B007RT1UH4 EBOK (67 page)

the enclosed: presumably the reviews and features that had appeared on the Meridian
R
up to that time. Most of the material was journalism, not criticism.

Dolbier: Maurice Dolbier (1912–93) wrote a favorable review of the Meridian
R
for the
New
York Herald Tribune
(14 April 1962, 6), which got a number of facts wrong (as WG points out), as he did when he called the Harcourt
R
by “William Gibson” in the
Saturday Review
seven years earlier (“The Summing-up in Books for 1955,” 24 December 1955, 11).

Wouk: on Herman Wouk’s
Youngblood Hawke
(1962), a novel about a successful writer destroyed by New York.

Stuart Gilbert: Gilbert (1883–1969) is best known for his book on Joyce’s
Ulysses
. The blurb he wrote for
R
reads as follows: “[
The Recognitions
] is a vast and devastating picture of the world the powers-that-be have doomed us to live in; Mr. Eliot’s Waste Land was only a small corner of the wilderness so observantly and successfully explored by Mr. Gaddis. Such a work might easily be lugubrious but the author’s wit, irony, and erudition, combined with a rich diversity of subject matter, make this book fascinating reading; long though it is, even longer than ‘Ulysses,’ the interest, like that of Joyce’s masterpiece and for very similar reasons, is brilliantly maintained throughout.”

Gill: see Gill’s anonymous review in the
New Yorker
, 9 April 1955, 117.

Graves [...] editor’): probably Graves’s letter beginning “To the Editor of Commentary” published as “Robert Graves Demurs” in
Commentary
, November 1956, 471–72, in response to an error-filled article published in
Commentary
’s October 1956 issue by Arnold Sherman entitled “A Talk With Robert Graves: English Poet in Majorca.”

“that is [...] at all”: from Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

letters: Stuart Gilbert’s edition of Joyce’s letters appeared in 1957.

Time
magazine: Theodore E. Kalem’s anonymous review of
R
appeared in
Time
, 14 March 1955, 112, 114.

my father: shortly after World War II, WG met his father for the first time at the Harvard Club in NYC.

(top of page 96): Wyatt on the artist as “the human shambles that follows” his work around.

San Francisco Review
: Seelye and Green corresponded about the possibility of publishing something in the
San Francisco Review
—specifically having it take over the special issue on WG that
Prairie Schooner
was to have published—but nothing came of it.

liblabs: “Lib-Labs” are Liberal-Labourers; Monaghan was afraid they would fault
R
for its mandarin nature, which is why he hoped to enlist mandarin critics in favor of it. The English
R
received a dozen or so reviews, but no such controversy followed.

To Charles Monaghan

Croton-on-Hudson, NY

1 June 1962

Dear Charles Monaghan.

With the usual promptness an answer of sorts to yours of 10 April, the sorts being these attached which reflect if anything the monumental laziness of the local literary press: not that I should have had profound critiques on every page (which of course I should)(in 1955) but the best they can do (except perhaps for the Berkeley Calif item) seems to be to look over each other’s shoulders and write about the writing about what’s being written about and never, never under pain of firing about the thing itself.

Words from the Grave (‘Palinurus’) might well create a disquieting effect but C Connolly made even then (1947?) such an effort at the self-picture of sloth that I cannot imagine his lifting the book let alone . . . well, brave of you, it could be quite a coup. And, mightn’t liblab damning of the sort you mention give it a leg up? or have they entirely taken over to the exclusion of the happy few (as I recall at the time Aubry Mennon (sp?
Prevalence of Witches
about 1953) despised it). Between 2 stools sounds altogether possible falling upon, I suppose, if it still exists, the unkempt plot of Colin Wilson. At that, even one of the stools finds itself between 2 others, I mean I would think the social-conscience types might be torn between the book’s contempt for their purpose on the one hand and delight at such criticism of USA (‘anti-America’) as they could find on the other. All together, quite a prospect if such, indeed, it is: if, I mean, they don’t all win quietly by simply looking the other way when the book staggers onto the scene. Shall I re-title it?
Oldeblood Hawke
? (The NYSunday
Times Book Review
front page for that appalling item 2 weeks ago subtitled as I recall How Success Spelled Artistic Failure) and, having seen how Failure spelled it (cf. 3rd page single column of spite March 1955 on
The Recognitions
) one should I suppose turn on to pages 14–15 for the full 2-page spread picture of the author looking balefully over Copies of his wouk of art, a gesture which cost Doubleday $4500 . . . I cannot think things are too terribly different in Fleet st.

I don’t know what of the enclosed I might already have sent you, herewith 2 copies of each one of which might be useful to O’Keeffe. Your campaigning strategy must bring something out of the woodwork there if only malice (what is forthwith dubbed a ‘controversial book’).

thanks, best wishes and luck,

W Gaddis

attached: presumably the press the Meridian
R
had received up to that time.

C Connolly: Cyril Connolly published a collection of reflections and aphorisms entitled
The Unquiet Grave
in 1944 under the pseudonym Palinurus. Monaghan sent him a copy of
R,
with no result.

Aubry Mennon: Aubrey Menen’s witty, Waughvian novel
The Prevalence of Witches
was published in 1947.

3rd page single column: another reference to Granville Hicks’s review of
R,
on the verso of the third page (i.e., p. 6).

To Terry Southern

[
American novelist and screenwriter (1924–95). With Richard Seaver and Alexander Trocchi he was editing an anthology published as
Writers in Revolt
(Frederick Fell, 1963), which includes a selection from chapter 3 of
R
(pp. 78–100, more than WG suggested below).
]

Croton-on-Hudson, New York

1 June 1962

Dear Mr. Southern.

Thanks for your interest in
The Recognitions
and I am sorry to be so long about answering your query regarding parts of it for your anthology. The impressive company of writers involved makes the proportion of my novel which you propose including very flattering, and thus I sincerely hope that it will not disturb your project when I say that a variety of reasons obliges me to limit such a selection to the first section you indicate only, that is, pp 91–100, from “It was dark afternoon . . .” through “. . . the exposure of her back.”

After the debacle of the book’s publication in 1955 I am only getting used now to the idea that some people actually have read it as you’ve done and find that most gratifying, which adds to my hope that my reservations with regard to this project don’t inhibit it, though with the range from Camus to Bill Burroughs to choose from that hardly seems likely. If this makes sense for you would you please make any business arrangements with Miss Candida Donadio at Russell & Volkening?

Yours,

William Gaddis

Bill Burroughs: WG became acquainted with novelist William S. Burroughs (1914–97) in the early fifties and saw him occasionally later in life.

Candida Donadio: WG’s agent in later years; see headnote to 17 April 1973.

To John D. Seelye

[
Seelye wrote 20 January 1963 recommending a Bay area resident named Michel Landa as a possible translator for a French edition of
R
. Seelye also reported on the progress of the
Prairie Schooner
issue on
R
and asked after WG’s new work.
]

[Croton-on-Hudson, NY]

2 February 1963

Dear Mr Seelye:

Many thanks for your interest in getting
The Recognitions
into French. Gallimard have been blowing hot and cold on it for some months, appalled at the task involved like anyone (except the Italians who took it on (Mondadori) but with a 30-month publishing period which reflects their anticipating translation as no mere bagatelle; also your last sentence (“. . . the value of all the many ambiguities . . .”) reassures me on having turned down Hanser Verlag’s offer to publish it with 350 pages cut (and after what the Germans have put us through this past century in the way of poundage why should they be let off so lightly?)). At any rate I would think the only thing that would intoxicate a French publisher to the grabbing point would be someone coming forward lunatic enough to do it as a love labour which I should certainly not encourage! Thus it would seem if your Michel Landa wanted to write to Gallimard (I’m sorry I do not know whom to address there, he might) saying he understood they’d shown interest in it which—for a decent consideration—he might like to share . . . ? (I gather from his first name French may be a native language to him?)

The phrase ‘welcome issue’ on the Karl Shapiro project I hadn’t heard and am of course most intrigued and curious how it will all turn out. On other matters, there was a film in prospect last spring and summer but I had to hold back for more firm prospects on it than came through and so far as I know it is still largely all prospect, much talk and notes, and possible even now that something may come of it yet. Meanwhile your query on progress on my latest book can draw only an equivocal response since
my
latest book is suspended (the cobbler’s children go barefoot) while I try to disentangle myself from a commission I welcomed some 7 months ago, a contract to work on a book for the Ford Foundation (not, repeat repeat repeat not a ‘grant’) on the use of television in the schools, an area they have blown some $60 or $70 million in over the past decade and now, quite understandably, wanted a ‘book’ about it, not a report, not a summary, a ‘book’; and I took the offer as a job and of course on getting into it found it an infinitely more involved affair than I, fresh from the boresome tasks of writing speeches &c on the balance of payments problem and direct investment overseas, had at first considered, thinking I suppose to treat it all in those fairly matter-of-fact propagandistic terms. At any rate I’ve material to take in to the Ford folk this week which I don’t know how they’ll feel about but worse I’m not sure how I feel about, I haven’t had a chance to get off and look at it myself and my impression is I may have fallen between two stools, huzzahs for the tonic effect it is having in (public school) teaching interspersed with caveats on technology devouring its own children, all this complicated by constant notes and thoughts and reading on the side on
my
book started many years ago largely on this same area, technology/democracy/the artist. Well, Ford may simply say “Pay him and get him out of here!” (or of course they may be even more brief, just “Get him out of here!”) when they see what I’ve done and not having really a clear enough picture of it myself I don’t at this moment know which would be more distressing, to have it squelched or published-andbe-damned. And even here is the equivocation, the Luciferian pride of wanting to be damned for one’s self not crucified for others. (I’ll stop this before this metaphor goes any further for the whole situation is really more annoyingly absurd than such images can dignify.) (But you see what a polite question can bring you.)