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love and best wishes to you both.
Papa
New Yorker: George Steiner’s review appeared in the 26 January issue, pp. 106–9.
Marc Brandel: British-born novelist, journalist, and screenplay-writer (1919–94).
Tony Harwood: after Harvard, Anthony Harwood became secretary to Dennis Conan Doyle (son of Sherlock Holmes’s creator), then married to Nina Mdivani (?–1987), a Georgian princess who had fled to Paris in 1917 after the Russian Revolution. After Doyle’s death in 1955, Her Highness married Harwood.
To Benjamin Reeve
[A student at Princeton who later submitted a thesis entitled “The World of Imagination and the Imagination of the World” for his B.A.]
Piermont NY
23 February 1976
Dear Benjamin Reeve.
Your thesis relating J R to Don Quixote sounds sufficiently unique that I would certainly hesitate to intrude on it (I’m not being facetious). I doubt there is more to JR himself than appears in the book but even were this not so, and I could tell you more about him, or on the other hand explain who and what I meant him to be, I should feel I’d pretty much failed my attempt to give him the only existence he has claim to, which is to say as he emerges from the book itself. And that must go for the rest of the book’s characters too, even with the writer’s wishes notwithstanding. Gibbs for instance I’d meant not as a failed writer, but as a man who might have been capable of almost anything if he’d found it worth doing but ends finding it too late even to be any of the things he’d never wanted to be, returns to writing as last resort and fails even at that; but reviewers have by and large found him a failed writer. So while few lines have haunted me longer than Eliot’s —That is not what I meant at all . . . I can’t see a writer following his books around trying to say what he did mean, if the book failed to convey it. And further, if J R has the dimensions I would hope, it may well be open to approaches quite different to those originally envisioned, as yours would certainly seem to indicate.
Contrary to your information I don’t live in New York and go in only when I have to, but wish you luck with this intriguing enterprise.
Yours,
William Gaddis
To Judith Gaddis
[J R was nominated for the 1975 National Book Award for fiction, along with Larry Woiwode’s Beyond the Bedroom Wall, Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift, Vladimir Nabokov’s Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, Hortense Calisher’s Collected Stories, and Johanna Kaplan’s Other People’s Lives.]
Piermont
Wednsday 17 March [1976]
Dearest J————
[...] Into fuzzier areas, the one I mentioned to you last night which both Candida and Bob do not appear to attach practical ($) significance to, Bob says for now regard it as an entertainment (my word). Books nominated for the Nat Book Award are mine, Woiwode’s, Bellow’s, then 3 books of stories (!) by Nabokov, Hortense Calisher, and Joanna Kaplan whom nobody’s heard of (Bob published it & can’t understand its inclusion). No Ragtime, no Dead Father, no Guerillas. But if the book selections are odd, the judges are even odder; a writer, a critic, and a complete idiot: Wm Gass, Mary McCarthy, and Maurice Dolbier. The short story books must be Dolbier’s candidates since his attention span is that of a 6 year old and I’m sure he will never reach page 516 in J R where D O’Lobeer describes The Tiger on Sonic as ‘a really yummy read . . .’ (unless a literate friend if he has any points it out to him). So it’s probably just as well you’re not here pressing me to press Bowdoin to press Mary McC . . . a real comic strip, Bellow has won the NBA 3 times so my money’s on Calisher? [...]
with all love from the 3 of us,
W.
Ragtime [...] Guerillas: novels by E. L. Doctorow, Donald Barthelme, and V. S. Naipaul.
Wm Gass: William H. Gass, eminent fiction writer and critic (1924– ), later to become a dear friend of WG.
Mary McCarthy: see headnote to 4 February 1987. Her third husband was Bowden Broadwater, whose name is mispelled a few lines later
Maurice Dolbier: one of the original reviewers of R; see 21 May 1962 and note.
To Matthew Gaddis
[J R won the National Book Award, and WG attended the ceremony on 21 April with his children, as indicated below. (For coverage of the event and photos of WG, see Publishers Weekly, 10 May 1976, 47–54.) The “sheet” is unidentified; Rockland is the county in which Piermont is located.]
Piermont N.Y.
29 April 76
Dear Matthew,
perhaps I should get out of the book racket, put on my $3 Thrift Shop suit hire John Dalmas as my press agent and go on speaking tours? Heaven knows whether a sheet like this sells any copies in Rockland County though it gets me big smiles at the bank and from Nard (not a reader) —but I am glad you got down for the thing & hope Cindy didn’t find it too cuckoo in the way of everybody going around shaking hands with everybody, a pretty good look at the ‘Establishment’ in action anyhow. Candida says ‘Your kids just knock me out. Now I understand everything.’ And Lee Goerner writes ‘Your family is neat.’ So those are the important things after all.
And in the wake of it things seem to be looking up. There is one deal in the wind I won’t get into here but if it does work out in the next couple of months could relieve these financial uncertainties for a while that I’ve been driving everyone mad with for so long. And then, a little more immediately real, I went up to Bard College yesterday and talked with the president and some people in the English department and they very much would like me up there for the fall term September through December, two courses two days a week at what I think is very good pay and it’s only two hours (90 miles) from here, and the courses would be entirely up to me to make what I wish, which is both flattering and alarming since I’m not all that sure I have enough to ‘teach’ to fill a term. But the Bard people don’t seem at all put off by my doubts and so if I can get over those I will probably take it: certainly a good deal more realistic than sitting here waiting for IBM or Eastman Kodak to call, and would give me time to explore my next project (probably the Civil War one) without feeling I must attack and finish it immediately. Also I have to confess that the title Distinguished Visiting Professor is tempting to wear around for a bit. (Just so Martin [Dworkin] doesn’t hear of it.) [...]
with love to you always and best to Cindy,
Papa
John Dalmas: a private detective in some of Raymond Chandler’s early stories.
Cindy: Matthew’s girlfriend.
Lee Goerner: (1947–95), Gottleib’s assistant at Knopf until he was promoted to publisher. the Civil War one: WG contemplated converting his play Once at Antietam into a novel.
To Johan Thielemans
[A Belgian critic and specialist in American literature who published numerous articles on Gaddis’s work as well as a few radio and television broadcasts for the Belgian media.]
Piermont NY 10968
18 May 1976
Dear Johan Thielemans.
I greatly appreciate your sending me the copy of your extensive broadcast critique even though, of course, I find the language tantalizingly impenetrable —makes me regret my long fraud with languages that so helped earn the epithet ‘erudite’ for The Recognitions (though I’m content to trust that while the author may be a fraud the book is not). And in that area I am struck again by the apparently casual ease with which Europeans approach American literature: for another recent case in point, a charming letter from a girl student at the University of Toulouse who has read J R twice for a paper on American literature and culture, all which of course I find immensely gratifying as I do your interest in it for the Paris symposium you speak of, I hope your paper is well accepted.
Our own plans for getting to Europe are as usual continuously postponed by circumstance but your invitation is appreciated nonetheless, and thank you again for sending me the paper.
Yours,
William Gaddis
To John and Pauline Napper<
br />
Piermont
29 May ’76
dear John and Pauline—thanks for your note—the Plum Tree is lovely & a good deal more lasting than the National Book Award which was pleasing of course but doesn’t seem to have had much tangible (i.e. $) effect (i.e. ‘sales’), the book is doing well enough but no vulgar “best seller” and a good deal of peevishness on my part with the publisher over lack of advertising after the string of marvelous reviews. God knows when it will appear in England, my trust-confidence in Tom Mashler at Cape is 0. Otherwise we wait and pray and will give you news when/as/if we ever do have it.
W—
Plum Tree: perhaps a book in WG’s library: Arthur H. Lewis’s The Day They Shook the Plum Tree (Bantam, 1964), a biography of miserly financier Hetty Green (1834–1916), said to be the richest woman in the world in her prime.
Tom Mashler: i.e., Maschler (1933– ), a leading literary publisher in England. No mention of WG in his memoir Publisher (2005).
To Candida Donadio
Piermont
1 June 1976
Dear Candida,
As my lawyer (God rest him and I wish he were still with us) used to say, —Oh Lord, you’ve written another of your letters . . . ! Which then, as now, serve largely to get my thoughts in order as we move to the next step. So I’m sending this to Stonington, where you can run through it at leisure when you have nothing worse to do in the next week or so. Mainly at this moment it is because you are out of your office this week, and I am going out to Fire Island sometime in the next few days to work on that house till the 15th, and there are a couple of points I want to have clear in case you should be talking to Knopf or elsewhere in the interim.
First—though I’m sure we think along the same lines and you have anticipated this—I hope we can avoid any quid pro quo with Gottlieb regarding my ‘next book’. In other words, giving up or giving in to something in exchange for his not pursuing any claim to a next book he might have under §14 of our agreement, which reads as amended: The Author agrees to submit to the Publisher his next book-length work before submitting the same to any other publisher. What might we have that he might want? First of course repayment of the $5000. December loan which was excluded from the J R contract, and which he has every right to have back off the top of any deal we should make.
Next—and this is the one that disturbs me—giving him a free hand with any reprint sale that may appeal to him to cut his losses, but which would do little or no good to me. Of course Bob is very shrewd (and frankly at this point I don’t know if he’s anything more than that), and may very well have exactly this trade in mind waiting for us to broach the matter of taking the next book elsewhere, as I have by now every reason to believe he would be glad to see us do, anyhow.
The point is, I don’t want to publish again with him any more, I think, than he wants to publish me. Sometimes I’m pretty slow thinking, Candida, especially when I have the idea that I’m held with confidence and respect. For a good many months there I thought the people at Knopf held me and my work in high regard, and it has taken a few real snubs to finally let me know that I’m considered simply somewhat of a nuisance. The NBA should certainly have made it clear, Bob too busy to take us to lunch, too important to take us to dinner and too chintzy to pay for it, he seemed simply embarrassed by the book’s showing a new breath of life when he’d already written it off. A few months ago the mails brought a steady stream of reviews, mentions &c from Goerner. Since the NBA, all I’ve had of that was the PW writeup that you sent me and a long piece from the LA Times from a friend in California, so I gather the word has gone down to stop bothering with those mailings too.
I guess what it comes down to is that Bob and I disappointed each other a good deal. He came in on J R at the last minute as sort of a spoiler—none of the long agonies and uncertainties Asher put up with me—gambled sixty thousand and when he didn’t make the bundle on the book that he’d hoped to, like a good gambler has moved right on to the next game. So I’ve disappointed him on the money side, but he’s disappointed me with his finally quite explicit show of non-interest and non-support. Of course (as JR knew clearly) that’s what business is; but even though I’ve been as disappointed as anyone on the money side, I’d thought there was more to it than that.
Curiously, I remember back when I applied for that Nat’l Endowment grant on the strength of turning the Civil War project into a novel which Bob on the board of judges helped me to get; but when once last year I tried to talk to him about the book, I was surprised and I guess a little hurt too that he showed no interest in it at all. In other words, J R for him was just a one-shot deal that didn’t pan out, and its author likewise. Though I can see his antipathy as partly my fault. I think he’s quite a thin-skinned guy who doesn’t like criticism and doesn’t like the source of any suggestion he’s not entirely right. Of course I never did tell him, in as forthright terms as I told you, what a half-baked job I thought they were doing in terms of promotion, sales and distribution with the hard/soft cover problem. But 2 big Times ads for the book within 4 days of each other, and then never another one when all the good reviews had come in, except for that obligatory obituary-looking admission that it had got the NBA? I did try a few times to get into the whole thing with him in a bantering way but he was having none of it, dried right up on me and I should have been bright enough then to realize that every word of mine was a nail in my coffin.
There. I’ve only gone on like this—aside from getting it off my chest—to clarify elements of this essential problem excluding anything else: that neither he or I wants Knopf as publisher of my ‘next book’. I would in fact, if you think it advisable, call or write him myself in a very straight low-key way to bring out exactly that, without reference to anything else. Then if he brings in some quid pro quo (I’ll trade you §14 for §1 a iii), we know where we stand. Or you might prefer to say to him yourself on the ’phone sometime —Bob? Incidentally there’s one other small item: you’re not really interested in seeing Gaddis through another book even if he should manage to write one, are you? (Then if he says —I’ll trade you §14 for §1 a iii, we’ll know where I stand.)
See the whole God damned problem is you’ve spoiled me in terms of support, loyalty, integrity—all those outmoded 19th century square notions. Ask JR.
[carbon copy; unsigned]
To John and Pauline Napper
[A postcard from a hotel in Hong Kong. In August 1976 WG was sent by the United States Information Agency on a speaking tour from Thailand through the Philippines to Japan: see his letter to the Times of 21 February 1984.]
The Peninsula Hong Kong
[23? August 1976]
dear John and Pauline—
how can I get to the other side of the earth but never manage a trip to England? The US State Dept is passing me off as an ‘American Specialist’, speaking to university people &c, painful but how else would I ever see Bangkok & Japan? Sort of a sop for the million $ J R did not make I guess, will be home late September and try to write and explain all.
Love, Willie Gaddis
To Judith Gaddis
The Oriental
Bangkok, Thailand
Friday 27 August 1976
dearest Judith————
it is hard—impossible really—to realise I’ve been gone just a week? [...] here feeling helpless looking out on this calm brown river, rusted tin roofs on the other side and a gold temple roof sticking up from the confusion of modern buildings and (to western eyes) slums—though where I miss you constantly most is these people’s obsession with flowers, even in the worst market stalls fruit and nameless edibles cut to look like blossoms, you do look at all this and really wonder what in God’s name we were trying to win a war in this part of the world for.
Well I have been through my first 2 (and only) talks in Bangkok—I hope successful though these people are quite shy and so polite it is dificult to know. I’d been told I would be talking to university people—pro
fessors, instructors, some students—but no one in the State Dept thought to mention that these are 95% young ladies, so I’ve felt I was addressing a seminary—and my usual anxiety feelings that I’m not really earning my way. I do have the feeling that the State Dept operation is not the most efficient one in the world and perhaps should have pressed harder about meeting local writers (though there are few) but everyone has been most relaxed and kind—And this evening a young very soft spoken professor (man) is coming by and we are going for a walk in the city and probably a bite to eat, I feel he hasn’t much money and also believe he has some poetry to show me—so I’ll do my best and also hope for a closer look at the place and the people. And tomorrow expect to go for a real look at some of the temples. [...]
I just think about you constantly and miss you so much and love you always—
W.
To Sarah Gaddis
in flight [postmarked Tokyo]
4 September 1976
Dear Sarah————it is quite unreal to be 7 miles above the Pacific between Manila and Tokyo knowing that you have just left Saltaire and are all in Piermont—and Scarborough—today, and that by the time this reaches you I will have spent a few days in Japan and you will be at Swarthmore—and 21 years old. Of course you know how much I wish I were there for that, but all I can think is that this trip is a beginning of better things for us all, that it is as productive as it is fantastic. The people in Thailand and the Philippines have all been so generous and attentive and so wanting to hear anything I could tell them about “writing” or life or anything that I begin to think I may really have some things worth telling them——(I had 32 in my audience yesterday, 68 the day before!) hell Sarah this isn’t the way I thought your 21st birthday would be but of course the point is not the occasion itself but who you are at 21, and you know how happy and proud these things you are make all of us who love you — — — happy birthday and I will see you soon.