B007RT1UH4 EBOK (112 page)

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).

No I have not written other ‘letters to editors’. No I did not see my picture in
People
though have been bantered about it (by people who read
People
). Thanks for the Ansen effort; only he would manage an original Hong Kong publication, others being pirated.

I have just signed a contract with Alfaguara (Madrid) for both books in some hereafter considering the translation challenge; also with V-Penguin for a trade softcover of
The Recognitions
sometime in a year or so.

You may hear from a William Ray, whose weighty doctoral dissert. on my work for University College London (though he’s in Boston) I’ve just returned to him looked through but unread since I cannot at this stage take that time though it looks impressive in its range & construction. He wondered about publishing where I’ve no advice for him but thought you might be interested in what he’s done.

We were pleased to learn of your coming east & if it’s feasible would like you out here for a couple of days’ visit, an easy express trip from NY &—barring the increasingly remote chance we rent this place out—will probably be here into the foreseeable fall but let us know about August, meet the luminaries, charlatans &c & we’ll let you know if any inconvenience arises: 516-537-0743 when you get in.

I forgot to mention the jolly (& deserved, really) dedication in your & John K’s book.

Yours

W Gaddis

Mrs Kask: a woman who worked at Meridian, recipient of an unimportant 1962 note excluded here.

Kenner [...]
Harpers
: Kenner’s “Writing by Numbers,”
Harper’s
, April 1981, 93–95.

People
: his photo appeared in the 4 June 1984 issue, p. 50, illustrating an article about the annual meeting of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, into which WG had just been inducted.

Alfaguara:
Los Reconocimientos
, translated by Juan Antonio Santos, was published by Alfaguara in 1987, but they never published a translation of
J R
.

V-Penguin [...]
The Recognitions
: Penguin editor Gerald Howard arranged to reprint both
R
and
J R
to accompany the publication of
CG
in the summer of 1985.

William Ray: William Vincent Ray,”Transformations of Modernist Fictional Technique in the Novels of William Gaddis,” PhD diss., University College, London, 1984.

visit: I visited him in Wainscott 18–21 August 1984. He had just finished
CG
and allowed me to read the manuscript, which I raced through in a day, to be grilled that night about the plausibility of certain plot elements.

dedication: “For Jack Green.” Green wrote a letter to Kuehl (and sent a copy to WG, which he showed me during my visit) expressing outrage that we had not requested permission first, and interpreted it as an insult on my part instead of the homage I clearly intended it to be. He requested that it be removed in any future printings.

To Sarah and Matthew Gaddis

8 August [1984]

Like old (& worser) times: DEAR SARAH & MATTHEW,

Well I finished it. Not really of course . . . a nice folder of notes of items to squeeze in when it goes to galleys but at least I did put a whole 2nd draft in the mail to Viking & now up to them to start the machinery; & even at this rate some question whether they can publish it before fall 85! Now how can you make a Major Motion Picture in like 8 months & it takes them a year to print & peddle a book, it’s beyond me. But as you know my main purpose is to get the damned Thing out of my life & I am close to doing that. Et puis? 3 more years of (blessed) MacArthur so maybe I can just sit and play with my toes—but I do want to get right to these revisions &
then
think.

Aside from that daily horror (why I haven’t written you, or anyone) the usual: saw
Under the Volcano
last night, a virtuoso perf. by Finney but still a book there was no reason to make a movie of (including that wimp who had the teddybear in
Brideshead
from whose every pore untruth exudes . . .) then a hoho burger at “Van’s” with Gloria, Kennet, Polly & Joe, Ellen Adler; this eve. to cook chicken thighs at Sag Main with Woods, Sherrys, Saul? Jean Stein? Gigi still very wound up & no knowing where it will lead.

In town for a day & dinner with Martin who is so mad at everybody he’s ever known that he’ll outlive us all. [...]

But I did see
Passion
finally (Gigi brought one back), not only good fun but a good piece on “Whatever Happened to the Great French Novel?” (July issue) (what happened is they just don’t sit down & work) but it is a snappier publication than I’d expected, all to the good.

I know I’ll become too impatient for news of you both to resist calling before you get this, most curious regarding Matthew in Paris & ‘the work’ of course!

love to you both

Papa

Under the Volcano
: 1984 film adaptation of Lowry’s 1947 novel, directed by John Huston, starring British actor Albert Finney and costarring Anthony Andrews, who had won acclaim for his role in a TV adaptation of Waugh’s
Brideshead Revisited
a few years earlier.

“Van’s”: Bobby Van’s restaurant in Bridgehampton.

Gloria [...] Ellen Adler: Gloria Jones lived with Kennet Love; see 25 August 1980 for Polly and Joe Kraft; painter Ellen Adler was the daughter of actress and teacher Stella Adler.

Saul [...] Gigi: Saul Steinberg (see headnote to WG’s second letter of 21 January 1990) and his partner, photographer Sigrid Spaeth, who committed suicide in 1996.

Jean Stein: American author and editor (1934– ), and a Wainscott neighbor.

Passion
:
Paris Passion
, an English-language magazine published in France.

To Bill Morgan

[
American literary historian (1949– ) who specializes in the Beats. He invited WG to contribute to a festschrift for Allen Ginsberg, eventually published as
Best Minds: A Tribute to Allen Ginsberg
, edited by Morgan and Bob Rosenthal (Lospecchio Press, 1986). Responses from those who declined to contribute were published in a companion volume entitled
Kanreki: A Tribute to Allen Ginsberg
, published the same year by the same press. WG’s response, a postcard without a salutation, appears on p. 47.
]

[Wainscott, NY]

9 Aug. 1984

Though I saw Allen cordially this past spring, I hadn’t for quite a good many years & the days when we met have been amply attended to surely in the Kerouac saga & elsewhere, so I’ve really nothing to add but my good wishes,

W. Gaddis

To John and Pauline Napper

Wainscott

11 Sept. 1984

Dear John and Pauline.

Some of the excuses follow but none can really excuse my not having got off even a line to you in what is an
age
. So much seems to have happened & indeed much of it has.

Most recently these past few months have been devoured by
Carpenter’s Gothic
. . . good guess! Yes that’s the title of my ‘new’ novel, why in God’s name it should have taken me so long to finish & doubly infuriating since were it out today it would be selling hotcakes, its main concern being precisely the far right political USA’s entanglement with the evangelicals, fundamentalists &c filling our pre-election front pages. It can’t be out till next year when we’ve either got a new & sobre Administration or Reagan’s reelection, in the latter case it may well be news (as all signs point) so there’s nothing to do but vote democratic & hope for the worst (Reagan). The title because in part it’s a patchwork of used ideas, borrowed & stolen, with what simple materials were to hand (hammers & saws) in the way of outrage at ‘revealed truth’ (read Genesis), erected on a small scale (about 250pp.); but also because the entire book takes place in that Piermont house (where of course The World comes in by telephone) . . . some rather heavy handed satire & flashes of poor taste but it ‘moves right along’ as they say & should offend enough people to move it in what we are pleased to call the marketplace (supply side). I very seldom go up there but do still own the Piermont house, rented out for barely enough to carry itself but my ‘workroom’ still cobwebbed with most of my books & papers with no other home despite comfortable quarters indeed here on Long Isld & in NY, Muriel’s dowry? but not a damned inch to store anything. At any rate every sobre minute has gone into finally last week handing over to Viking Press the entire rewritten, corrected, proofread MS with vast relief.