B007RT1UH4 EBOK (135 page)

best wishes again,

Bill Gaddis

Sarah Bernhardt: French actress (1844–1923).

LEXIS® NEXIS®: online search services for legal documents and newspaper articles, respectively, now called LexisNexis.

Joel v. Morrison: a case cited by Prosser in his
Torts
: “In 1834 Baron Parke uttered the classic phrase, that a master is not liable for the torts of his servant who is not at all on his master’s business, but is ‘going on a frolic of his own.’”

To James Cappio

21 May 1993

Dear Jim Cappio.

Many thanks for your note (& enclosures). I too have been feeling pangs of conscience over the hiatus.

The book is done. Its title is

A Frolic of His Own

which came to me in reading

Master & Servant lore, the Master (‘God’?) liable for his Servant (Jesus)’s tort while on the master’s business (Know ye not that I am on my Father’s business?) but not if the servant is off ‘on a frolic of his own’ (Joel v. Morrison, 1834, 6 C & P. 501, 172 Eng.Rep. 1338 by Baron Parke).

The 640pp MS went in to Simon&Schuster/Poseidon in Feb after months of 5am days, copyread & marked for printer, returned to me for queries (Apr), returned to Poseidon via Federal Express, who lost it. A week of agony. They found it minus p. 638, 3 days recasting that, & it is now presumably in the hands of the printers; Poseidon (ed. Ann Patty) appear very pleased, most cooperative with me regarding various type faces (text, opinions &c), art title page &c & there should be galleys in a couple of weeks about the time I go in for prostatectomy to then review & revise at my convalescent leisure assuming of course that in the course of things I have not gone off on a frolic (nisi) of my own.

I would hope to get you a set of galleys but this mayn’t be feasible & have to wait for the bound ones but will keep you advised.

very best regards,

Gaddis

Know ye not [...] Father’s business?: Luke 2:49.

nisi: Latin, “unless,” used in legal proceedings.

To Robert Coover

[
American fabulist fiction writer (1932– ) and a professor at Brown University. Stephen Wright (1949– ) is another innovative novelist; his first novel,
Meditations in Green
, appeared in 1983.
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

19 June 1993

Dear Bob.

I am glad to recommend Stephen Wright for any opening there may be on your teaching staff at Brown in the area of writing on the strength of my memory of having been impressed a few years ago reading through his novel
Meditations in Green
. I haven’t seen his subsequent works but the very fact of his having published a second and finished a third rather lengthy novel makes clear that he is committed to the work in all its wonder and drudgery and should, after evident talent, I think be the first qualification for spreading our plague among the young who want not to ‘be writers’ but to write.

with regards,

W. Gaddis

To William H. Gass

[
Gass invited WG to participate in a symposium on “The Writer and Religion” that would be held at the International Writers Center at Washington University in October 1994. WG delivered a lecture entitled “Old Foes with New Faces,” which was published the following year in the
Yale Review
, and is reprinted (minus its final page) in
RSP
88–108.
]

Wainscott

25 Jne ’93

Dear Bill,

your invitation is irresistable—caveats about the ‘literary reading’ aspect of course though I assume we’ll have tangled with that in Hollywood (which does sound like ‘a gas’ if you pardon the expression I look forward to it) in fact, I was dizzied enough at first reading that I took it for this (’93) October as a launching pad for publication of a novel touching on this same topic* to appear in January following but of course by the appointed date all AMERICA will have read it & a bounty (cf Rushdie) on my head from the vested interests as noted below.

And so I will hope to appear at your doorstep much like Prince K. in D’s
Uncle’s Dream
arriving at Mordasov ‘so decrepit, so worn out, that as one looked at him the thought instinctively occurred to one that in another minute he might drop to pieces’ having, last week, a 10year lithium battery pacemaker installed beneath the clavicle as a cautionary step before next week’s shaving of the prostate with other repairs to follow (‘the Prince had made a brilliant debut, he had led a gay life, flirted, had made several tours abroad, sang songs, made puns, and had at no period been distinguished by the brilliance of his intellectual gifts. Of course he had squandered all his fortune, and found himself in his old age without a farthing.’)

*to the contrary notwithstanding I felt it wise to put you on notice of the sort of goods you are bargaining for & so enclose a sample here—it is as you see galley time at Oblomovka-by-the-Sea where it would be a great treat if you were passing through but failing that

the warmest wishes to you both,

Willie

Hollywood: WG and Gass had been invited there for a program the following January; see 13 April 1994.

Rushdie: Islamic extremists pronounced a death sentence on British writer Salman Rushdie (1947– ) after the publication of
The Satanic Verses
in 1988.

D’s
Uncle’s Dream
: an 1859 novella by Dostoevsky. (Prince K. is a senile aristocrat.) The quotations are from the beginning of chapter 2, in Constance Garnett’s translation (pp. 229–30 in
The Short Novels of Dostoevsky
[Dial Press, 1945], which Gaddis bought in his twenties).

To Peter Friedman

[
A New York City attorney and a fan of WG’s fiction; having heard he was working on a novel about lawyers, Friedman wrote to offer any legal assistance he might need.
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

30 July 1993

Dear Peter Friedman.

Thank you for your generous offer and most impressive (both in extent & legal bent) resume in connection with the morass of legal fiction I’d got myself into; however we may both probably count our blessings that it comes along too late or it might have taken another 5 years & thousand pages from both our lives.

As of today, under the title
A Frolic of His Own
(Joel v. Morrison, 1834, 6 C.&P. 501, 172 Eng.Rep. 1338) the entire 600+ pages of turmoil is in the hands of Poseidon / Simon & Schuster in the form of corrected galleys waiting to be cut & bound, packaged & remaindered over the months to come (publication date probably January ’94) & thank the Lord to have it out of my hands.

Quite contrary to the received opinion of legal language as purposely obfuscatory I had come to admire its tortuous (no pun intended) struggles for precision & contingency (“holding these rights in perpetuity throughout the world and elsewhere”), was handed Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad &, once hooked, on to Prosser & thence a gift of every human foible in
AmJur
’s all 84 vols. till finally a couple of years ago I sobered up to the fact that I was writing a novel of civilization & its discontents not a compendium of western law & finally surfaced a few months ago to my great relief & that of those around me albeit with decisions never to be reached & opinions never to be written. Which may be just as well.