B007RT1UH4 EBOK (100 page)

Also, p. 99 (
J R
p. 142) while Bast is echoing the Ring motif on the piano the lines he’s declaiming (Rift the hills. . . Rain or hail! &c) are from Tennyson’s Locksley Hall.

Also liked your rescuing the passage (your 103) regarding the unfinished book/terminally ill patient to which you give the interpretation intended (compare Gardner’s distortion).

Finally I have got to thank you for never so far as I recall writing me with questions, queries &c since 1) I just have not time to respond to those things which often come in in some detail & can’t afford the correspondence they anticipate, & 2) have always tried to hold to the stance that the work is on its own & I cannot pursue it saying —This is what I really meant . . . (or That is not what I meant at all . . .) but mainly 3) what you accomplished without my help (read interference) is in so short a space so succinctly & well done that I am in your debt,

Yours,

William Gaddis

Regarding Broyard’s
Times
review unfortunately the short shrift he gives you (in a very odd statement) is I’m afraid really meant for me: we’ve known each other some 30 years & I guess clearly aren’t pals.

Broyard: Anatole Broyard (1920–90) & WG knew each other in the Village in the late ’40s and were rivals for Sheri Martinelli’s affections, which caused some friction. He was the model for Max in
R.
See his posthumously published “Remembering William Gaddis in the Nineteen-Fifties,”
New England Review
17.3 (Summer 1995): 13–14. He reviewed
Money Talks
in the 13 June 1981
New York Times
, stating: “In his analysis of William Gaddis’s ‘JR,’ Steven Weisenburger manages to sound both ingenious and off-putting” (21).

Big Books: Weisenburger begins his essay: “William Gaddis is the author of two Big Books. By this designation I mean that
The Recognitions
(1955) and
JR
(1975) stand in a brotherly relation to
Moby-Dick
,
Ulysses
,
The Sot-Weed Factor
, and
Gravity’s Rainbow
” (93).

Bartleby: Weisenburger quotes Melville’s “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” as the impulse behind such Big Books as WG’s. Gardner wrote a book entitled
On Moral Fiction
(1978).

EBOM [...] &c: handwritten first with English letters, then gone over again to make them appear Greek.

To David Markson

Wainscott NY 11975

26 Sept 1981

Dear David,

I’ve been out here since September began & our mail connection with NY is tenuous, it gets here eventually only when someone stops in the NY apartment & notices it & postpones forwarding it or brings it out in a heap.

So this may be too late for your Guggenheim application, where you may use my name. My past testimonials have generally been brief & have accumulated a list of no-wins; also I have noted a greatly declining number going to fiction writers compared to the old days, compared to film music & academic projects, all capped by what I would think must be a greatly augmented number of applications because of threats to federal state &c funding for the ‘arts’.

Good luck whatever,

Willie Gaddis

To Johan Thielemans

Wainscott, NY 11975

8 October 1981

Dear Thielemans,

thanks for your letter which I just had forwarded here, unfortunately some 100 miles from New York so I’m afraid I’ll have to miss you this trip & should like to have heard more of the happy episode of Gass in Ghent. That Balazy is a good tough minded girl, glad I could talk with her & most curious to see what she comes up with. Regards to Freddy deV, sorry nothing on tape yet but the day may come,

best regards

W. Gaddis

Teresa Bałazy: see 8 January 1980. She had by this time published an essay entitled “A Recognition of
The Recognitions
” in
Traditions in the Twentieth Century American Literature
, ed. Marta Sienicka (Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 1981), 23–33.

Freddy deV: Freddy de Vree (1939–2004), Belgian poet and radio producer; conducted an interview with WG in 1988.

To Tomasz Mirkowicz

[
A Polish critic, activist, and translator (1953–2003) who, while visiting the United States, interviewed WG with a professor from Columbia named Marie-Rose Logan. The interview was translated into Polish and published with the title “‘Kto do utworu przychodzi z niczym . . .’: Z Williamem Gaddisem rozmawiaja”
[
“If You Bring Nothing to a Work . . .”: An Interview with William Gaddis
]
,
Literatura na Swiecie
1/150 (1984): 178–89. Mikowicz began a Polish translation of
R
at this time but eventually abandoned it.
]

Wainscott NY 11975

7 November 1981

Dear Tomasz Mirkowicz.

I’m sorry to be so late about responding to your letter, but have been spending most of my time out here in the country & mail forwarding hasn’t been dependable.

So far as the interview goes, I think it’s just fine & see no reason to make any changes, as I told Marie-Rose Logan when she called a week or so ago. There are a few word changes here & there which are probably simply errors going into the English translation (as toward the foot of page 4, engendered should read endangered?), but I’m sure you & she will straighten this entropy out.

It also has occurred to me to suggest to you my making use of the interview if you have no objection, even though there is ‘my condition’ in it that it not appear in English; but I do get these requests frequently enough to be distracting even annoying so if such a moment comes along & you don’t mind, I might make such use of it (would of course say interview conducted by you & translated from the Polish which would sound nicely exotic here).

Regarding fiction for your magazine, the only material I have right now is what’s written of the book I’m working on and, since what I have is still in a first finished draft I don’t especially want to see it published. I haven’t yet incidentally heard from the Jarek Anders you mention with the magazine with the excerpt from
J R
, I’ve been as I say at the address below (and probably will until the end of the month, back in New York in December); but there has been someone at the 73rd street apartment so I hope the material hasn’t got lost.

Finally, I’m sending your name along to a professor at New York University who has written me about a book he is getting together of critical articles on both my published novels, & you might possibly hear from him (his name is John Kuehl).

with best regards

William Gaddis

excerpt from
J R
: Jarosław Anders’s translation of a section of
J R
appeared as “Symetryczny ruch wielkich kół” in
Literatura na swiecie
3/71 (1977): 132–91.