B007RT1UH4 EBOK (72 page)

W.

Altnaveigh’s [...] 9A: an inn in Storrs, Connecticut, and the 9A highway that leads from Crotonon-Hudson down along the west side of Manhattan.

Blowup
: Michelangelo Antonini’s 1966 film
Blow-Up
, based loosely upon Julio Cortázar’s short story, “Las babas del diablo.”

Jablow: WG’s lawyer, Richard B. Jablow.

MacDonald: Charles B. MacDonald (1922–90), wrote several books on World War II but none on the Vietnam War.

Arabelle Porter: i.e., Arabel J. Porter, editor of
New World Writing
who published an excerpt from
R
in 1952.

this fellow Moore: unidentified.

Adrian Grunberg: unknown and apparently unpublished.

Robt Graves [...] endures your trust: the concluding stanza of “Loving True, Flying Blind,” the penultimate poem in
Love Respelt
(Doubleday, 1966).

To John and Pauline Napper

Saltaire, N.Y. 11781

15 July ”67

dear John & Pauline—

After your diligence, & entirely seductive picture of Ireland, I’ve of course taken the course of least resistance, & apologise heartily for being so long letting you know. But—here is this house of my mother’s out here on Fire Island, a beach settlement about 40 miles from New York, no rent to pay, & the children—who will be with me for August—familar with it, so, I decided to rent the house in Croton and pack up my whole trash heap of notes &c. and try to continue this infernal novel out here, writing on it as well as I have anywhere, it all seems to make the best sense for the summer at any rate, though there are the constant temptations to evade it, painting to be done, windows to be mended, anything resembling work with tangible results and attainable ‘perfection’—even to washing out shirts. But I do
not
go and lie on the beach, a kind of Puritan rejection of leisure that has dogged my life, though I do hope I will be somewhat more agreeable next month when the children appear.

And very little ‘entertaining’ [...] But I do go into New York occasionally so if there should be anything you need done there do let me know. Otherwise—well, page 165—no, rewrite page 164, then . . . in fact perhaps betetter rewrite starting page 161—or 150—or perhaps better start the whole thing over, and—no! fare forward——let me know news, even —the best wish I can leave you with —if there isn’t any—

love & best wishes (& from Sarah even in her absence)

Willie Gaddis

To David Markson

Saltaire, NY

20 July ’67

Dear David.

Thanks for your letter from London. I am sorry to have been so poor about answering your items in the past, largely probably because I have had little to say. Thus you find me brisk enough when you ask a tangible like Croton. And it is excellent, bachelor or family (I’m not suggesting the former to you), I can live there for weeks and speak to no one but the clerk at the A&P & comments on the weather with the gas station man. Which I like. You mightn’t. But inevitably with children in school you meet parents, more or less. I do have a few friends there, say 4 families, which is all I want. It is country and because of the twisty up&down nature of the land unsuburbanizable like Long Island. It is attractive, the river is a splendour & quite beyond anything I’ve seen elsewhere. And besides being country it is less than an hour’s drive to NY, trains are not bad (albeit the cars mostly turn-of-the-century items) and offered me the good position of strictly country life when I’m there, or —God forbid it should happen again—as good commuting to NY as one can find elsewhere. With children, as I say, I don’t think one could do better; and even without it’s worked well for me. I don’t know, I get awfully bored in NY, going out, sitting around, hearing myself talk, awfully impatient with it.

Though what my plans are I don’t know. I’ve got my house in Croton rented now in fact for the summer which I’m spending quietly (isn’t the word) at Fire Island, partly to save money, partly to try to work, partly that I’ll have the children for the month of August and it’s a good place for them, I can spend enough time with them but they can lead pretty much their own social lives. My mother is here so, as I say, quiet (this being one of the quieter communities), Judith gets out usually weekends, and I paint (not pictures, old iron beds &c) & patch and go back to this damned typewriter. God knows. I don’t generally answer people anymore even friends who ask how/when &c the book is coming, but simply to say I’m working, that is, it’s still in my hands. How tired one gets of one’s own voice. Unless it’s saying something sensible like I love you. But even at that, providing one isn’t saying it because he can think of no other news, or would rather not say You have bad breath, one doesn’t hear it one’s self.

Do you see Katy Carver? Ask her to send me a line. How can Dean Rusk go on being Dean Rusk? How can people get into cars and go to Expo ”67? And PS to the above, Croton is not the south, Faulkner’s or anyone’s else. I was in Lawton Okla 4 times and never ceased to wonder why people there got up in the morning.

best wishes to you & Elaine

W. Gaddis

Dean Rusk: Secretary of State from 1961–69.

Expo ”67: a world’s fair held in Montreal in 1967, the most popular of its kind.

Elaine: Markson’s wife, a prominent literary agent.

To Alice Denham

[
Denham had asked WG for a blurb for her first novel,
My Darling from the Lions
(Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), and received this tardy reply, which appears on p. 283 of her
Sleeping with Bad Boys
.
]

25 Park Trail

Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.

[postmarked 12 January 1968]

Dear Alice—I’m sorry for the lateness of this for I’ve had your book & started it—But do recall our talk about quotes, at that party I think, and why it’s never made sense for me to give one because I honestly can’t believe my name would sell a single copy so that—since it is not a name in the public mind like Mailer’s for instance—my name on the jacket of someone else’s work, or in an ad, flatly would strike me as an advertisement for myself, like the raft of provincial reviewers whose livelihood apparently depends on such publicity—that’s from my point of view, & from yours—I’m convinced it wouldn’t change your sales etc at all—where publishers get these ideas I cannot imagine—I even recently got in the mail a big book of Aubrey Beardsley drawings—some quite startling—with request for comment—imagine my name selling Aubrey Beardsley! I don’t think anyone’s figured out the chemistry of book sales—except the fact that the one who sells books is the man in the bookstore—and as I know, there’s altogether too much pain connected with it—hang on—all I know that counts is luck & I certainly wish you that—I’ll keep an eye for reviews—

Willie Gaddis

Aubrey Beardsley: English artist (1872–1898) associated with the decadent 1890s.

To John and Pauline Napper

[
From 1968 to 1970 WG frequently interrupted work on
J R
for freelance writing projects, mostly for Eastman Kodak, but also for Audio Adventures (a tour of Greenwich Village) and Film Enterprises (on IBM software; WG’s first draft was deemed by a Film Enterprises exec “a little too profound and needed reshaping in a manner that would be informative at a shallower depth”). One of the projects resulted in a book:
A Pile Fabric Primer (
Crompton-Richmond Company, 1970).
]

Saltaire, N.Y. 11706

4 July ”68

Dear John & Pauline —

I think that today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, is the day I’ve been waiting for for about 4 months, simply in terms of sitting down.

First, —Judith and I got married. That was about 4 weeks ago, & that is the best affirmation of recent years. All around it various aspects of confusion: my Mother returned from California not in very good condition, got progressively worse & finally, when I came back from a ‘business trip’ to Rochester, I got her hospitalised, she came out of there better, is now in a convalescent home & I expect to bring her out here in a week or so, when she’ll be better able to get around. How all that is going to work out there’s no way to know yet. Then, the children’s mother moving them to Boston finally came off, again emotional & confusing scene, but finally done & better than the uncertainty & the waiting. In between all the above my fly-by-night trips to E Kodak in Rochester, getting a job, hurrying back to Croton, writing the whatever-they-wanted, mailing it &c &c; took Matthew off on a camping trip last week which was fine enough even though it was rain constantly, & now at last we’ve got all of our stuff out here, including my barrels & barrels of papers, clippings &c that hope some day to be a novel. Sarah has gone south (Carolina) to visit a cousin till mid-July, & Judith & I & Matthew are settled in at the house on Fire Island, she with a new sewing machine making pillows a mile a minute with spreads & curtains in between.

And this I pray is the way it will continue through August. As I say I expect to bring my Mother out next week, & she will stay the summer through. The children are to return to their mother the 18 August. And in between I will (I hope) be back on and off the Rochester run, 3 or 4 jobs for them will get us through the summer. And possibly, if I have the sense to grasp it, time to get back on this novel. [...] curious how some of us who are obsessed with order seem constantly immersed in disorder.