B007RT1UH4 EBOK (132 page)

And thus as I’ve grown older (how one cowardly shrinks from saying simply & forthrightly “grown old” as in When Dostoevski was my age he’d been dead for a decade) my youthful romantic preoccupations with love redemption not to say ‘God’ have quite given way to simply struggling with, documenting & surviving the senseless universe op.cit. in pursuing Gibbs’ dilemma both in work and ‘real life’ over how we who cry out for order seem to lead the most disorderly existences (as, in a recent note from Bill Gass, “We must get together and celebrate something, even if it’s only our weary selves and our out-of-whack lives.”).

And so on to another old saw, the Hollywood star: We’ve talked enough about me now let’s talk about you, what did you think of my last movie?

Waugh’s late years are my bedside reading otherwise I daren’t turn what is left of my mind & time on earth to any more serious reading than the daily paper until this literally Last Act is done. The reach of your letter is quite enough; but I believe, with it & spotting through* your MS & rather staggering bibliography, I am even more overwhelmed by the foreboding that the future is already here, & thus while I frequently enough see my work cited in a postmodern context I cower in the notion of a traditional novelist to such a degree that, sitting back & looking at this work in hand, I am often enough depressed at the notion that it will be dismissed as behind the times much as this letter on a 20year old portable in the face of word processors computer screens &c in the hands of 10year olds leave me outdistanced by an eon. I have to say then that seeing what you have done makes the blood race, makes up in some part for me the reassurance of “what is worth doing” & I hope you must not take it amiss that I do not for now pursue it all further here but simply send this along with thanks & appreciation & my very best regards to you

and the stunning blonde, of course

W. Gaddis

*I did give a passing glimpse at it to 2 fellows you might recognize Frederick Karl & Walter Abish passing through who were more at home with the allusions & citations & pronounced it ‘eminently readable’ . . . what will be its disposition? a univ. press? (or even a Dalkey Archive

Frank: from Joseph Frank’s
Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859
(Princeton Univ. Press, 1983), 159.

Stannard: Martin Stannard,
Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years 1939–1966
(Norton, 1992).

Last Act: the working title of
FHO
was “The Last Act.” Other titles he contemplated are “Damages,” “Articles of War,” “The Last Clear Chance,” and “True Wars Are Never Won.” a univ. press: as noted earlier, it was eventually published by the University Press of Florida in 1994.

To Steven Moore

[
In September 1992 I sent WG copies of Dalkey Archive’s edition of Jack Green’s
Fire the Bastards!
, disregarding Green’s earlier refusal to grant permission to reprint his work. (The work was in the public domain, meaning Green’s permission wasn’t legally necessary.) As this letter makes clear, WG was still upset that I had sold his letters the previous year.
]

Wainscott

15 October 1992

dear Steven Moore,

sorry to be so late thanking you for sending the finished copies of the Jack Green opus (might even have added an appendix page of the review parodies of
The Recognitions
in
J R
) held back probably by the conflict in my head & history between vain pleasure at seeing Green’s work preserved & circulated on the one hand & on the other my strong feelings over a writer’s wishes for & implicit rights to his work & privacy however legally encroached upon over which I’ve tangled with (Judge) Pierre Leval from the Salinger case onward, goes I suppose with an oversensi[ti]vity over seeing one’s private letters sold where I suppose a case can be made for ‘making a market’ for the eventual ‘archive’ as patrimony.

Penguin Classic eds. of the above apparently not due till next summer.

I have received an extraordinary & detailed exegesis from Greg Comnes with which you’re probably familiar but am too consumed with the work in hand to give it the thorough attention it demands & I am sure deserves.

Yours,

WG.

Pierre Leval: see headnote to 10 August 1993.

Penguin Classics eds.: new editions of R and
J R
appeared in the summer of 1993, the former with an introduction by William H. Gass, the latter by Frederick R. Karl.

To Ivan Nabokov

[
See note to 6 February 1988. He had published the French translation of
CG
that year and was preparing for
J R
in 1993 (both translated by novelist Marc Cholodenko [1950– ], who would later translate
FHO
as well.) The following is a fax, a medium WG had just begun using.
]

27 October 1992

Dear Ivan,

what a great pleasure hearing your voice this morning bursting with good news and enthusiasm! These are the citations I mentioned if they may be of any use to you and
J R
even though they embrace both books. I do not solicit (or give out) ‘blurbs’ but once they appear independently it seems valid to use them.

These are citations that were written proposing my membership in The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (Bellow, 1984) and then for the inner American Academy of Arts and Letters itself (McCarthy, 1989); Bellow has given his permission and McCarthy God rest her soul would I know.

Whatever their use ‘commercially’ you may only imagine how deeply pleased I was when I first saw them (& remain so!). And with what an appetite I look forward to seeing your ‘press kit’ and the cover posthaste even a xerox—and of course the book itself (a prepublication copy?) and yourself early next year.

very best regards,

William Gaddis

To Saul Bellow

[
American novelist (1915–2005); WG reviewed his
More Die of Heartbreak
for the
New York Times Book Review
in 1987 (RSP 73–79).
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

31 October 1992

Dear Saul,

a note of real thanks to you for your generosity in the use of your Academy citation by the Penguin people for the reissue of
The Recogntions
and
J R
in their ‘Classic Series’.

Since I have always avoided writing and soliciting ‘blurbs’ I felt the notion of this request shadowed by an infringement both on friendship and good manners, since presumably these citations bear the confidentiality of the higher order of clubs; but as Saul Steinberg—another man for the scrupulously chosen word and image—observed in his good offices here, it would be a pity to see the marvelously conceived endorsement moulder away in the Academy’s vaults and so I am elated now as I was when first saw it.

In licensing the rights to this ‘Classic Series’ it was quite clear that their list is mainly posthumous, meaning I assume they may dispense with the annoyance of paying royalties or deal bluntly with ‘the estate of’ unfettered by the unreasonable price the author himself might place on his wistful vision of inkstained immortality where we find even Sidney Sheldon leading the pack demanding publication on acid-free paper. But having now been relegated as a ‘classic’ in this age of Madonna (& Sidney Sheldon) your imprimatur so cleanly marks the line between literature and the deluge of sheer books and it’s that which I find inordinately gratifying in this battle to simply last them out.

Bearing down myself though on both 3 score & 10 and the shattered ending of what increasingly looks like ‘another damned, thick, square book’ it’s difficult to hold at bay the despair of finding it an episodic sitcom as the word and indeed the world now has it and the wish for the day to say goodbye to all that.

Notwithstanding, as all these considerations begin to strike closer to the bone they inform me of the quite serious cast of my best wishes to you for good health and yet longer work and life,

William Gaddis