B007RT1UH4 EBOK (121 page)

Adele: Auchinloss’s wife.

To Sarah Gaddis

Wainscott

17 Sept. 87

Dear Sarah.

What a great treat to hear your report of Deauville, not only for the high life part of it but essentially what sounded in all you said like a further grasp at what we’ve called taking over your own life & the self esteem that must be a part of that: & so, so fitting that it should crown a birthday! one of the best you’ve had. Which brings in the negative note you’ve brought in a few times talking about the ‘jealousies’ & lacks of generous attitude toward your well-earned good fortune you’ve felt among some people around you. Well, there’s nothing to be done about it, just that feeling of disappointment that’s hard to shake off. For the most extreme example in my own life of course I cite Martin; our last contact was many months ago & I finally just decided damn it all, he has always looked at the underside of any (well-earned!) good fortune of mine, never had a good word for either
J R
or the last one (& only for the first one because of what he considers his own monumental ‘contributions’ to it), I don’t even know that he’s read them; point is there’s nothing to be done or gained so why go on with it? These things do eat away at one if we let them so the best we can do is to try to have learned something, to rescue that & cross the rest out.

Now: regarding the assortment enclosed, [...] Next a piece of rabid nonsense from
Esquire
picturing the world you are entering as a starry universe (I get in there under Leo, the Hamptons & Ursae Majoris) (but alas not Comets), the whole thing designed to inflame exactly what we talk about above (envy, jealousy &c).

& finally the
Szyrk
Opinion (not in final form, a good many alterations needless to say made on the phone yesterday with Linda A who has been terribly concerned about the dog’s fate so I’ve supplied a sort of life support system for it—little does she know that later in the book lightning will strike
Cyclone 7
& all America will greet Spot’s demise ‘with an outpouring of grief’ . . .). I hope it amuses you.

Anything else is a footnote to our talk on the phone. The Schnabel business is all pretty wild & wait till you see the thing! I’m already anticipating unkind remarks from colleagues, if it appears somewhere, re someone (me) who has always kept privacy (avoided Elaine’s) suddenly going public —to say nothing of Louis A’s piece if they use it . . . (Again imagine Martin seeing the Schnabel! that I had surely finally sold out!) But simply enough, with negotiating for another contract on the next book coming up, why not?

Certainly you can relax about all that for a while, you’ll have plenty of time & I’m sure many changes of mind between now & your publication date. I haven’t talked with Candida (ie ‘interfered’) but hope you have some progress ($) on the English deal. I have just got a copy of
Carpenter’s Gothic
in Swedish (titled
Träslott
, whatever that means) so sent one along to Torsten. I mean who else can read it?

see you very soon, with much love

Papa

Deauville: prestigious seaside resort town in northwestern France.

Esquire
: a chart in the August issue depicting the “Literary Power Game.”

Linda A: Asher, fiction editor at the
New Yorker
at the time, and a noted translator from the French.

Schnabel [...] wait till you see the thing:
William Gaddis
(1987), an oil portrait with broken crockery by American artist Julian Schnabel (1951– ); see Hallowe’en 1991 for more on the painting, and see WG’s brief tribute to Schnabel in
RSP
(137–39).

Elaine’s: famous Upper East Side restaurant where literary (and other) celebrities hung out.

Träslott
: “wooden castle,” an architectural style that resembles carpenter gothic. Translated by Caj Lundgren,
Träslott
was published by Legenda (Stockholm).

Torsten: Torsten Wiesel (1924– ), Swedish-born corecipient of the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1981. He taught at Rockefeller University in the 1980s and later married Jean Stein.

To Gregory Comnes

[
A professor of literature and philosophy (1948– ) at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida, who had sent WG the
J R
chapter of his doctoral thesis, eventually published in revised form as
The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Novels of William Gaddis
(Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1994).
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

29 September 1987

Dear Gregory Comnes.

I have just read your paper (Fragments of Redemption) again and find it quite extraordinary, certainly far more informed than all but perhaps 2 or three of the numerous dissertations &c I’ve seen. And whether the book deserves it or not I must finally admit that it does demand a careful reading (recalling a review by ‘the late’ John Gardner who read the passage on the unfinished work as invalid as evidence of “In all fairness (sic) Gaddis was apparently uneasy about bringing out
J R
.”, among many other misreadings.) Unfortunately but of course, many more will have read his words than yours.

This is to say nothing of all you bring to it, some I must confess as surprise (& delight) to me. No, though the name is vaguely familiar, I do not recall to have ever read Walter Benjamin, for the most glaring such instance; & probably the better so, I should have got myself even more entangled but how profoundly intriguing these parallels are, if only they might illuminate those who seek and demand ‘influences’—I am constantly regaled with my influence on Pynchon & vice versa—unable, apparently, to accept the notion of 2 writers preoccupied with similar ideas quite independently. Just as, in the case of
Agap
ē
Agape
, I recently came across what it might have become in the hands of Hugh Kenner’s
The Counterfeiters
and felt, well damn! that settles it, mine will never be done; though something still remains that drives me to tear out & save anything I come across on mechanization & the arts to add to the 30 year hoard. All of it relating, in that never to be finished work* & in fact to the finished work
J R
itself, to the epitaph** (p 724) when the ceiling has fallen in on the painting, —look! if you could have seen what I saw there! You seem to have done so, and a good deal more at that.***

*Notwithstanding, I shall certainly look out for Benjamin’s essays you mention (Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The Destructive Character) adding a bit to the pain of work undone though, looking back, better for me to have worked it into a fiction than my (& Gibbs’) original intention.

**cf
The Recognitions
’ epitaph in its last 2 lines.

***for a fleeting instance, the further explication of the prolonged E-flat opening
Das Rheingold
and
its extension to Mozart & Freemasonry.

(Though, to pick, Isadore Duncan (your p28) was to play on Isadora as a confused/confusing echo in the inarticulate reader’s mind, an insolent solacement in effect.

thank you again and warm regards,

William Gaddis

Walter Benjamin: German philosopher-critic (1892–1940). WG eventually read Benjamin and cites him in
AA
.

Agap
ē
Agape
: the book Jack Gibbs is writing in
J R
, not the novel WG eventually published.

The Counterfeiters
: subtitled
An Historical Comedy
(1968), a wide-ranging study of mechanization and the arts.

Duncan [...] Isadora: American dancer (1878–1927).

To Klaus Modick

[
German writer and translator (1951– ). With Martin Hielscher (1957– ) he translated
CG
as
Die Erlöser
(“The Redeemer,” Rowohlt, 1988) and with Marcus Ingendaay translated
J R
(Zweitausendeins, 1996), as well as a German edition of my
Reader’s Guide
(Zweitausendeins, 1998).
]

Wainscott NY 11975

7 October 1987

Dear Klaus Modick.

Thank you for your letter of 29 September just received. By happy chance I had just spent the morning with your colleague in translating
Carpenter’s Gothic
, Martin Hielscher, here visiting the US. We discussed the problems of translation at length and I believe cleared up any remaining small points. A title, for example, must be in your & Rowolt’s hands as knowing what sounds provocative in German, though I think
A Locked Room
sounds like our Nancy Drew girl detective and
Patchwork
conveys little or nothing.
Das Holzschloss
does at least sound substantial.

I appreciate the pains you have gone to to produce a faithful & careful translation, but the vagaries of the publishing world will always elude me. As I mentioned, the Swedish took exactly 1 year from contract to finished book, though I cannot judge the quality of the translation of course; on the other hand, I have just received the Spanish edition of
The Recognitions
(
Los Reconocimientos
), and read Spanish well enough (as well as being familiar with the text of course) to see that they have done a very creditable job of it. Thus why Rowolt cannot publish
Carpenter’s Gothic
before spring and possibly not until fall a year hence is to me one of publishing’s mysteries. In fact perhaps that is why sometimes smaller publishing firms are preferable to the elaborate complications and schedules of large firms like Rowolt.