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by Gaddis, William

  Do you think it would be worthwhile? the photographing? And would it cost me, to get around here and take pictures? When I leave I’m going up into the interior—toward the Costa Rica border (and probably on to Costa Rica) to see what this jungle country really looks like. Certainly an opportunity for photography. But you will understand, I shan’t have the money to spend traveling for that—for taking the pictures I mean. You see, I have a pretty vague picture of the set-up. It is awful to be this way, to have both time and money mean so much. But that’s the corner I’m in. Also I must mention, no cameras allowed on the canal, if they should want some pictures here. Anyhow, if I had some better idea of how extensive a tour they wanted, and who would foot the bill, and what sort of remuneration, &c. And if, after all of this whining, it sounds feasible, you might let me know.

  I wrote Uncle Oscar, and enclosed a picture card which may please him—and am half expecting, any day, to get an undecipherable answer.

  And news from New York is good, although I am just as glad to be here for this winter.

  Thanks for your letters—and the Valentine—and now I must get back down to business.

  Love,

  W.

  Keystone View: a Pennsylvania company that produced stereoscopic images.

  Uncle Oscar: Oscar Rhodes (1862–19??). The protagonist of A Frolic of His Own is named Oscar.

  To Charles Socarides

  [A Harvard friend; see note to letter of late February 1943. This is the earliest letter to explain the essential idea and plot of R.]

  Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone

  [February or March 1948]

  dear Charles.

  First—please don’t be alarmed by the weight of a correspondence which I may seem to be thrusting on you. But when you write a letter like this that I have just received, honestly I go quite off my head with excitement. Am fearfully nervous now.

  All because I have been away for 3 days, on a neighboring island, working frantically on this novel. Which looks so bad. But here: you see, what you say in these letters—most specifically this last—upset me because the pictures you draw, the facts you offer, are just as this novel is growing. It is a good novel, terrific, the whole thread of the story, the happenings, the franticness. The man who (metaphorically) sells himself to the devil, the young man hunting so for father figure, chasing the older to his (younger’s) death. And the “girl”—who finally compleatly loses her identity, she who has tried to make an original myth is lost because her last witness (a fellow who takes heroin) is sent to jail—the young man (‘hero’) the informer. Here the frantic point: that it all happened. Not really, maybe, but with the facts in recent life and my running, it happened. All the time, every minute the thing grows in me, I “think of” (or remember) new facts of the novel—the Truth About the Past (alternate title). (The title is Ducdame, called ‘some people who were naked’). But this growing fiction fits so insanely well with facts of life that sometimes I can not stand it, must burst (as I am doing here). And then I ruin it by bad writing. Like trying to be clever—this perhaps because I am afraid to be sincere? But I watch myself ruin it. And then—because when I was writing in college I went so over board, now it must be reserved, understated, intimated. Or bad bits of writing just run on. Look: “There are few instances when we are not trying to control time; either frantically urging it on, or fearfully watching its winged chariot ragging by, spattering us with the mud that we call memory.” Isn’t that awful. You see, it just happened, was out of my control until the sentence reached the period. To be facile can kill what must be alive.

  That’s why I hated Wolfe—that he cried out so. Because my point is, no crying out, no pity. We are alone, naked—and nakedness must choose between vulgarity and reason. Every one of us, responsible. Still those lines you quote (Wolfe) excite me horribly. Not to have Forster’s understatement. No room for Lawrence’s lust. Perhaps Flaubert, or Gide. But I am not good enough as they. It is sickening this killing the best-loved—work.

  Now I should like to see you, if you could look at this thing, flatly condense (parts of) it—the writing, exposition. God I know all this fear, but have no sympathy with it. Fools. I can not afford to be one.

  As though your letter anticipated what I am just putting down as fiction.

  I can’t come home before June. Because of money. Always that. After June I can live on Long Island, not before summer though, you see? Must work on this goddamned canal until April, hope to save around 600$, enough to live on until June and get home. I hate it, paid 12$ a day—or night—to waste. Now it is 10:15pm—and I must be at the canal at 11, “work” until 7am. But I have to because of money. Perhaps good I don’t have money, crazy in love with the daughter of this local island’s governor—not Mex, Panamanian, but Spanish. Splendid nose. Good Werther love, doesn’t trouble her. It is hell not to have either the time nor the money to live.

  Then there is a man here with a sail boat going to Sweden. And if the novel suddenly looks too bad I may go, he needs someone to work, a very small boat, sail boat.

  God the running, running. You understand it, don’t you? I almost do. But if I can’t make a good novel then I must keep running, until I know all through me—not just as a philosophical fact, as truth which I “believe” and am trying to sell—but can sit down and know without having to try to sell it (writing) to everybody.

  Thanks. I shall write you.

  W.

  Ducdame, called ‘some people who were naked’: “Ducdame” is a nonsense word from Jaques’s song in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which he facetiously defines as “a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle” (5.2.53). “Some people who were naked” probably derives from Pirandello’s play Naked (see 7 April 1948).

  time [...] its winged chariot: an image from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” (c. 1650).

  Wolfe [...] those lines you quote: perhaps Socarides quoted those lines near the end of Look Homeward, Angel (1929): “Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos. Unswerving punctuality of chance. Apexical summation, from the billion deaths of possibility, of things done.” WG was so struck by the phrase “unswerving punctuality of chance” that he used it in all five of his novels (R 9, J R 486, CG 223, FHO 50, 258, AA 63).

  Werther: the suicidal hero of Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).

  To Edith Gaddis

  Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone

  [late Feb/early March? 1948]

  dear Mother—

  An outburst. But I have to burst out somewhere. Having just spent 50$—but on what. Two magnificent suitcases. All English made, beautiful leather, locks, &c. Like Brooks sells for 45$ (the small one, I paid 18) and 87$ (big one I paid 23.50$)——Well. So now I have my little suitcase to carry about manuscripts in and look like the Fuller Brush man. I should have been a fool to miss it—and since it looks like I am going to spend a rather peripatetic (that means doing things while moving about) youth, all the better.

  I have your letter—and hope you do get to Virginia this weekend—I am off to work now, go to Taboga at 6 am tomorrow. Hot spit. With typewriter. This novel, dear God. If only I could stop living for a little and do it. But you may imagine the sort of life I lead if packing 2 cans of beans, six of sardines, a loaf of bread and a box of cinnamon buns, and going off to an island for 3 days alone excites me so that my handwriting gets like this. Got to write a novel, got to work and save, got to go to Costa Rica, to Haiti, to Jamaica, got to know people, write letters, got to read, study, think, learn—got (at the moment) to go to the dentist — — — Isn’t it fantastic? Wonderful? I am going off my trolley—so much. But most of all I have got to finish a good novel, don’t I. Because that’s what I’ve set myself to do. And when one forces one’s self to rise above the idiotic futility of it all, the vanity of human wishes, the acquisition of “things” (vis. luggage)—then it is splendid.

  I had wondered about you and the Harvard Club—and am so glad it is as good as you wr
ite it.

  I don’t think I could stand Crime & Punishment on the stage. Who was this Dolly Hass—Sonia? What an opportunity that part would be for a young actress. She could probably never play a part again.

  Main reason for this, I have so many ideas, for writing. But they must be written mustn’t they? You see I suddenly find myself to engulfed with new thoughts, interpretations, impressions, Revelations, that I can’t sit still to finish one. Well, you know. I’ll get over this. (In psychology we call it Euphoria).

  And many thanks. I await the civilised cigarettes and reading matter (if that book doesn’t sober me up, nothing will).

  So did you go to Williamsburg? And be reckless enough (how you and I give ourselves gifts, with such guilty pleasure) to take a sleeper. I hope so.

  Love,

  W.

  Fuller Brush man: archetypal door-to-door salesman of the early twentieth century. the vanity of human wishes: title of a pessimistic poem (1749) by Samuel Johnson.

  Crime Punishment on the stage: opened in New York in January 1948, starring John Gielgud as Raskolnikov and German-born actress Dolly Haas as Sonia.

  To Edith Gaddis

  Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone

  [10 March 1948]

  dear Mother.

  You were so good to have sent this divination book right off. I have just got it; and of course it is in a way preposterous, and foolishness. But quite exactly what I wanted, and thank you.

  Sometimes this life gets so horrid; but then, the time I have set myself runs out in 5 weeks! Dear God, to be ‘free’ again briefly. But then, the reading I have been doing recently (except for the New Testament, such a wonder)—has not been of a high character—Dostoevski’s House of the Dead—an account of his Siberian imprisonment, and one cannot help but find analogies to the sterile barbarity of the Zone. Incidentally, we haven’t had an extended talk about Americans. I am so glad you managed Virginia. When things are exceptionally woeful, I go in to Panama and simply walk. Such colours, and unarranged humanity, and rest. A lime-green building with brown trim, or another brown with blue, and pink, and so much wonderful white. Tomorrow night I am going in, and Juancho—this kind fellow who is a judge, and could ‘write’, so nice to me, humanly so—is going to play for me the Messiah, 35 sides to its recording! How I look forward to it, music is so badly missed.

  A very distracting letter from John Snow. I shall show it you; he thinks he is well-off, but you may read it and may understand why I don’t see going back to Harvard, where he is. Very sad.

  And Granga and I seem to have got up a regular correspondence! Glad of course that you are passing such a jolly and busy winter. I trust you still attend your ceramic classes in the midst of all that gaiety! Eh?

  Since I am on very bad terms with myself—writing going badly, so I have no sympathy here—I shall cut short, before I begin railing at something.

  Love,

  Bill

  divination book: probably The Book of Fate, ascribed to Napoleon, first published in 1822, reprinted often thereafter, and quoted a few times in R (137, 754).

  Dostoevski’s House of the Dead: documentary novel first published in 1861–62. 35 sides: 78 rpm phonograph records held only about four or five minutes of music per side.

  To Edith Gaddis

  Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone

  [13 March 1948]

  dear Mother.

  One thing I do not understand. You know, I left N.Y. with comparatively little luggage. And now this room is littered. Junk all over the place, and all over the walls, &c. Apparently I am a real candidate for the studio; but I cannot understand how these things just accummulate.

  This morning I rode into Balboa with the foreman on our job—he says he thinks it will last for 3 or 4 more weeks. And then I find that I cannot get the reduced rate back to the U.S.—that is 40$, the regular rate being 180$! So I guess I shall go up to Costa Rica as tenatively planned. Have recently been reading about Eugene O’Neill—and am furious that one can no longer live as he did—just wandering about, one job, one ship to another. No. To travel now—and this most especially for the woeful American—one must have money, and be ready to pay at every turn. [...]

  Well—that little business can wait another couple of weeks—since I am just now getting no writing done at all, only making voluminous notes, and a few sketches for what should be splendid stage sets. (How one wanders, wanders, from one creative world to another—) (And this morning I got from the library a book on plays and two books of plays—perhaps the childhood influence of the ever-beautiful Frances Henderson—). [...]

  Love,

  W.

  Frances Henderson: unidentified.

  To Katherine Anne Porter

  Panama, R.P.

  7 April, 1948.

  My dear Miss Porter.

  Perhaps you can understand how well your letter was received, how many times read; and how much I want to repay your kindness by trying very hard to write you an honest letter. I find it difficult always (or rather of course make it difficult for myself) to write an honest letter because I am not clear yet about writing a letter, and especially as now when this writing I do is not going well then to write a letter is more strange still because it becomes an outlet which it should not be but the writing should be. Not that the writing is an outlet, but as though the outlet is the purpose. Well when the writing is consistently unsatisfactory then the purpose is all confused, and one may run to letter-writing saying, —Here is what I have to say, you will see how important it is, and what a worthy one I am . . . no, I haven’t quite finished the story, the novel, the play, but meanwhile you must appreciate . . . Well you understand, that it can be like that morass of conversation. And so now often in the middle of a letter I must stop and say, —What filthy little vanity is this, Willie, that you are relishing so. And stop, furious with myself and also the person who does not get the letter. Still it is all wrong, absolutely, to then turn and revel in the idea of not being able to write a letter. You know, I have so many letters from NY that start out, —I started to write you a letter last week, but it turned out to be . . . , and —I have written you twice, and the letters are here unmailed. Well those people are writing to themselves, and would do better to not bother using someone else’s name at the head of the sheet as an excuse. But the vanity of letter-writing, of shouting out for witnesses. I have thought a great deal about this whole insistence on a witness that we all make, that is certainly one reason why so many bad novels are so bad. Much of it seems to be a very American thing too, I see the American with the camera everywhere, that filthy silent witness; and to jump off of the aeroplane when it lands in one country after another: no time to look at the volcano or feel the air except to say to another how hot it is, but (because the ’plane will only be in Guatemala, in Nicaragua, in Costa Rica, for fifteen minutes) that one must get to the counter and send off postal cards with a picture of the volcano he did not see, to witnesses. I have recently finished reading the New Testament, which makes much of witnesses. Now what did Jesus mean, (this is Matthew 9:30, 31, after he has healed a blind man) And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it. But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country. Now certainly the largest reason he carried on these miracles was simply for witnesses, later he charges the apostles as witnesses. No; but getting back, everyone running about insisting on having them. (And that often splendid comedian Jimmy Durante’s —Everybody wants to get into the act. Well.) Certainly a prophet needs witnesses, otherwise the whole thing is to little avail. But the instant a piece of writing takes on the note of, —See what I have done, where I have been, what I have read; but do not forget that these things cannot happen to you but through me . . . well then the whole thing is vile, will not do. And the other side of that dirty coin is all of the snivelling confessionals, they are the most infuriating and it seems to be the way the coin is falling now. Oh, these soft-handed little boys who su
ffer so with themselves and their boys and ‘men’, I am intolerant. Or of the loneliness of our lot, without a poet of stature that sensibility snivels. But Goethe’s (I do not read German, I have learned some by rote—I am trying to be honest) Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt weiss was Ich leide, Allein und abgetrennt von alle Freude—that that stands up in suffering; or Rilke’s Who if I cried would hear me in the angelic orders. This distinction between loneliness and alone-ness. But to start this bad arguement at its beginning: Did you have trouble with people anticipating you? that an idea which you had discovered and formulated for yourself and then were working to deliver it, find it was not yours (in the mean sense) but (if you thought further, with courage and (if you were not mean) gratitude) eventually yours most because given to all, because perhaps one may have the brass to say it is a truth? Well, and so when you said in your letter of distinguishing loneliness and solitude, I was immediately troubled, even (witness this meanness) offended. Do you understand? As though, what business had you, to offer in some fifteen words, what I discovered finally some six or eight months ago, discovered with such triumph! And really what meaner more unchristian thing than one who would try to covet a truth. And these months past I have been running around pounding the board for recognition of aloneness and (this above all) the incumbent responsibility. Discovery indeed! And then to read Sartre’s Les Mouches. This, if ever was, a time to find joy and triumph when truth is shared, and to tear out meanness where it grows, to be Christian. (The only poetry I have been reading here—after the tiresome disappointment of Auden’s The Age of Anxiety—is Eliot; and I say this because a line suddenly comes up, —I am no prophet, but here’s no great matter; I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter &c.)