mary Gass then out here for more or less good.
And I suppose there’s a kind of secret suspense that colours everything else, waiting for that book to come out (though I was sure that this time I’d treat it as a minor event (which of course it may be!!)). I’ve practically lost contact with Viking, & having made all the suggestions I could decided any more will simply aggravate matters so I guess I’ll just wait for the thing to appear. Just turned down a $5 thousand offer from a Brit publisher hoping to do better. Also asked for an interview for Rolling Stone which I think I’ll do since it reaches the Young where one wants one’s readers. Otherwise a grand silence pervades all.
Then of course another & probably the larger reason for postponing writing had been waiting to see how your plans developed & hoping to see you here soon; & it’s not disappointment but rather concern that when we talked last week your spirits didn’t sound high as they have almost always this past year & more, & I hope it was only a passing case of the blues though I felt, as the possibility came closer, your being disturbed at the prospect of coming ‘back’ for a visit which, as I said, I’d all this time pictured as a kind of reverse vacation not a threat of the future or jobs or anything like that & I do just wish—& this goes for your brother too—that you don’t have feelings that such a visit entails your having to ‘prove’ something, anything; anything but Yes Paris is marvelous, Yes everything’s good as can be . . . because it really is you know, & crass & awful as it sounds the very Freedom you & Matthew (me too!) have with the money horrors off our backs is major. Not for a moment that ‘money buys happiness’ Lord no! from the examples around us in fact it often looks like the more of one the less of the other; but the comparative freedom we have now, you he & I, to look around for what we really want to do instead of being driven to what we don’t like 99% of mankind (or as ee cummings phrased it manunkind): not buying happiness no, but the grand luxury of a sense of proportion & self worth, Joan D[idion]’s ‘self regard’ or Mister Gibbs in J R observing there’s nothing more demoralising than failing at something that wasn’t worth doing in the first place, meaning something one had a kind of contempt for (I think I’ll write a pop song & make a million dollars) . . . because, again, we the 3 of us I think have paid our dues in the nickel & dime department, & now it is up to us whether to let all that have ‘strengthened our character’ or warped it. Well! enough of another of ‘Papa’s little talks’ . . .
Meanwhile I’m trying to make random notes around another novel, or rather concept for one, dealing with the ‘final problem’, what else? death and money. I’ve heard a few comments on the new book in fierce intellectual terms (its density & resonances accomplish everything the earlier books did at 3 times the length) and it ‘is very, very funny’ which is the heart of it, which is ‘positive absurdity in the face of absolute idiocy’ as I read recently somewhere, which is where death & money will eventually end up too.
I think your talking on french radio, if that came through, is just wild, just a marvelous burst of the things around us; & your ‘dealing with the client’ over the invitation . . . oh! that’s the real world out there! As for pressures you seem to feel on you for a visit back they are simply those of love & pride in you, in you both.
with much love as you know,
Papa
interview for Rolling Stone: never happened.
ee cummings phrased it manunkind: poem 14 in 1 x 1 opens: “pity this busy monster,manunkind, / not.”
‘it is very, very funny’: so said Esquire in a feature on forthcoming novels (August 1984).
‘positive absurdity in the face of absolute idiocy’: in an article in the 1 May 1985 New York Times, the president of Canada’s absurdist Rhinoceros Party praised its founder for teaching “us the power of positive absurdity in the face of absolute idiocies.”
To Sarah Gaddis
Wainscott
6 June 1985
Dear Sarah.
I keep expecting I’ll have something to send you in the way of news on the book’s progress & it keeps not arriving—in this case a review in a rag called Kirkus Reviews very much read by booksellers and ‘the trade’ (also movie sharks) & usually quite unkind (they called The Recognitions ‘totally undisciplined’) but in this case apparently quite excited, some slavey at Viking called & read it to me (the only words I remember are ‘virtuoso’ & ‘dazzling’) said they’d send it immediately but of course have not. Next, Publisher’s Weekly is sending someone out here to interview me & while as you know I’ve generally avoided such foolishments in this case I am trying to be more like a regular grownup & help sell the book rather than pretend I’ve never heard of it. So as all this mounts toward publication even though I’ve thought of getting away, even a hop over to see you, it is better to stay here & do what I can (short of a ‘talk show’) to cooperate at this rather crucial stage of things. My only other commitment is the last week of June at Bard to which I can’t say I look forward but it is $3 thousand and they were good to me back in the late 70s when as we all remember things were pretty rough.
[...] with much love always,
Papa
Kirkus Reviews: 15 May 1985, 437. See Green’s Fire the Bastards! for some choice words on its review of R in 1955.
Publisher’s Weekly: Miriam Berkley interviewed Gaddis in Wainscott on 17 June, and her interview appeared in the 12 July issue of PW (56–57), accompanied by a photograph Berkley shot. (Another photo taken the same day appears on the cover of my monograph William Gaddis [Twayne, 1989].)
To Sarah E. Lauzen
[A Chicago critic who had sent WG a draft of an entry that would be published the following year in Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide, ed. Larry McCaffery (Greenwood Press, 1986), 373–77.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
20 June 1985
Dear Ms Lauzen.
Thank you for sending me your nicely & wittily written entry. I especially appreciated (p.5) mention that my work is ‘enjoyable to read’: among the many ‘hostile and ignorant reviews’ of The Recognitions when it first appeared most were so cowed by what they called ‘erudition’ that scarcely anyone dared suggest that it mig
ht be comic.
To your entry:
p. 1 I’ve just broken silence & given an interview to Publishers Weekly, seemed the politic thing to do this time (& that place) should appear in a couple of weeks; & I might elsewhere if it’s a good elsewhere. (You might say for openers, something like Until the publication of his most recent novel WG had granted only one &c.)
bottom of page, should read grants from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1963; might also want to add Guggenheim Fellowship 1981
p.2 line 21, is there a better word for ‘counterfeiting’? (which people usually associate with $: try forgery?
p.4 line 3, for setting sun read evening sky? v. p. 474 [of J R], the point here’s really the moon coming up a few lines later, since (v.p. 661) what she’s really seen is the top of a Carvel stand (& is there a millionaire for that!). No need to elaborate, just for your information.
p.5 line 3, the NBA was 1976 (for books published in 1975).
line 8, I’d say in and around New York
Primary Sources: the Harvest pbk was Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Secondary Sources: I’d certainly include Frederick Karl, American Fictions 1940–1980, Harper & Row 1983; might want to mention Tony Tanner’s City of Words all of course at your discretion.
I especially enjoyed that ‘first and last attempt to reach the man at the airport’ wherever that came from.
thank you again
William Gaddis
Tanner’s City of Words: see 4 March 74.
‘first [...] airport’: it came from WG himself; in conversation WG had said of CG, “This is the closest I’ll ever come to writing for the man in the airport” (i.e., for the general reader looking for something entertaining to read). Lauzen called me in early 1985 to get information on the new novel (she hadn’t seen it yet), and I paraphrased his remark.
To Sarah Gaddis
Wainscott
6th July 1985
Dear Sarah.
Well here at last it is! & from reading it you will see that I couldn’t have been more fortunate (especially in light of the really dimwitted review by Lehmanhaupt a couple of days ago which may have been reprinted in the Paris Tribune?) —no, other reviews will come along now but no matter how good or bad nothing is as ‘influential’ as this front page of the Times. So we are off to a terrific start I think. (I sent you a ‘finished copy’ of the book more than a week ago, hope you got it?) Of course it is going to have to sell a good many copies to make back all the money I have had in advances before I get anything from it, [...]
Well I went up and did my stint at Bard & it was very strange, retracing those steps from 7 & 8 years ago when things were so difficult on all sides for us all. What is important, not just important but paramount, at the heart of it all, is how we’ve stood by each other & how both you & Matthew have stood by me Lord knows through some pretty dark times, even at the distances we’ve been apart, that has been & remains the by far best thing of my life (way beyond ‘rave reviews’) & now, with what certainly looks like Fortune Smiling, even Grinning (I touch wood) that we can build & build upon it. It has been a very great source of my strength, & of my driving myself down to work even in the times I really didn’t feel like it, simply couldn’t see the use of it, but—sentimental as it may sound—wanted above all for you & Matthew to be ‘proud’ of me as I’ve been of both of you increasingly so as time passes. I miss you so much now but when this long flurry passes & we get together one place or the other we can savour it all.
with much love always, always,
Papa
Lehmanhaupt: Lehmann-Haupt’s review appeared in the 3 July New York Times, p. C22.
front page of the Times: Cynthia Ozick’s review appeared on the front page of the 7 July New York Times Book Review.
To John W. Aldridge
[The obverse of this postcard reproduces Texan artist Charles Anderson’s Rapture (1973), a kitschy fundamentalist painting depicting the return of the redeemer over Dallas’s Thornton Freeway. WG bought a stack of these postcards and used them for years.]
[24 July 1985]
Dear Jack,
Glad and relieved to hear from you, it seems a very long time & we’d hoped you might pass through; glad also that the book did reach you & kept your generous regard for my work unblemished. (I’d wanted this Rapture for the book’s jacket, but the folks in Sherman Texas feared the book might have swear words in it & so declined.) Again, let us know if you do pass through.
our best to you both
Bill Gaddis
5. A Frolic of His Own, 1985–1994
To Johan Thielemans
[In his book Vrijheid in de steigers (Haarlem: In de Knipscheer, 1985), Dutch critic Graa Boom-sma describes a visit with WG (p. 24, with Joseph Heller stopping by), and a few pages later describes how, sitting one evening out on Gaddis’s porch, Thomas Pynchon dropped by for a chat (p. 28).]
Wainscott, New York 11975
11 October 1985
Dear Thielemans.
Thanks for your letter of the 30th September with its news—news to me—that Graa Boomsma not only visited us on Long Isld but that he met Thomas Pynchon here! He had written me of his trip to the US hoping we might meet, but there was some confusion & it never came about, surely not out here, most surely not Pynchon (whom I’ve never met, despite the many critical claims to similarity in our work: I see us both classed paranoid & conspiratorial but who, aside from James Michner, is not?). And so I would very much appreciate it when you’ve got the time if you might send me a copy of his piece with a translation. Most curious.
I met your charming Anna K. last week, she came up to the NY apartment on her tour of US writers & we had a delightful chat though I’m not at all sure that she got from it whatever information she was after. At any rate I enjoyed it highly.
Carpenter’s Gothic seems to be going well here, & I have signed for it abroad with Andre Deutsch (Britain), Albin Michel (France), Rowolt (Ger.); Spain still unsigned but practically so (can’t think of the publisher, begins with an ‘A’). My agent is at the Frankfurt Book festival & I’ve told him to notify Sweden Holland Norway &c to watch your 27 October television which may help to bring them into the fold.
News here: we (Muriel & I) invited to 2 or 3 weeks in Russia, some sort of writers’ conference (though I have no details at all) from mid November, & I will try to stop in Paris on return around 5th December to see my daughter for a few days & what happens then is wide open.
Finally, word of some sort of British Publishers Assoc’n event for early next year selecting the 20 ‘best’ US novels since the war (WWII), a rather odd list but The Recognitions among them so that may be another grand tour; it all leaves little time for ‘writing’ even were I so inclined.
best regards,
W. Gaddis
Anna K.: by the time Thielemans made copies of these letters for me, he had forgotten who this woman was.
Carpenter’s Gothic [...] abroad: the novel was published by Deutsch in 1986, as Gothique charpentier (translated by Marc Cholodenko) by Christian Bourgois in 1988 (not Albin Michel—see 6 February 1988 for an explanation), and as Die Erlöser (“The Savior,” trans. Klaus Modick and Martin Hielscher) by Rowohlt in 1988. The Spanish publisher Alfaguara brought out a translation of R in 1987 but not CG. The novel was also translated into Portuguese (1985), Swedish (1987), Italian (1990), and Polish (1991). A Spanish translation was eventually published by Sexto Piso in 2012.
Frankfurt Book festival: the annual trade show where publishers from around the world gather to sell foreign rights.
Russia: for an account of this trip, with occasional mention of WG, see William H. Gass’s “Some Snapshots from the Soviet Zone,” Kenyon Review 8.4 (Fall 1986): 1–43, and, with the focus on WG, A Temple of Texts (Knopf, 2006), 191–200.
British Publishers Assoc’n: the British Book Marketing Council announced its list of the twenty greatest postwar American novels in October 1985 for a
special trade promotion the following year called AUTHORS USA. All of the (living) authors were invited to attend, and WG was one of seven who accepted and went to England in February 1986. See Publishers Weekly, 18 October 1985, 20, for the complete list of novels, and its 28 February 1986 issue, 26, for details on the promotional tour.
To George Plimpton
[American writer (1927–2003) and editor of the Paris Review who had often approached WG about an interview. The one mentioned below appeared in issue 105 (Winter 1987): 54–89.]