B007RT1UH4 EBOK (111 page)

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 –8
^o
.

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 for 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.