B007RT1UH4 EBOK (113 page)

& what took so much time? Well partly of course getting deeper immersed in the book, which started out as a ‘romance’ but I found needed outrage to fuel it, ergo fundamentalism &c. And life itself, mine & theirs . . . Sarah’s divorce a sticky number but finally accomplished & she’s now been in Paris for a year, doing design, fashion & drawing studies at a branch of the American College there (connected to Parsons) & also some side paying jobs; & though it’s exactly a year to the day I haven’t seen her seems to be in great shape & Growing Up (panicked of course that yesterday was her 29th, feeling the hand of Age descending (can you imagine!)). And Matthew {***}. Pretty wild for the 2 children of one of the most tried & true Francophobes you will find . . .

Well now at last blessed relief (‘famous last words’ as your old saw has it), we plan going to Rome for November & December, have got a room at the American Academy there which will assuredly not be lavish but at the least provide refuge from that operatic people while we sample their remains; been in such odd places as Bankok & Libya (shades of David Tudor Pole) but for some reason or none, never Rome. And there for the moment it all stands; the heavy shadows of drink (not drunk but certainly to be cut down) & tobacco taking a serious turn & if humanly (me) possible to be ended, the new ‘creative challenge’ [...].

Willie

To Robert Minkoff

[
I was widening my efforts to collect WG’s letters and had written to Robert Minkoff to request copies of any he might have. Minkoff wrote to WG for permission to release them to me.
]

American Academy in Rome

Via Angelo Masina 5

00153 Rome

12 Nov. 1984

Dear Robert Minkoff.

Your 20 August letter finally reached me and I appreciate your thoughtfulness in this what is at heart an idiotic matter. This fellow Steven Moore has already published 2 books on my work—very straight & diligent & appears headed to be my sympathetic “chronicler” like it or not.

My letters—& I think no one’s—are written for publication (unless they
are
in which case they’re probably full of lies); legally I believe the letter (as an
object
) belongs to the recipient (or anyone he sells/gives it to), while its
contents
remain property of the one who wrote it (ie regarding publication). I’ve long suspected that my papers, letters &c. would eventually bring more money (not necessarily to me) than royalties on the books themselves, & I say “idiotic matter” above because this is apparently happening—some university in Canada I understand has paid around $900. for a handful of my letters (not of course to me). Thus there’s a price tag on what you hold in your hand as you read this!

Ergo ——what’s the rude solution? write someone a letter, send her/him a xerox & keep the original? The letters
are
yours, to keep, burn, sell, give to Steven Moore, or 2 of the above —ie send Moore xeroxes & keep, burn or sell the originals. It’s all madness. (I understand 1
^st
ed. of
The Recognitions
, once remaindered at $1.98, now goes for $450.)

best regards,

William Gaddis

To Johan Thielemans

235 East 73 Street

New York, New York 10021

7 January 1985

Dear Thielemans,

just back from 2 months at the American Academy in Rome to find galleys of
C
****’s
G
**** waiting, now ‘corrected’ (with almost negligable changes) to take in to Viking tomorrow & find out their schedule for it, also for their (Penguin) reissues of
J R
&
The R
*******
s
all early summer I believe. I don’t know their prospect for bound galleys but if I can lay hands on one will send it along to you.

In my absence here a few things have come up regarding this spring to which I must respond & so would greatly appreciate hearing from you as soon as conveniently possible where the Orleans possibility stands & inhowfar I should consider it as a realistic spring prospect or not.

Forgive this haste plowing through a mountain of mail (bills) after chiseling through the stunning exhibition of computerized typesetting (typos) (ie the worst sort, that for than &c)—having just read that Mme Tolstoy copied
W** & P
****
7 times,
& presumably in Cyrillic at that?

with best regards,

Gaddis

To Sarah and Matthew Gaddis

New York, NY

10 January 1985

Dear Sarah & Matthew,

16
^o
here my, it is cold! & I read you folk in Europe are enjoying similar agonies, I hope you both have heat. [...] I’ve delayed this thinking I’d be able to send you bound galleys which should have been ready by now but Elis Sifton has to write a long kind of blurb (to help reviewers so they can review the book without reading it) & hasn’t yet done so, another week or 2 . . . Meanwhile I went down yesterday & turned in my set of galleys corrected & with negligable changes; the only hitch remaining is Viking’s lawyer who may want me to change some passages as coming too close to Jimmy Swaggart but he was away yesterday (in South Dakota fighting a suit by an exgovernor there against Peter Matthiessen for saying he’d once raped a 10year old Indian girl or some such since even in South Dakota that might damage his chances for reelection. Also a long splendid lunch with Candida who of course has found a very expensive Italian restaurant in the new neighborhood she’s moved her office to (West 22nd street), full reports on Rome &c.

I try to go out & ‘walk’ (for health) but 2nd Ave no treat after the Gianicolo. Mainly preoccupied thinking I must seriously decide and get started on Another Project, but what. Especially after just having painfully written a letter to LSU (Louisiana State Univ) turning down or at least postponing their invitation to me to come down there & direct their writing program, salary (hold your breath) $55 thousand! was I a fool? 8 months in Baton Rouge? Arguing one way no, the whole point of The MacArthur is to free one for a while from such necessities to do one’s ‘own work’; on the other, really just a good excuse for laziness? Joyce Carol Oats teaches doesn’t she? & has just published her 16th novel . . . ouch. But I will go down to Univ of Delaware just an overnight, give a talk &c; and a week at Bard in June. Haven’t as yet heard anything about the Orleans number for spring. Maybe I’m secretly thinking something $ly exciting will happen with the new book. Fool! [...]

Sarah I am taking a liberty for which you may or may not thank me: a note from Catharine Carver saying she is in Paris for a couple of months at something called Trianon Press & I’m sending her your number. She is really now what she always wanted to be, an old eccentric English lady of letters . . . [...]

much love

Papa

Jimmy Swaggart: fundamentalist preacher (1935– ) at the height of his popularity at that time.

Peter Matthiessen: American novelist, nonfiction writer, and environmental activist (1927– ); Governor William J. Janklow and an FBI agent named David Price sued him and Viking to suppress his book
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
(1983).

Gianicolo: Italian name for the Janiculum, a famous hill and location of the American Academy of Rome.

$55 thousand: $120,000 today.

Joyce Carol Oats: Oates (1938– ) has produced a prodigious output while teaching at Princeton.

Univ of Delaware: at Elaine Safer’s invitation, WG judged a fiction contest and delivered a talk there on 1 May 1985. Miriam Fuchs and I took the train down to Wilmington with him; the talk was an assortment of observations, opinions, quotes, and jokes, delivered in an improvisatory manner from notecards.

To Steven Moore

[
Having seen a limited edition of John Updike’s
Harvard Lampoon
writings (
Jester’s Dozen
, Lord John Press, 1984), I wrote to WG to request permission to edit a similar book of his. I also naively asked about the possibility of reviewing
CG
for the
New York Times Book Review
.
]

New York, NY 10021

[28 January 1985]

Dear Steve,

sorry but the sheer gimmickry of publishing the
Lampoon
material leaves me cold despite your kind offer of time effort &c.

Bound galleys for the new book are being held up because of complications over permissions for the Jas. Hilton material which I’m trying to resolve now hence the haste of this. I think The
NYTimes
selects their reviewers as far as that goes.

Someone called my attention to the Delmore Schwartz passage which is at least thoughtful & straightforward.

WG.

Hilton material: the sections of
CG
quoting
Jane Eyre
(both the 1847 novel and the 1943 film adaptation starring Orson Welles) originally quoted James Hilton’s
Lost Horizon
(1933, film version 1937). The Hilton Estate objected to the erotic context in which WG quoted the novel.

Schwartz: in the just-published
Letters of Delmore Schwartz
, ed. Robert Phillips (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1984), Schwartz responds to Catharine Carver’s request for a promotional statement on
R
with a harsh critique of the novel (p. 298).

To Sarah Gaddis