I have a nice note yesterday from Aaron who says to his dismay “the last batch of pages (740–787) have arrived here unacknowledged,” but that “what’s more important, I have read them and continue to be astonished . . .” at what? that I’m still alive? that the God damned thing goes on, and on, and on? No, he’s a kind and loyal fellow but God I could use some good news.
Please tell Hy that I haven’t answered his letter because I’ve been trying to stay in J R as much longer as I can (now page 814, have a toothache and wasted the whole damned morning on this Gallimard nonsense), I know Hy will understand but regret the time he gave it after I’d rushed in with it as I did, but I will get to it as soon as Bast leaves on the bus with Charley Yellow Brook and his brother (the Brook Brothers) for the reservation. [J R 564]
I can’t but think that the English hope for money has fallen through and that Aaron (despite he says “seeing the Pynchon hysteria as a good omen”) would not write me such kind notes if he could write me a check instead, so the generally rollicking tone of this note is a fraud, I hope to heaven you are keeping well.
[signature missing]
Aaron: Asher, who planned to publish J R at Holt, Rinehart & Winston, where he currently worked.
Hy: Hy Cohen, an associate of Donadio’s.
the Pynchon hysteria: Gravity’s Rainbow had been published in February to great acclaim.
To John Leverence
[A graduate student at Bowling Green State University who was working on an essay on R, eventually published as “Gaddis Anagnorisis” (Itinerary, Summer 1977; rpt. in In Recognition of William Gaddis). After teaching at California State University at Long Beach, Leverence (1946– ) became the producer of the annual Emmy Awards.]
Piermont NY 10968
19 August 73
Dear Mr Leverence.
Although I have been gratefully aware of Eugene McNamara’s interest in The Recognitions and I think had brief correspondence with him some years ago about it, I don’t recall the passage you quote from his Queen’s Quarterly piece and frankly cannot then or now imagine an ‘almost abject apology’ of any sort issuing from the book’s publisher.
Despite the attractive (I hesitate to say characteristic) conspiratorial flavour to this report of Fr Flood, whoever he may be or have been, my own far more mundane recollection of the book’s being ‘mysteriously withdrawn from the shelves’ is that a good portion of the rather modest first edition was simply remaindered—dumped at ‘below cost’—a year or so after publication, earning me, if not royalties, perhaps a wider readership, and the somewhat chill pleasure of seeing it quoted now at $22.50. Whether that remaindering reflected the rather substantial management and editorial changes at Harcourt Brace about the time the book was published is matter for speculation. They have recently reissued it in their paperback ‘Harvest’ series with what I find a singularly unattractive cover at $4.95 which—as Fred Allen said when New York’s subway fare went from 5¢ to 10—should ‘keep the riff-raff out’.
The book did have another epiphany about 1962 in a paperback issued by Meridian which carried a good many corrections of the meticulous sort you query in ‘Epiclantos’, largely through the diligent good offices of Jack Green, though whether this particular correction, if it is such, was made I don’t know and haven’t a copy to check; unfortunately the ‘Harvest’ reissue, of which I was unaware till its appearance, remains uncorrected, since it was apparently simply photo-offset from their own earlier edition.
Catharine Carver is I believe a good deal happier at Oxford University Press in London.
Yours,
William Gaddis
Eugene McNamara: this Canadian critic (1930– ) included WG in his “The Post-Modern American Novel,” Queen’s Quarterly 69 (Summer 1962): 265–75.
Fr Flood: unidentified.
Fred Allen: American humorist and radio personality (1894–1956).
Epiclantos: on p. 10 of R, the monk Fr. Eulalio “was surnamed Epiclantos, ‘weeping so much’”;
Leverence pointed out this is a typo for “Epiclautos,” but WG neglected to correct it in later editions of R.
To Matthew Gaddis
Piermont, NY
29 December 73
Dear Matthew,
I don’t know whether you need this English course list or not but am returning it with really great regret that in the Christmas confusion we didn’t spend time going over it together, though I gather you’d already chosen Modern Poetry (though whether because of or in spite of A. being in the class I’m not sure: the former might be a rather shaky basis for academic selections). I’m sure you will get a kick out of AE Houseman, who identifies with Shropshire & you may think of J Napper as a current native there, and whose verse is filled with images I am sure will be very familiar to you in terms of “carried half way home or near pints and quarts of Ludlow beer” (see pages 88–9, 73) from your recent trip doing just that . . . also Houseman is quite filled with rather soured images on Young Love which may come in handy sooner or later (see poems pages 31, 42, 26) and discouragement and futility (pages 110, 131, 109, 197, 25) in fact I just had an idea, as my birthday present I have just called and am getting hold of a copy (just “sent” Judith to Pickwick for it while I finish this letter) and enclose it here to get you off to a head start. You may find it all a bit too neat (Houseman’s verse) and not ‘up to’ Dylan, but I guarantee if you read a little you will want more . . . (“Shoulder the sky, my lad, and pass the can” (of ale)). (These are lines I recall from 30 years ago; and I’m sure I’ve quoted to you that parody of Houseman somebody wrote (see poems page 68, 66) which went, in part: “If your throat is slit, Slit your girl’s and swing for it; For bacon’s not the only thing That’s cured by hanging on a string . . .” last lines I think are “Lads whose work is still to do Will whet their knives and think of you.” (You might spring those lines on Ms Averill to get things off to a rousing start.)
Enough Houseman; right now I haven’t much comment on the others but if you get into Yeats and Eliot you are certainly in good hands. (Speaking of Creeley though I remember him one night in my room in Adams House bloody head in hands having just turned his mother’s car over in a ditch—of such things are poetry made?) (You tell me at the end of the course.)
Heaven knows we miss you and Sarah; and I guess the house will gradually drain of strange (I mean unfamiliar not fully looking) faces, and JR’s and Basts’s will return to take the place of {***}—they are nice boys certainly, but at some point Judith observed that despite your age difference with them she felt that you were more mature—she wasn’t simply tossing compliments either. And I myself am constantly impressed at both your and Sarah’s sensitivity to other people and their feelings, which with all his good points I don’t really think one can say for {***}, and it is an admirable quality to have. Perhaps it is one that develops from trying to resolve one’s own self doubts and confidence, as I know you and Sarah are still working out, and in your different ways trying to be honest with yourselves about it, which takes a good deal of courage working toward the never-quite-realized Greek ideal of “Know thyself”. I suppose any man who ever can do that will never disappoint himself no matter what he accomplishes or doesn’t accomplish, and of course one’s self is where satisfaction, or accomplishment, or disappointment lies, rather than in others even those we love. So even though, on a birthday like this with my work unfinished, I am tempted to feel the fear of disappointing you or Sarah or Judith (let alone Aaron Asher and Candida!), you are all only mirrors for disappointment I feel in not yet having reached goals I’ve set for myself—so the next step is simply to keep trying to reach them.
Of course the problem is setting the goals in the first place; many enough ‘successful’ men end up drunks for having fulfilled goals the world set for them and then finding they’ve fulfilled nothing in themselves; many enough kids end up junkies for having decided the world’s goals aren’t worth trying for and being unable to set any of their own. A
few fortunate combine the two (I don’t mean drink and drugs, but meaning your own and wordly goals), and your education and growing up now are vitally important because learning the world’s goals (even marks in school) gives you the material to form your own—and don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean that by your 16th birthday you should know whether you want to be a poet or an astronaut, but only have a hungry curiosity in all directions for anything that brings you and your mind to life. (This is why for instance I think it’s unfortunate that you cross off the film-a/v area at school because of the people involved in it; if you’ve looked that area of work over and have no interest in it at all, that’s one thing; but if you avoid it simply because of the other people taking part you can really be missing something of yours, and after all what’s the world going to be when you’re out in it but fields of interest where everybody certainly won’t exactly suit your liking?)
At any rate, what I started to say at the top here is that we ourselves are our only real receptacles for disappointment. If I am not disappointed in myself I cannot disappoint you or Sarah or Judith or anybody who loves me; and so long as any of you do your best and don’t let the little disappointments in yourselves that are inevitable add up to one big one, you can never disappoint me, and none of you ever does. In different words it goes back to those often quoted lines of Shakespear (Hamlet I iii), in which Polonius is advising his son:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
This is perhaps more the sort of letter I would have written you on your birthday than on mine, but it is really appropriate to both since birthdays are inevitably times of reevaluations, disappointments, resolutions (improve work habits!) and certainly for both of us satisfactions in what we have done so far.
with much love always,
Papa
pages 88–9: in The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965).
Pickwick: probably Pickwick Books of Nyack, NY, still open today.
Dylan: Matthew read Thomas’s “Where Once the Waters of Your Face” to WG when visiting him.
“If your throat is slit: by British writer Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949), a parody that Housman judged “the best I have seen, and indeed, the only good one.”
Ms Averill: Mary Averill, who taught Modern American Poetry.
Creeley: poet Robert Creeley; see 20 September 1993.
To Candida Donadio
Piermont NY
16 January 74
Dear Candida,
Without agonzing preamble to what must be a ‘progress’ report I obviously would rather avoid giving you and/or Aaron: I have got a Summons for service on a Federal jury starting on 4 February. Since I wrote them last fall and got a postponement this time I think I should appear in person to plead for another. What I am forced to admit to you here of course is that, unless the lightning ease of other days strikes me this morning, I expect to be still working on this damned book Feb 4th &c, and obviously US Southern District Court downtown daily would be disastrous. However I don’t think my plea for another postponement would be taken very seriously unless supported by a letter from you or Aaron, spelling out as unkindly as I deserve the fact that I am now completing a book which is substantially behind deadline and for which a good deal of money has been advanced me, and that interruption at this time would work an extreme inconvenience and constitute undue hardship for all concerned.
Since Aaron is the publisher a letter from him would probably bear more weight than an agent do you think? But asking him would of course be to remind him yet once more of my delinquency (not that he is unaware of it!), and appear to project it on and on into spring, as I hope to Christ will not be the case. You may well have had this experience (jury service I mean, I know you’ve had the delinquency one) with writers before. What do you think? If you or he will write such a letter I think it should be sent to me and addressed to Clerk of the Court, United States District Court, US Courthouse, Foley Square, NY NY.
God knows there are ironies: practically everyone at the end of J R is being subpoenaed to appear at this same court & it would have been a marvelous experience if it had come a year ago (if it came now it would add another 60 pages . . .)
And what can I tell you about the delinquency itself? True, Christmas did not help work, and I have had to interrupt for two IBM job speeches—dentists, tuition &c and of course still desperate: but even these are excuses of reality to which you’re well used. I do get up every morning at 6:30 or 7, do come in to this desk and go on till 5 or 6, do hold my head in frustration, and in the end have no excuses for why this last part is so hard to bring off. Part of it is The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, if you happened to see that excellent film. And that drawn-out metaphor of Gibbs’ book as the invalid in there defiantly waiting where one left him was not lightly inspired. [J R 605]
I have to thank you for sending up Les Reconnaissances (got one Vol I & two Vol IIs) and the review from Le Monde which, to my broken-french eye, looks quite rave and God help us does not even mention Joyce I believe. I must say the book itself looks excellent (though apparently better proof-read in the French than Spanish), maybe I will be like Edgar Allen Poe (not at these prices). If I were on any decent terms (any terms at all) with Gallimard I’d ask them to send a copy to the director Alain Renais (sp?) homage for his film Muriel (with of course the hope he might like to do a big-scale US movie).
Proofs for the few pages (ie 10 out of some 400) for Antaeus came and I returned them titled simply
Untitled fragment from another damned, thick, square book which Halperin (Halpern?) said should be out in March, wish they’d taken a later fragment but doubt it makes much difference one way or another.
Finally, is there any way to know when Avon will make its 2nd payment to Harcourt, if I can get my part promptly when they do? Also occurred to me Avon might be interested in seeing the review from Le Monde.
Candida believe me my attempt above to sound brisk and businesslike is just that, an attempt, I won’t retail the despair behind it but if you can hang on with me a little longer I am honestly trying to finish this God damned thing.
[carbon copy; unsigned]
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner: the 1962 British film directed by Tony Richardson and based on Alan Sillitoe’s 1959 story.
Poe: Edgar Allan Poe was revered by the French long before he was appreciated in America.
Alain Renais [...] Muriel: Resnais’s 1963 film Muriel ou le Temps d’un retour, with a screenplay by Jean Cayrol.
Halperin: Daniel Halpern (1945– ), editor and publisher. Pages 137–43 of J R appeared in Antæus 13/14 (Spring/Summer 1974): 98–105.
Avon: a mass-market paperback edition of R was published by Avon (under its Bard imprint) in 1974 and went through three printings in succeeding years. However, it was reset from the first edition, thus ignoring WG’s corrections for the Meridian edition, and contained hundreds of typos of its own.
To Judith Gaddis
[Written after Judith left for a trip, formatted to look like a classified report. MIL = mother-inlaw.]
REPORTREPORTREPORTREPORTREPORTREPORTREPORTREPORT EYES ONLY EYES ONLY EYES ONLY EYES ONLY AM 26FEB74 OFFICIAL CLASSIFIED 26FEB74 OFFICIAL CLASSIFIED
08:25 waved
08:26 watched down hill to make sure car turned corner safely; waved
08:28 walked dog to Aufieri garbage can and returned
08:31 poured coffee
08:45 decided to move car back to house so I would not keep looking out and thinking Judith had gone on errand and would return
08:46 saw bag with grapefruit, put it by door to remember to give to Jack
08:47 let cat in
08:48 poured coffee
08:49 saw MIL’s letter
08:59 went in to look for stamp for MIL’s letter
09:00 saw work laid out on table, decided to
have drink
09:01 let cat out; decided not to have drink
09:02 decided to move car back to house so I would not keep looking out and thinking Judith had gone on errand and would return
09:04 burned toast
09:09 called John, reached hoarse lady who said he would call back
09:11 let cat in
09:12 poured coffee, looked at work laid out on table
09:14 decided to clear kitchen table and bring typewriter there to be near ’phone
09:16 tied up newspapers
09:23 emptied ashtray
09:25 decided to make list of things I must do
09:29 could not think of anything so decided not to make list
09:31 cleared kitchen table
09:34 John called; read him note from his Mrs emphasizing all underlined words but did not know Pat’s ’phone number. Haha.
09:44 let cat out
09:45 decided to move car back to house so I would not keep looking out and thinking I had gone on errand and would not return
09:46 moved car back to house
09:58 looked at work laid out on table, decided to have cereal
09:59 made cereal
10:02 ate cereal reading Swarthmore alumni bulletin; noted one alumnus who claimed 3 billion dependents for federal taxes and given 9 months in prison for filing fraudulent W-4 form, decided must remember to warn MIL who might consider something similar
10:40 looked at work spread out on table
10:41 twinge at noticing coffee cups &c, put them in dishwasher to not be reminded of departure
10:48 examined contents of refrigerator, discovered spaghetti sauce with Message and put it in freezer
10:50 discovered corned beef and potatoes
10:55 thought I should probably go down and get butter; checked first, found 4 sticks of butter
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