Authors: William Gaddis
B007RT1UH4 EBOK (140 page)
To Polly Roosevelt
[
The wife of a CIA officer (the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt), Ms. Roosevelt was born Mary Lowe Gaddis; she apparently saw WG’s interview in the
Washington Post
and wrote to see if they were related.
]
Wainscott, New York 11975
14 March 1994
Dear Ms. Roosevelt.
Thank you for writing: I too am just into my 70s & so understand the haste involved & only wish I could be of more help regarding your inquiry.
In fact I can really be none at all. Had you asked about my mother’s side (Williams, Hough, Meredith &c) I could have gone on chapter & verse, largely Quaker stock moving from the Carolinas to Indiana in one of those schisms before the Civil War & gradually drifting back to the East Coast, my mother age about 18 to a brief college career at Sweetbriar & thence to New York where she met this dashing fellow & married at 22 & he wasn’t much older in the high spirits of the 20s, little fliers on Wall Street (where he overworked) which seemed to go on theatre tickets & finally a breakdown & they separated when I was about 3 brought up by my mother’s family & I didn’t see him again until I was in my 20s when we got reacquainted or I should say acquainted but I never did pursue his lineage with him, thought it was largely Scotch Irish (as much also on my mother’s side with England & Wales) but met his ancient mother who was German Catholic which I later understood hadn’t set too well with the Williams side, recalling an equally ancient thee-&-thou great aunt of mine whose visits east from Fountain City Indiana in the 30s we would try to spark with trips up to the Roosevelt shrine at Oyster Bay (we lived on the South Shore) & there, I’m afraid, I must leave you.
There were other Gaddis uncles of his involved in NY state politics especially in the Dewey years & all of their fortunes might have changed mightily had he won that presidential election [in 1948] when who knows, all sorts of revelations might have surfaced & we might even have met. Meanwhile my best wishes for your & your sister’s good health (since that’s what it all seems to be coming down to at last),
with warm regards
William Gaddis
To Arthur A. Hilgart
[
A businessman, radio host, and patron of the arts (1936–2010) who occasionally corresponded with WG. After an unidentified reference to “Alcott,” WG clarifies some points in
FHO.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
14 March 1994
dear Hilgart,
the healing power of Pepsi is splendid but the Alcott frolic is quite beyond anything—years of reviews of my work have shown me how rare is the careful reader, ergo:
No, Trish didn’t marry both men, it’s simply another turn on ‘getting it wrong’ which preoccupies me (see
Carpenter’s Gothic
): Lily has simply blurted out that Trish said she’d got married & Christina takes for granted it’s Madhai Pai (she’d married Bunker). No, Basie had nothing to do with Judge Crease getting hold of the opinion, he’s simply got it through channels & of course on the lookout for it. And no, Harry wasn’t in the accident caused by Lily (p.523); his death (515) is meant to be left in the realm of predictable, with Lily (491), unexplained fact lost & overwhelmed in the clutter of trivia (his Turnbull & Asser shirts) surrounding it.
Speaking of ‘careful reading’ here’s an item that was on my mind from the book’s start: the careful threading of the ‘hairy Ainu’ Harry & Christina in bed through her embarrassment with Basie’s cheerful ignorance to the blow that finally strikes her down (582) with the young lawyer’s —. . . no. No that’s not the Harry I knew. Perhaps some doctoral candidate will find it.
Kind regards,
W. Gaddis
‘hairy Ainu’: a reference to Japan’s Ainu tribe: see
FHO
119–20.
To Sarah Gaddis
[
At this time, Sarah was working in the press office of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which was mounting an exhibition of William S. Burroughs’s “shotgun paintings.”
]
Wainscott
30 March 94
dear Sarah,
I know what you mean about meaning to sit down & write a long letter but the weekends end up with errands & & & except that I’ve got no real excuse, think I’ll call & the time difference interferes then make the weekend try but the line’s busy which frustrates but really pleases me because it means that you are busy & leading a real life after the time you’ve put in on one so poorly furnished; but I forget, we (esp east coast here) forget about earthquakes till another 5.6 is all over the evening news diverted, today, by people staring vacantly at homes & the sad small lives laid to waste in Georgia tornados—I mean here I am still dining out on my earthquake anecdote until you remind me that for you & those around you it is a constant presence, your remark about a subliminal lack of concentration in people & things they forgot to do or did wrong & knowing your earlier distress over them admire you going right on, but at this cost, it is like some overwhelming fiction (the terms I think in) esp the Hollywood set image inserting epoxy in the walls like I felt that one night of it in the “Ritz Carlton”.
But thank you for the packet you sent reviews & all, I hadn’t known of St Moore’s for the
Nation
& have certainly done well but trying to get S&S to spend another 50¢ on an ad is hopeless, they say they’ll make a big splash when they bring it out as the lead book in their new fancy Scribner’s (which they took over) trade paperback series end of the year . . . another year! Lord how they go by. The woman on book jackets is quite intriguing I only wish she’d seen ours but Sarah the ART world I confess is simply beyond me aware that I am a minority of 1 & how oddly a leading postmodernist in fiction but Bill Burroughs with his ‘lost images’ in the catalogue . . . & to think I’ve got a copy of his first paperback
Junkie
inscribed (in soft pencil) ‘To Bill Gaddis who knew me before I knew myself’ . . . at any rate I am so pleased (& proud) that you are out in front with what’s going on in the world & handling it so well stress & all, stress of course being a vital part of it or what is the art itself all about? And not to add to it though I know it must be something you & the women you work with must discuss frequently but I do (like most parents I’m sure) worry about you & all the wildness loose in the world, things like carjackings (do you lock your car doors when you get in? take a careful look at the shopping mall parking lots?) the list is endless & could drive one crazy & there’s finally no hiding place.
I mainly wander about literally & figuratively (in the head) vaguely considering what to do, I mean work on, next, going through old notes & papers, does anyone need
A Secret History of the Player Piano
? & getting something together to speak about in Albany the 14th & the college at Stonybrook later, part of the price of my NYState Authorhood & the money already gone to pay taxes on the Lannan prize . . . Your brother incidentally is right now presumably in New Orleans, sketch for a film project on his pal Jack’s legal tussles & I’m simply glad of his getting out of town finally for a few days’ change.
much love always
Papa
my earthquake anecdote: WG was in Los Angeles for a Lannan event when a strong earthquake struck on the early morning of 17 January 1994.
St Moore’s for the
Nation
: “Reading the Riot Act,” 25 April [
sic
] 1994, pp. 569–71.
To James M. Morris
[
Author and editor-at-large for the
Wilson Quarterly
. At the urging of feminist Betty Friedan (a Hamptons friend of WG and Mrs. Murphy), he invited WG to give a lecture at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. WG gave a casual talk there on 7 December 1994.
]
Wainscott, New York 11975
10 April 1994
Dear Mr Morris.
Thank you for your letter & your invitation to talk. I am sorry to be so long responding but take refuge in the welcome provision that it may be later this year or even early next.
Most welcome however is the proposal that it be for a talk rather than a ‘reading’. On occasions when I’ve been asked to do the latter I’ve answered if at all with an offer to speak on why I do not give readings &—shades of Dylan Thomas ‘traveling 200 miles just to recite, in my fruity voice, poems that would not be appreciated & could, anyway, be read in books’—don’t see why anyone else does except for the toxin of this ‘in performance’ culture. My only concern would be that since what I put on the page is more structured & disciplined than the informal somewhat rambling nature of a talk, transcribing such a talk for publication as you mention puts me off a bit but I’m sure could be resolved.
Further, from the material you enclosed, the aims & atmosphere of the Wilson Center sound most congenial to my ways of thinking & I hope we can work something out along the lines you suggest; & finally, thanks for your warm estimate of my books especially this last.
Yours,
W. Gaddis
To Michael Silverblatt
[
Creator and host of
Bookworm
, a literary radio program broadcast since 1989 by KCRW in Los Angeles, and underwritten by the Lannan Foundation. On 18 January 1994 Silverblatt hosted an event at which William H. Gass spoke on WG, who then spoke briefly. At this time, Lannan’s Jeannie Kim expressed concerns about the program’s direction; the Kurt mentioned below was her assistant.
]
Wainscott NY 11975
13 April 1994
Dear Michael,
word has reached me of some of the pressures you are under involving Lannan’s literary program & I hope they will dissipate before things come to some sort of bureaucratic grief.
I thought (& was later told) that our presentation in January came off quite successfully, & I certainly felt I had you & Bill Gass to thank for making it more than just another of these ubiquitous ‘readings’. Gass is for me our foremost writer, a magician with the language, & it was he who’d told me before I came out there of your deep commitment to literature as your thoughtful probing confirmed, opposed to the interviewer asking whether one uses a word processor & on which side of the paper do you write?
What it all finally comes down to I suppose is what sort of writer & what sort of audience such a program wishes to attract, the difference between entertainment & exploration of ideas, of what writing & the serious writer are all about or an audience that can say I saw Irving Wallace in person on television last night, all adding up to how seriously such a literary program’s sponsor’s name is taken by its peers & any serious writer quickly spots the difference. We’re not up there reciting recipes for tapioca pudding to make some insecure bureaucrat look good after all.
A propos, when you see Kurt will you thank him for sending me the Heaney version of Philoctetes we’d discussed out there, now here again is a really good man with real ties to literature who is far too valuable to be relegated as someone’s nameless bureaucratic ‘assistant’ in what armed service slang appropriately refers to as Mickey Mouse. In situations like this one I think there’s a lot to be said for running a loose ship.
Good luck and best regards,
W. Gaddis
Irving Wallace: best-selling American novelist (1916–90).
Heaney version of Philoctetes:
The Cure at Troy
(1990) is the Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of Sophocles’
Philoctetes
.
To Isabel and John Butterfield
[
Old British friends whom WG saw while in England for the publication there of
FHO
.
]
Wainscott, New York 11975
30 June 1994
dear Isabel & John,
how can civility—the mere civility of a note of gratitude to old & dear friends—have fallen to such low estate as it nears a month since I have left you? In some part it may be explained (if not excused) in the enclosed FAX I just faxed to my publishers, having flown (literally) from that week of order & indulgence, of correct & thoughtful & generous behaviour on all sides, to be plunged immediately back into the Psychopathology of Everyday Life maintained all too familiarly here, leaving the accourtrements of civilised life where we left them behind 200+ years ago. Dinner in the House of Lords! I mutter to gaping friends over undergrilled fish & marble-hard potato salad; addressing a select (albeit rather small) audience in London University’s Senate Room; devouring a haunch of beef in the shade of Evelyn Waugh at the Hyde Park Motel, recounted over hash at a kitchen table; a Publication Dinner (roast wood pigeon) at Lauceston Place, retailed to my publisher here who has never come up with so much as a burger at Burger King . . . All of it crowned by your warm embrace, it was a stunning time.
And I have got to say (in an immediate & similarly inexcusably delayed note to her) how deeply struck & touched I was by Mathilde’s warmth & care & sheer courage had never reached me so strongly, what we call ‘character’ I suppose in its lonely strength, ‘blood will tell’ as archie told mehitabel, breaks your heart.