Paterson (Revised Edition)

by William Carlos Williams

  in the mud—Night: “Sometimes two men racing after one big eel and finally tumbling down upon him together causing great amusement to those on shore.”

  WCW also omits the final five lines.

  Other differences between Paterson and The Prospector:

  the water mostly had/the water had mostly

  into the nets/into their nets

  a black crowd/a black cloud

  strike at them/strike them

  Those who prepared the nets/those who had prepared nets

  he filled it/he filled it with eels

  the men/and the men

  All verbal differences and omissions are present in the Za186 typescript, although only the last is a revision marked by WCW.

  35 Shortly before … all that day Adapted from a much longer article in The Prospector, November 12 1936, 1, 4.

  WCW originally intended to include a longer adaptation from the article, but cut the following, which preceded the present two paragraphs, on the KS galleys:

  The bells ringing out the hour of worship on Sunday morning, August 15, 1875, had scarcely done tolling before the news of a drowning of three men had spread throughout the city; and at once and thenceforth throughout the day crowds wended their way to the grounds to learn the shocking particulars.

  About twenty minutes past ten, application was made to Mr. Oswald Bleackly, who kept a small grocery and spruce-beer store at No. 345 Totowa Avenue, by James Grogan—a man about forty years of age, well-known in social circles as a skilled cricketer and employed at the Phoenix Mill as a “loom fixer”—for the use of his boat to take two friends on a short row up the river. Mr. Bleackly, had but a few moments previous denied the same request from a neighbor because of the danger of such amusement when the stream was swollen about the Falls, and on this application from his fellow workmen offered similar objections, claiming it was unsafe in the present condition of the river to venture out especially at such a perilous location as that occupied by his boat.

  The only reply to the advice was a hearty laugh, as Grogan, confident of his own power and strength stretched out his brawny arm, exclaiming, “O, a fine fellow like me afraid to go on the water? I am young and not to be compared with you.” The attempt to prevail upon the three to give up their proposed enjoyment was useless, and disliking to refuse his intimate friends when they pressed him to allow them the privilege, he finally consented. So the three with oars, rudder and key started down Wayne Avenue to the river. The boat borrowed was a well-built, flat bottom craft, painted a light pink color, red striped, and amply capable of holding the party.

  The boat lay chained to the west bank of the river about thirty feet above the Society’s dam below the carriage bridge. (Spruce St.)

  They were all in exuberant spirits at the prospect of a splendid morning’s enjoyment, and loosing the chain that bound the boat to the shore pushed out into the stream before they had made any preparations whatever for guiding the boat in the strong current that was dashing down with its oily wave but a few feet distant. Quickly all hands went to work at manning the boat, perceiving the immediate danger in which they had placed themselves, and with the crowd of spectators on the bridge and along the opposite shore shouting warnings to beware of the current, they exerted themselves to the utmost to bring the oars into working order to “back water.” Not a man but Grogan, in the boat, was used to boating, nor had any knowledge of the use that might be made of rudder or oar in turning a craft, or the ensuing accident might possibly have been averted. They were soon impelled toward the rushing current through their own efforts to prevent getting farther from shore, and the bow of the boat turned down stream toward the dam. Here the three men jumped from the boat, sending it with a new momentum dashing on faster than ever. It overturned and a second afterward it had shot over the dam, at that place about six feet in height, and righting again below the rocks it passed toward the basin on the west shore and half filled with water remained safe out of the current. The men in the meantime struggled hard to reach the banks but they too one after the other followed the boat and were carried over the dam. The current there was rushing at tremendous speed and fully three feet in depth. (This dam of which the narrator is speaking, lies above the Falls proper not more than a hundred feet or so from its brink).

  The alarm and consternation among the many visitors on the grounds was now intense and all ran towards the falls to catch a glimpse of the helpless castaways as they passed over, but their curiosity was disappointed as the bodies, on authentic statements, were not seen after the three heads disappeared in the wild seething mass in the basin under the dam.

  The remaining Paterson text follows The Prospector to “the body being lodged,” but then omits and summarizes some material. WCW makes the changes on Buffalo E13. The Prospector reads:

  the body being lodged in a very curious manner between two logs, one a very large one that had been placed across the chasm by the workmen, and lodged across it in a very extraordinary manner. It was in the “crotch” of these logs that the body was wedged. From the position of the body it was thought impossible to remove the body without risk of life, but the river was rapidly falling which later made possible the recovery of the body.

  A coat of one of the men was also found lodged in Broomhead’s water wheel at the West Street bridge.

  The news of finding the body hanging on the edge of the Falls, attracted a very large number of visitors. The sight of the human body hanging over the precipice was indeed one which was as novel as it was awful in appearance.

  37 Your interest … product. In a notebook in which he began the notes for his Autobiography WCW records: “Pound’s story of my being interested in the loam whereas he wanted the finished product” (Buffalo D7). WCW instructed on the KS galleys that the nine lines from “What do I care” to “ruin” “must all appear on same page.” But both the NC and fifth and subsequent printings of the 1963 text (1969) split the material.

  38 a tranquility/a still tranquility IST

  38 “The 7th … ensued.” From BH 50. WCW keeps the quotation marks that are in BH, but omits the source BH provides—“Smith’s History of New Jersey.” On the KS galley WCW cuts two further passages describing earthquakes; one another passage from BH, and the other a longer piece that KH annotates as “Mt. Pelee—eruption of Mount Pelee” (UVA). For the eruption of Mount Pelée, “which wiped out the last of my mother’s family,” see A 71.

  40 “In order … morality” WCW cites the 1880 New York, Harper edition. This passage was added to Book I very late and does not appear on the galleys or typescripts. On the KS page proof WCW noted: “center this note on a page of its own at end of book.” See WCW/JL 112–114, 116. The passage follows its source save for the spelling of “meter,” the addition of quotation marks, and “communicated” for “communicate.” The verbal and spelling differences are as in the version sent by WCW to James Laughlin on June 14, 1945.

  BOOK II (1948)

  The first edition carried an “Author’s Note”: “The present is the second of four books on a single theme, PATERSON; the first appeared in 1946, the others will follow shortly.”

  43 the Park Garret Mountain Park, Paterson

  44 the ugly legs … beeves and WCW quotes from (and slightly alters) his early poem “The Wanderer,” first published in 1914. These lines appear in the section originally titled “Paterson—The Strike.” See CP1 31, 112.

  45 The body is … aided As Weaver 206 notes, from Beckett Howorth, “Dynamic Posture,” Journal of the American Medical Association 131, 17 (24 August 1946), 1402–03. Weaver reprints Fig. 6B. Page 1402 is pasted onto a sheet now filed with Buffalo E22.

  45 Despite my … condition Extract from a letter from Marcia Nardi, see note to p. 7. WCW and MN had continued to correspond since MN’s first letter, of April 9, 1942, extracts of which appear in Book I, and subjects had included MN’s writing and her search for employment. The two met for dinner in New York City in June. MN’s share of the corr
espondence became increasingly dominant, and on February 17, 1943 WCW sent a short note (HRC):

  Though I have tried to find work for you I have not succeeded, under present circumstances my best advice would be for you to apply to one of the Federal Employment Bureaus and let them instruct you.

  There’s nothing more that I can do or say. This brings our correspondence to a close as far as I am concerned.

  But MN continued to write to WCW. A handwritten draft, or copy, of a letter to WCW among MN’s papers at HRC, dated February 22, 1943, begins: “This is no continuation of the correspondence you wish ended. It is merely my own ‘last word’ in that correspondence.” A postcard on March 5 tells WCW that she has found employment, “a job that I like (and one connected with books)” and that she has used his name as a reference (Yale uncat.).

  The three paragraphs on p. 45 of Paterson are from a long letter transcribed in the Buffalo E5 and E19 typescripts. Further extracts from the letter appear on pp. 48, 64 and 76. The original letter (April 1943?) is not filed with any of WCW’s correspondence or typescripts, to my knowledge. The Buffalo E5 typescript has some characteristics of a transcription. A blank space is left, for example, the word added in manuscript, possibly where MN’s difficult handwriting could not be deciphered. In a section that WCW does not use, MN refers to the job and to using WCW’s name in applying for it, and so this letter certainly dates from after the March postcard. Extracts from another, later, letter appear on pp. 82 and 87–91.

  On the UVA typescript KH notes “letter used almost verbatim, made him change it somewhat,” and see Reed Whittemore, William Carlos Williams: Poet from Jersey (Boston, 1975) 291.

  46 I asked…. occupation As Sankey 76 points out, noted as the “Temple incident” on early typescripts, e.g. Yale Za187.

  46 No fairer day … Dean and From The Prospector, November 12, 1936, 5, excerpted from a much longer article on Dean McNulty. The Buffalo E20 draft contains considerably more of the Prospector text, covering the Dean and Dalzell’s escape, and Dalzell’s trial and acquittal, material WCW marks there to omit. On E20 the cut-off point was to be at “bewildered.” The E21 draft matches the final version, incorporating this and other excisions.

  Most of the differences from The Prospector occur with the E21 version:

  than May/than on May

  garden/gardens

  cheek…. Some WCW cuts “which inflamed the already hostile mob. Coroner William S. Hurd tried to calm the mob by making a speech, and while he was talking,”

  [to] WCW adds the square brackets on Buff E21 after E20’s “out of the barn and he succeeded in reaching the house of” is revised to the final version. The Prospector reads “out of the house” for “out of the barn.”

  Following “half furlong away” WCW cuts: “Chief of Police Graul arriving with the aid of policemen could not quiet the raging mob.”

  “a great beast” WCW’s addition.

  join/join in

  The crowd then/The mob then

  While in Prospector has “While at,” change caused by typing error. “While it” on E20 that becomes “While in” on E21. This is one example of many in the typescripts of a change made on a subsequent typescript without consulting the original.

  Sergeant/police sergeant

  of Saint/of the St.

  Joseph’s/Joseph

  seating/seated

  Dean and In the Prospector and E20 the sentence concludes, “his display of Christian charity, for he was the highest prelate of the Catholic Church in Paterson and the man he was befriending had been prominent among the Orangemen.”

  47 Chapultepec! grasshopper hill! See Sankey 77, who reproduces a photograph of a carved grasshopper from Chapultepec.

  The line is omitted in the selection from Book II published in Partisan Review (Feb. 1948).

  48 by the mind’s/of the mind’s Partisan Review, which also adds a following line “Walking:—”.

  48 If that situation … for us A continuation of the same letter [April 1943? ] from Marcia Nardi quoted on p. 45. See note to that page.

  Z Reads “H” on E5, probably Harvey Breit.

  49 Shortly after midnight … fun From The Prospector, October 29, 1936, 4. The minor verbal differences from the source—table at/table of, too small/rather too small, the cellar/a cellar, a lightning/lightning—occur with the Buffalo retypings.

  53–54 Dear B … kill Although KH annotates as “Bill’s cousin in Green-point” [Brooklyn] on the UVA typescripts, Thirlwall’s copy of Paterson identifies “B” as Betty Stedman “a Post-Grad Hospital nurse.” Betty Stedman is the source of a later prose passage, see note to p. 144.

  Thirlwall’s identification is confirmed by Mr. Stanley Stedman, who writes in a letter to Christopher MacGowan, December 15, 1990:

  There was a letter about our dog Musti but it has long since disappeared. We were away from home and our neighbor Florence Plarey was taking care of our dog. Sometime after we returned we noticed that the dog was swelling and my wife suspected that [the] dog might be pregnant. She questioned Florence about it and received an evasive answer. Florence was a sweet girl without too much backbone so she went home and wrote the letter. This was in 1935 or 36.

  I don’t recall whether we knew Dr. Williams then or not. At any rate the letter was a gem and we saved it and eventually Elizabeth showed it to Dr. Williams. He said he would use it in Paterson and we waited eagerly for the book to come out. When it did we compared it to the original. There were minor differences and we felt that the original was superior to the published version.

  A longer version of the letter appears in the UVA and Buffalo E25 typescripts. WCW marks most of the excisions on one of the E25 drafts. In the longer version the second sentence begins, “Also I did not want to shove the blame onto George [Florence’s husband] but …” Between “beat it” and “George” WCW cuts “and I was afraid he would bite me when he was in that mood. George was working so he wasn’t of any help. Gosh I’m nervous I can’t talk—I mean, write.” The words “had happened” are underlined in the earlier version, which then reads to its end:

  I’m so excited I even left a piece here that I must write in now. I’ve been watching her and would have soon told you if you hadn’t already asked. Please forgive my carelessness and don’t be angry although I know you’ll be cursing like a son-of-a-gun and probably won’t ever speak to me again for not having told you. But it just goes to show that I have no backbone and if I have it must be one of a jellyfish. Don’t think I haven’t been worrying about Musty. No doubt that’s why I’ve been losing weight. She’s occupied my mind every day since that awful event. You won’t think so highly of me now and feel like protecting me. Instead I’ll bet you could kill me.

  Well let’s get off on another subject unless I get a crying spell from sheer nervousness.

  These early typescripts read “plenty hell” for the printed version’s “plenty of hell.”

  (Readers might be relieved to hear that Mr. Stedman reports to the editor that Musti went on to complete a successful pregnancy, and give birth to five puppies.)

  57 the lost/Eisenstein film Weaver 207 cites a version of Que Viva Mexico! shown in New York in late 1941 and titled Time in the Sun.

  62 I see they … undermine us? Thirlwall’s copy of Paterson annotates as [August] Walters (see p. 180), as does Norman Holmes Pearson’s copy—although Pearson received much of his information via Thirlwall. Weaver 207 offers the plausible suggestion that the passage is from a letter by WCW’s friend Fred Miller, who edited the left-wing magazine Blast (see Weaver 71). But the comments are not in the approximately one hundred letters from Miller to WCW filed at Yale and Buffalo.

  The passage may be WCW’s own prose, perhaps a record of a friend’s comment. On Buffalo E17, possibly the first appearance of this passage, the lines are handwritten, rather than typed in the manner of the transcribed letters, and the passage undergoes revision more radical than WCW’s usual treatment of letters. The E17 version
reads:

  I see the Senate is trying to throw out Lillienthal and deliver the bomb to a few choice industrialists. I don’t think they will succeed but even those party leaders here who hope to be elected to power are among them. That’s what I mean when I refuse to the oppose the communists. Are they any worse than the shits who are trying to undermine us?

  It is terrifying to think how easily we can be destroyed.

  The Buffalo E23 version is also quite different from the printed version. For David E. Lilienthal’s comment to Weaver see Weaver 207.

  64 an old man Thirlwall wrote to Sankey that the sermon was based on one “Williams heard at Lambert Tower ‘sometime before the war’” Sankey 92.

  64 There are people … upon me A further extract from the April 1943 [ ? ] Marcia Nardi letter, see note to p. 45. On Buffalo E5 the paragraph reads as in the printed version except that “few months” reads “past few months” and “maladjustments” reads “maladjustments, if necessary.” WCW omits the final sentence of the paragraph: “And my economic situation has been involved, of course.” On the Buffalo E25 draft the text is as the printed version.

  66 The detectives … detective said With the Buffalo E16 typescripts is an October 19, 1943, letter from WCW’s Paterson correspondent David Lyle (for Lyle see note to p. 15), which begins: “I remember your saying once you had thought of going around with detectives etc, on their duties, but abandoned it as being all the same thing. Here’s a going around, cut and indexed to be absorbed in ten minutes, of a going around in Paterson.”

  67 Hamilton saw … worse than any … Especially … Jefferson Possibly WCW’s own prose summary. In early Buffalo typescripts the language is included with prose material that is clearly WCW’s.

  68 America the golden … in hand See Weaver 207–208 for an extensive annotation on this parody, which is to the tune of “America the Beautiful,” and for background detail on John Peter Altgeld, governor of Illinois in the early 1890s.

  69 As with some of the prose, the periods in the poetry mark WCW’s omissions from his own earlier drafts.