Wainscott, New York 11975
13 September ’92
Dear Ann Patty,
thank you for your letter (lately reached me at this address) & its kind wish for a ‘lovely summer’ which in fact turned out quite otherwise, the only lasting & pertinent item to emerge from the chaos being that the book has not prospered as much as I’d hoped & intended but I now have some 200 pages beyond what you have in your folder & its plotless plot right now reaching a boiling point: would you care to see it?
And thank you for the Erickson book whose story interests me (what a time Quayle would have with the situation!) which I’ve put aside for the moment though for the record I’ve never written a ‘blurb’ (& don’t solicit them) so that won’t affect its sales not that it would.
Oh I would pray for the fall ’93 publication date you mention for me though God knows the gaps between even the completed text & that grand moment (especially borne in upon me by Penguin’s next-summer note for The Recogntitions & J R in their Classic Series with the corrected film already in hand from the earlier ed.).
Well back to work
with best regards
W Gaddis
Erickson book: Steve Erickson’s Arc D’X (1993), a surreal dystopian novel.
Quayle: American politician, vice president under the first Bush (1989–93) and the subject of a squib by WG that had just appeared in the August issue of Esquire (RSP 114).
To Gregory Comnes
[For the visit WG refers to, see headnote to 5 November 1988. Comnes had finished revising his dissertation and sent a copy to WG.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
15 October 1992
dear Greg Comnes,
indeed I remember your visit (& at risk of sounding rude more for that breathtaking beauty in your company than, say, Walter Benjamin) but had not counted on the extraordinary issue from it that you have sent me, in the shape of Agapē Agape & Indeterminacy, & am struck & gratified by the argument grasped & glossed in your accompanying letter regarding “how, if at all, being moral had any legitimacy in the postmodern world” & “the willingness of people to act without the sanction of absolutes” all of which, I believe, continue to occupy (read “obsess”) me to an even further (read “despairing”) degree in my 500+ page work in hand which opens with the fine old saw “You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law” trying desperately now to surface from the deluge of my usual vastly overresearched material to wind the thing up for “another damned, thick, square book.”
Thus in no particular order: I hadn’t meant to “fuss” over your allusions to Walter Benjamin: it has been remarked elsewhere his obvious influence on my work & thought though—as I must have told you to my embarrassment—I hadn’t known of him, & certainly would have been pilloried for plagiary had I ever completed by own Agapē Agape: the Secret History of the Player Piano which became (cf. Gibbs) a casualty of overresearch; but then of course in my ignorance Benjamin had already clearly, concisely, brilliant & briefly covered the ground.
And thus in this mixture of frustration & revelation we constantly find ourselves preempted by those “selves who could do more” and did, as Frank on the greatest of them: “Not to believe in God and immortality, for the later Dostoevski, is to be condemned to live in an ultimately senseless universe; and the characters in his great novels who reach this level of self awareness inevitably destroy themselves because, refusing to endure the torment of living without hope, they have become monsters in their misery.” (& to see this rambunctious agony played out in our own time stagger through the marvelous new Stannard biography of Evelyn Waugh vol. 2)
And thus as I’ve grown older (how one cowardly shrinks from saying simply & forthrightly “grown old” as in When Dostoevski was my age he’d been dead for a decade) my youthful romantic preoccupations with love redemption not to say ‘God’ have quite given way to simply struggling with, documenting & surviving the senseless universe op.cit. in pursuing Gibbs’ dilemma both in work and ‘real life’ over how we who cry out for order seem to lead the most disorderly existences (as, in a recent note from Bill Gass, “We must get together and celebrate something, even if it’s only our weary selves and our out-of-whack lives.”).
And so on to another old saw, the Hollywood star: We’ve talked enough about me now let’s talk about you, what did you think of my last movie?
Waugh’s late years are my bedside reading otherwise I daren’t turn what is left of my mind & time on earth to any more serious reading than the daily paper until this literally Last Act is done. The reach of your letter is quite enough; but I believe, with it & spotting through* your MS & rather staggering bibliography, I am even more overwhelmed by the foreboding that the future is already here, & thus while I frequently enough see my work cited in a postmodern context I cower in the notion of a traditional novelist to such a degree that, sitting back & looking at this work in hand, I am often enough depressed at the notion that it will be dismissed as behind the times much as this letter on a 20year old portable in the face of word processors computer screens &c in the hands of 10year olds leave me outdistanced by an eon. I have to say then that seeing what you have done makes the blood race, makes up in some part for me the reassurance of “what is worth doing” & I hope you must not take it amiss that I do not for now pursue it all further here but simply send this along with thanks & appreciation & my very best regards to you
and the stunning blonde, of course
W. Gaddis
*I did give a passing glimpse at it to 2 fellows you might recognize Frederick Karl & Walter Abish passing through who were more at home with the allusions & citations & pronounced it ‘eminently readable’ . . . what will be its disposition? a univ. press? (or even a Dalkey Archive
Frank: from Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 (Princeton Univ. Press, 1983), 159.
Stannard: Martin Stannard, Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939–1966 (Norton, 1992).
Last Act: the working title of FHO was “The Last Act.” Other titles he contemplated are “Damages,” “Articles of War,” “The Last Clear Chance,” and “True Wars Are Never Won.” a univ. press: as noted earlier, it was eventually published by the University Press of Florida in 1994.
To Steven Moore
[In September 1992 I sent WG copies of Dalkey Archive’s edition of Jack Green’s Fire the Bastards!, disregarding Green’s earlier refusal to grant permission to reprint his work. (The work was in the public domain, meaning Green’s permission wasn’t legally necessary.) As this letter makes clear, WG was still upset that I had sold his letters the previous year.]
Wainscott
15 October 1992
dear Steven Moore,
sorry to be so late thanking you for sending the finished copies of the Jack Green opus (might even have added an appendix page of the review parodies of The Recognitions in J R) held back probably by the conflict in my head & history between vain pleasure at seeing Green’s work preserved & circulated on the one hand & on the other my strong feelings over a writer’s wishes for & implicit rights to his work & privacy however legally encroached upon over which I’ve tangled with (Judge) Pierre Leval from the Salinger case onward, goes I suppose with an oversensi[ti]vity over seeing one’s private letters sold where I suppose a case can be made for ‘making a market’ for the eventual ‘archive’ as patrimony.
Penguin Classic eds. of the above apparently not due till next summer.
I have received an extraordinary & detailed exegesis from Greg Comnes with which you’re probably familiar but am too consumed with the work in hand to give it the thorough attention it demands & I am sure deserves.
Yours,
WG.
Pierre Leval: see headnote to 10 August 1993.
Penguin Classics eds.: new editions of R and J R appeared in the summer of 1993, the former with an introduction by William H. Gass, the latter by Frederick R. Karl.
To Ivan Nabokov
&nb
sp; [See note to 6 February 1988. He had published the French translation of CG that year and was preparing for J R in 1993 (both translated by novelist Marc Cholodenko [1950– ], who would later translate FHO as well.) The following is a fax, a medium WG had just begun using.]
27 October 1992
Dear Ivan,
what a great pleasure hearing your voice this morning bursting with good news and enthusiasm! These are the citations I mentioned if they may be of any use to you and J R even though they embrace both books. I do not solicit (or give out) ‘blurbs’ but once they appear independently it seems valid to use them.
These are citations that were written proposing my membership in The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (Bellow, 1984) and then for the inner American Academy of Arts and Letters itself (McCarthy, 1989); Bellow has given his permission and McCarthy God rest her soul would I know.
Aesop’s vixen, pleased with her numerous litter, asked the lioness how many offspring she had. The lioness said, “One. But a lion.” Gaddis has published two novels, each of them a lion. These are bold, powerful books ambitious in conception and elegant—leonine—in execution.
—Saul Bellow
William Gaddis is pure prodigy. He has a fantastic ear for American speech with the strictest attention and exactitude such an ear demands but, strangely crossed with that, the wildest of imaginations. He is horrid and funny. His three novels—The Recognitions, J R, and Carpenter’s Gothic—are massive in ambition and dazzling in execution. They are fierce with integrity.
—Mary McCarthy
Whatever their use ‘commercially’ you may only imagine how deeply pleased I was when I first saw them (& remain so!). And with what an appetite I look forward to seeing your ‘press kit’ and the cover posthaste even a xerox—and of course the book itself (a prepublication copy?) and yourself early next year.
very best regards,
William Gaddis
To Saul Bellow
[American novelist (1915–2005); WG reviewed his More Die of Heartbreak for the New York Times Book Review in 1987 (RSP 73–79).]
Wainscott, New York 11975
31 October 1992
Dear Saul,
a note of real thanks to you for your generosity in the use of your Academy citation by the Penguin people for the reissue of The Recogntions and J R in their ‘Classic Series’.
Since I have always avoided writing and soliciting ‘blurbs’ I felt the notion of this request shadowed by an infringement both on friendship and good manners, since presumably these citations bear the confidentiality of the higher order of clubs; but as Saul Steinberg—another man for the scrupulously chosen word and image—observed in his good offices here, it would be a pity to see the marvelously conceived endorsement moulder away in the Academy’s vaults and so I am elated now as I was when first saw it.
In licensing the rights to this ‘Classic Series’ it was quite clear that their list is mainly posthumous, meaning I assume they may dispense with the annoyance of paying royalties or deal bluntly with ‘the estate of’ unfettered by the unreasonable price the author himself might place on his wistful vision of inkstained immortality where we find even Sidney Sheldon leading the pack demanding publication on acid-free paper. But having now been relegated as a ‘classic’ in this age of Madonna (& Sidney Sheldon) your imprimatur so cleanly marks the line between literature and the deluge of sheer books and it’s that which I find inordinately gratifying in this battle to simply last them out.
Bearing down myself though on both 3 score & 10 and the shattered ending of what increasingly looks like ‘another damned, thick, square book’ it’s difficult to hold at bay the despair of finding it an episodic sitcom as the word and indeed the world now has it and the wish for the day to say goodbye to all that.
Notwithstanding, as all these considerations begin to strike closer to the bone they inform me of the quite serious cast of my best wishes to you for good health and yet longer work and life,
William Gaddis
Sidney Sheldon: American TV producer and best-selling novelist (1917–2007). In 1989, Sheldon and nearly a hundred other writers and publishers signed a pledge to use “acid-free paper for all first printings of quality hard-cover trade books.”
goodbye to all that: perhaps only coincidentally the title of Robert Graves’s early memoir (1929).
To Jack Green
[After I sent Green copies of the Dalkey edition of Fire the Bastards!, he wrote me an insulting letter threatening legal action—to which I did not respond—and sent a copy of his letter to WG.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
20 November 1992
Well Jack Green,
long live intransigence! What are we dealing with: in a splendid (as always) phrase from Bill Gass ‘the high brutality of good intentions’? Hovering as I have always done between the limelight & obscurity this butterfly of the divided self (a basic theme of ‘another damned, thick, square book’* I am finishing now) pinned to the wall by Steven Moore’s attentions, 2 books past on my work & future threat of publication of my letters even & ‘biography’? which is dull stuff I would proclaim having just finished v. II of Stannard’s marvelous Evelyn Waugh.
You see by the enclosed that indeed I did receive copies of his publication as what he must have felt my curt note witnesses (I have not heard from him since) every letter of mine (Dear Miss Tillingast Thank you so much for your perfumed and generous estimate of my work, might I ask you to send me a snapshot of yourself naked) being worth $1 or so to the patrimonial archive, Lord! to have the thunderous integrity of Samuel Butler say (his fine novel published posthumously) or even Sir Richard Burton’s wife burning his papers (for all the wrong reasons) or what about Nietzsche’s crazy sister’s recreation, Hauptmann’s (& even Heidrich(sp?)’s) widows + Mary Hemingway’s uxorial rehabilitative efforts, on to Mme Pasteur (‘Oh Looie! all Paris is talking . . .’)
God knows how I got off on all this, not a glass of spirits in 3 years but a little wine for the stomach’s sake trying desperately to close out the * above now at 500++ 8½x14 pages much, in fact, dealing with copyright (a man’s illfated play stolen for The Movie) law but law law everywhere as usual over researched having been given the 84 vol. AmJur (next step down from Corpus Juris) hoping against hope (whatever that fine cliche may mean) to be done with it by year’s end & perhaps my own but otherwise expect to be in NY later in the winter & would be a tonic to see you again with fair warning.
best regards
W. Gaddis
Butler [...] posthumous novel: written in the 1880s, The Way of All Flesh was not published until 1903, a year after his death.
Sir Richard Burton’s wife: Isabel Burton burned many of her husband’s papers and manuscripts “to protect his reputation.”
Nietzsche’s crazy sister’s recreation: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche published his writings in mangled form after his death in 1900. See AA 77–78.
Hauptmann: after the death of German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946), his widow kept his archives secret.
Heidrich: in 1951, the widow of Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich (1904–42) turned down an offer by a Welsh writer to split the royalties 50-50 on a book about her husband.
Mary Hemingway: authorized the posthumous publication of novels that her husband Ernest (1899–1961) may not have wished to be published.
Mme Pasteur: holding rights to the French chemist’s name, his widow allowed another scientist to call his laboratory Institut Pasteur du Brabant.
To Muriel Oxenberg Murphy
[undated fax, 1992/1993?]
OR—accepting your good point that Ibsen has given us the 2nd act curtain only with Nora stamping out the door resolute? or in despair?—of course her (fictional ‘ideal’) husband Helmer is left in utter despair & confusion finally understanding “what has really happened” as GBShaw tells us “and sits down alone to wonder whether that more honourable relation can ever come to pass between them.” But
she has, after all, “learnt to coax her husband into giving her what she asks by appealing to his affection for her: that is, by playing all sorts of pretty tricks until he is wheedled into an amourous humor” (and my! Claire Bloom certainly could in Joyce’s phrase make his mickey stand for him) . . . suppose, in his confused crushed angered self pity Helmer wonders whether she has taken a leaf from an egregious best seller of the 60s called Games People Play and is in effect daring him to come after her, invite her back, enlist family friends & seek ‘professional help’ shrinks & priests all to yield to the burden of the crippling proposition that it’s hardly over unless he wants it to be? Still mightily confused ‘after all he’s done for her’ trips he’s taken her on, gifts he’s tried to give her, friends and unspeakable practices & delights they’ve shared and all she has given him, does wretched Helmer left sitting there simply pour a glass of schnapps (it being Scandanavia)? or stand up and walk out the door himself up the country road breathing deeply on this beautiful day, same old squirrels, same old bunny rabbits scampering from his path, trying to clear his head thinking & hoping that with the help of the Great Script Doctor in the sky that this may be a 4 act play after all?
Ibsen [...] GBShaw: WG quotes from the conclusion of Shaw’s analysis of Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House in The Quintessence of Ibsenism (Brentano’s, 1928), 92.
Claire Bloom: the English actress (1931– ) played Nora both on stage and in the 1973 film version of A Doll’s House.
Joyce’s phrase make his mickey stand: a few pages from the end of Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses.
Games People Play: a 1964 book by Dr. Eric Berne on the psychology of human relationships.
To Saul Steinberg
[Typed on the back of a rough draft of a paragraph on page 570 of FHO that cites lines from Longfellow’s Hiawatha.]