B007RT1UH4 EBOK (126 page)

To Paul Ingendaay

[
German critic and translator (1961– ), brother of WG’s German translator Marcus Ingendaay (1958– ). Paul had sent WG his essay on his work, “Zauberer ohne Publikum” (Magician without an Audience),
Schreibheft
32 (November 1988), among others.
]

Wainscott, N.Y. 11975

[postmarked 25 August 1989]

Dear Paul Ingendaay,

a short note to thank you first for writing, and then for sending me, your pieces on my work. Of course I cannot read them, aber . . . my German being shreds of rote from 40 years ago the opening lines of your Zauberer ohne Publikum (Magician without a public? like the
Mann ohne Eigenschaften
? (whence we have Mr Eigen in
J R
)) reverberate with some Grimm moment in
The Recognitions
wo die Wünschen noch geholffen hat, lebte ein König, dessen tochter warum alle schön . . . well, there go my credentials but it sounds better than it looks.

I agree with you, of the 3 I prefer
J R
but largely probably because of how fond I became of the boy himself; but the most difficult I should think for translation though it is right now presumably going into French, and with less evidence Italian & Spanish as well, Spanish have done a very servicable job with
The Recognitions
. It seems odd to me that the Germans (or is it only Rowolt?) have such problems with me, they (Rowolt) gave the first book 2 or 3 tries about 20 years ago & gave up as too difficult; now I’ve understood decided to wait & see how this
Erlöser
fared in the marketplace before doing any others (which is good J R cautionary business practice). [...]

with best regards,

William Gaddis

Mann ohne Eigenschaften
:
The Man without Qualities
, Robert Musil’s huge, unfinished novel (1930–43).

wo die Wünschen [...] schön: from the Grimm Brother’s “Frog King,” as quoted in
R
(273). See 17 December 1950.

To David Markson

[
A postcard, without salutation or return address.
]

5 Oct. 89

Only you can fully appreciate my son Matthew haunting the sites of young film writing aspirants, only to meet—to be invited to dinner by, in fact—yes, Harry Joe Brown . . . plus ça change, which I’m afraid will also go for your Guggenheim try. Meanwhile since Si Krim 2 classmates of mine have gone ‘on tour’ as we (the living) say. Sobering,

Gaddis

Harry Joe Brown: see letter to Markson of ca. February 1966.

Si Krim: WG’s old friend Seymour Krim, a highly regarded editor and essayist in the 1960s, committed suicide on 30 August 1989.

To John and Pauline Napper

Wainscott, New York 11975

21 December 89

Dear John and Pauline.

[...] How many times we’ve thought of you but the weeks the months even the years go by justlikethat each taking a toll, you remember my old and eccentric (though not really by English standards) friend Barney Emmart in September and 2 more classmates since while strokes and cancers and divorces abound elsewhere and one hesitates to ask are you well? and are you both well?

Approaching seventy (!!!) is nothing like I’d envisaged God knows, still spry but short of breath and with both whisky and cigarettes flatly ruled out I cannot say I’m enjoying it all that much wondering why in God’s name I ever signed up to write another novel but I did and even worse about a world of which I discover I know nothing, the law; but I’ve taken their money and am now waist deep. [...]

love and warm wishes

Willie

To James Cappio

[
Cappio had sent WG an analysis of his draft of the Judge Bone opinion. WG’s letter was accompanied by a four-and-a-half legal-page outline of the legal procedure for one aspect of
FHO
.
]

Wainscott

5 January ’90

Dear Jim:

Do not panic!

Let me explain, first. In the early summer I got stuck in the novel in the novel sense not the legal, it was just beginning to sound wooden, and I broke it off to write a subsequent sequence which I greatly enjoyed, Oscar being deposed by the defendants’ counsel Mister Mudpye, a token minority number in a large wasp blueribbon firm, enjoyed it so much that it runs 50 pages. More than ‘based on’, ‘drawn from’ &c&c, it is much of it line for line lifted from Saul Steinberg’s deposition in his suit v. Columbia Pictures, and another legal horror (assuming Saul’s acquiescence) how Mister Mudpye’s “real life” original (with Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn) will feel at being so parodied or are depositions fair game—

Meanwhile I read and reread your meticulous informed & delightful dissection of the Crease appeal decision, it’s misues of Murry v. NBC &c, and a) grasped or at least for the first time got a sense of the bramble patch I have marched so blithely into, and

b) realized I must throw out the grand design I had hatched in my early enthusiam (roughly, to compress
AmJur
(or at least Prosser) into a ‘novel’), whereupon

c) I went into a blue funk, from which my struggles to emerge have now got me as far as the brown study down the hall, whence this.

I thoroughly appreciate your repeated assurance (in
Crease
supra) that you mean only to clarify ‘real world’ law not direct my course, but that I might wish to know the former & where I’d strayed intentionally or otherwise (artistic license? sheer sloppiness? plain ignorance?), the point my main mentor has stressed from the start (Donald Oresman at Paramount, Simon-Schuster &c: “Did getting
Arrowsmith
medically correct make it a better novel?”) But I have got this damned affliction as witness
J R
for (what Bill Gass despises as) ‘verisimilitude’ or its semblance wherein events in the ‘real’ world of business (read, the law) while not plausible are essentially possible, ie an 11yr.old ‘could’ buy up by mail the controlling majority of a defaulted bond issue at 7¢ on the dollar, &c.

Thus re the attached assuming for the moment that you are not ready to call the whole thing quits here is my hopeful notion: It is as you will see at a glance my attempt at a simple ‘procedural’ outline for Oscar’s infringement case. I certainly do not ask or want you to deliver a 10 page written commentary but would this be feasible? to call you when ‘convenient’ and run through the steps for any major gaffes? as (in 6), would law firm A be obligated (by law? ethics?) to tell firm B it has discovered fraudulence in the credibility of a member of B’s staff? (though God knows I’m a long way from that scene) . . . And so forth.

I will call to try to explain further and will understand if your secretary responds ‘Mister Cappio is not taking any calls . . .’

warm regards & “happy new year”

Gaddis

Arrowsmith
: Sinclair Lewis’s satiric 1925 novel about the medical profession.

To Donald Oresman

Wainscott NY 11975

21 January 1990

Dear Donald,

many thanks for Judge Leval (in fact I went to that lecture) and Ron Hubbard and the excuse to break this long silence.

Somewhere about the early summer I was abruptly overwhelmed by the enormity of the project I had set myself, its threat to come apart at the evident seams, and the legal complexities for which I was unprepared [...]. In this case it was a reading of my appeals court (Judge Bone’s opinion which you saw) decision for infringement for my protagonist Oscar by a meticulous young law clerk (for Judge Motley) since recruited by Cahill Gordon &c (who has admired my work to the extent of once inserting a citation from
J R
into Judge Breiant(sp?)’s opinion washing out Russian Imperials). His admonition has been similar to yours, ie: I will try to give you the relevant ‘real world’ points of law but please do not let this impede your fiction.

Nonetheless it all sent me ‘back to the drawing board’ as they aptly phrase it and I think very much to the novel’s eventual good; and I am heartened by the memory that this has happened before with both my earlier long novels—the teeming research, the putting it aside with ‘what have I got myself into!’—and the thing finally emerging in its own shape.

At any rate, toward the end of the year I sent along the draft bundle to the point it had reached to my S&S editor Allen Peacock as seemed only fair at this point, and had lunch with him just last week and found him quite pleased with it despite some obvious repetitions and disjointed elements (after all it is a draft) and I have always shrunk from showing unfinished work; but bearing all that in mind if you have any interest in looking at it at this stage of course you are welcome though I have hated to waste your time with unresolved ends or requests I am not ready to make immediate use of.