‘not our business’: from “East Coker,” part 5.
To Johan Thielemans
Piermont, N.Y. 10968
18 April 1978
Dear Johan Thielemans.
Thanks for your letter & for sending me your piece from TREMA. All your point of entropy is certainly well taken & I wonder if you have ever read Norbert Wiener’s book The Human Use of Human Beings (viz ‘. . . it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of its entropy, and the negative logarithm of its probability. That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives . . . &c’). Obviously a book that ‘reached me.’
But I must confess what pleased me most was your taking John Gardner to task, his review of J R was I think the only one that thoroughly irritated me, following its smug opening pronouncement on how easy the book was to read with error after error on the text, making clear that perhaps the book is a bit difficult to read for someone with his sloppy approach piling up on one of his lofty pronunciamentos (though I think his yappings about Art are not taken terribly seriously here—which of course makes him yap louder—& that people are getting rather weary of hearing it: see attached clipping). You did at any rate nail it down neatly.
I am only now trying to get in the frame of mind to start another book, meanwhile a possibility that J R may be made into a film, which I frankly see rather less in terms of artistic than financial deliverance, might eventually even enable me to get to Europe again after these many years.
with best regards
William Gaddis
TREMA: “Gaddis and the Novel of Entropy,” TREMA [Travaux et Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone] 2 (1977): 97–107.
Wiener’s book: first published in 1950; WG quotes from the first chapter.
attached clipping: probably a negative review of Gardner’s book On Moral Fiction, which appeared in 1978.
To Ólafur Gunnarsson
Piermont
2 May 1978
Dear Olafur,
Your generosity seems only exceeded by your enthusiasm; my indecision only by my general tendency to anxiety (perhaps should be translated as ‘laziness’: have you ever read perhaps the best novel in any language, Oblomov, by Goncharov?).
At any rate, your offer to send an air ticket forthwith is both immensely generous & something I cannot reward at this moment. I have got some matters here that are just taking day after damned day to clear up, & a summer house I have got to get ready to lease to tenants. The only thing that could change things abruptly would emerge from a British film producer who is interested in optioning rights to J R (that is one of the things I’m trying to get cleared up), of course if he offered to pay my trip across the sea I would go immediately —with a stop coming or going at Reykjavík of course.
Otherwise I have a hope in midwinter of visiting friends in England & if I can manage to work that out would let you know, assuming that Iceland is as uninhabitable as everywhere else that time of year, the schnapps notwithstanding. Meanwhile I hope your book has turned out as fine as your children—I do really look forward eventually to seeing it all & will stay in touch.
all best regards
W. Gaddis
To George Hegarty
[A student at Drake University who sent WG his dissertation “Gaddis’s Recognitions: The Major Theme.”]
Piermont, NY 10968
18 September 1978
Dear George Hegarty.
I feel badly being so late thanking you or in fact even acknowledging your kindness sending me your dissertation, especially so of course in the light of your generous estimate of The Recogntions & your grasp of its basic premises; that it is (p.12) essentially positive; that it is (39) ‘by its very nature imperfect’ & in fact in itself (13) a kind of forgery, this last a treat of sorts after being beaten relentlessly over the head with Th. Mann’s Dr Faustus in a very erudite dissertation from the Univ. of Colorado. I was also intrigued in your bibliography to learn of a number of critical pieces on the book which I didn’t know of.
All aside from the book’s major themes which, as I say, I do think you explore & present very clearly & well, I am always beguiled when I read these criticisms & dissertations (yours now about the 5th of the latter that I’ve seen) by points & parallels I’ve made quite unawares so far as I can recall—the ramifications (85) of ‘Irish thorn-proof’, of (95) the Narcissus Festival, &c—all of which of course delight me & for which I’m quite ready to seize full credit. (On the other hand one can be equally & perhaps less happily disconcerted when such exegeses take the opposite turn as I recall feeling they did in the B Benstock piece years ago which you cite, aside from its major theme (Joyce-pilfering) such supportive items as handkerchief-covered mirrors which I took, not from Ulysses which I hadn’t (haven’t) read but an experience of my own in a Panama hotel room.) But I suppose bemused is a better word (than beguiled) since chasing after & readjusting images (‘That is not what I meant at all . . .’) these days is even more futile a notion than it was back on page 152 of The Recognitions. But still . . .
Whether the following will serve any purpose but your own interest I don’t know & certainly, in the light of your dissertation’s overall accomplishment, these items are trivial enough but I pass them on anyhow: Page 12 contemptible I think you mean contemptuous? Page 50 I think Agnes D was a literary agent not a critic. Page 60 it is before magic despaired not disappeared, as page 63 it is Puritan indignance not indulgence. Though perhaps not quite clear in the book (p. 30), Wyatt confronts a Deadly Sin on the Bosch table where he eats, not (your p. 65) on a dish. Then curiously, & reflecting I suppose the innocence (to say nothing of ‘banned in Boston’ threats) of those days in the ’50s, I think all the distinguished novelist was doing (p 85) ‘meditatively engrossed in the landscape’ was having a pee; but your reading is somehow marvelously more pertinent to his self-absorbed isolation from the real experience at any level so I don’t mind at all letting it stand (& perhaps God knows in some forgotten future saying —Of course that’s what I meant . . .)
Finally & again (perhaps deliberately) obscure the Willie references (pp. 475–8) you quote (pp 45,6): all I meant attributable to him was as 1 of ‘the 2 young men’, ie p 475 from Philogyny? through become a misologist? Then 477, lines 9 through 12 & 15–18; & lastly p. 478 lines 27–32. (I can’t recall offhand who the ‘haggard boy’ was in the book (though I do in ‘real life’).)
Many thanks again for troubling to send me the dissertation.
Yours,
William Gaddis
dissertation from the Univ. of Colorado: Robert Charles Brownson’s “Techniques of Reference, Allusion, and Quotation in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus and William Gaddis’s The Recognitions” (1976).
page 152 of The Recognitions: “Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition.”
To Elaine Markson
[David Markson’s wife and a successful literary agent. In 1978 she published a novel entitled Home Again, Home Again (Morrow), and invited WG to her publication party.]
Piermont, NY
22 Sept. 1978
Dear Elaine,
I am teaching up at Bard College this fall—a class Tuesday afternoon & another Wednesday morning—& of course your party is Tuesday eve, when I stay over up there—that seems the way life goes these days & I am sorry to miss this occasion to wish you well & good luck with your book, if there is such a thing any more (or in fact if there was ever); as well as the chance to thank you for your time & efforts on behalf of the various hopefuls I send in your direction. But I do mean the “good luck”.
best wishes,
Willie Gaddis
To Stanley Elkin
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[Critically acclaimed novelist (1930–95) and a professor of English at Washington University in Saint Louis. He wrote to invite WG to teach for three weeks there.]
Piermont, NY 10968
7 October 1978
Dear Stanley Elkin.
I just got your letter forwarded & was most agreeably impressed by its proposal. Bill Gass some months ago had mentioned the possibility to me as just that & without going into terms which sound, as you present them, extremely inviting & I want & am glad to be able to accept.
My spring schedule is still in balance but at the moment the February turn looks preferable, perhaps if only because one would always rather be any elsewhere in February. As for obligations I would expect to do all I could along student lines but am not much for readings & have never in fact given one; as for talks I was obliged to clarify some of my prejudices for the Japan tour a couple of years ago & know it’s high time I got them together & trust we can sort that one out.
Beyond the above but no less persuasive, I must add that I’ve admired your ear (now there’s a line from one writer to another, recalls the young man from Devizes) since —this is Dick ‘Pepsodent’ Gibson, I’m very happy to be here in Minneapolis tonight . . . & very much look forward to meeting you & to seeing Bill Gass again, please give him my best regards & let me know details that need attention as they occur.
thanks again for your letter & invitation,
William Gaddis
young man from Devizes: from a limerick: “There was a young man of Devizes / Whose balls were of different sizes. / One was so small / It was nothing at all; / The other took numerous prizes.”
Dick ‘Pepsodent’ Gibson: this section of Elkin’s The Dick Gibson Show (1971) appeared in the same issue of the Dutton Review that featured the opening section of J R.
To Sarah Gaddis
Piermont
14 October 78
Dear Sarah,
[...] Speaking of Academia, a really confused land. Bennington you recall months ago sounding quite excited at the possibility of my coming up there; a week, a month, 2, I hear nothing; finally they call, would like me there the bulk of the week (March–June) with a heavier course load than I have now & at substantially less money. Elegant, expensive Bennington & doesn’t even get near little Bard’s terms. So I said I’d think about it & am going around the house muttering when the mail brings a letter from Washington Univ in St Louis (where Bill Gass is), asking me out for 3 weeks either Feb or April at half the fee Bennington offers for a full term, & with far lighter duties mainly consorting with graduate students as much or little as I like plus a talk or 2, furnished apartment office & (new) typewriter. Plus, the letter itself terribly hoping I’ll accept was from a writer named Stanley Elkin who I think is marvelous (novel called The Dick Gibson Show) who teaches there. So of course I accepted immediately for Feb, when one would rather be anywhere else than where one is even if it’s St Louis, & partly of course for the fee & situation, but in a way mostly for the prospect of rowdy time with Elkin & Gass & I’m really looking forward to it. I think we’ve all 3 got similar views on what good writing’s about plus highly compatible senses of humour. So for those brief 3 weeks I’ll go from being Distinguished Visiting Prof at Bard to being Hurst Professor at Washington U, then the Lord knows what since being the Hadley Fellow at Bennington sounds less than heaven though if it’s a question of that distinction money or none . . . well we’ll see. I’ve also been trying to think seriously about thinking seriously about starting another book & think I may have an approach. [...]
Meanwhile Bard goes very well, better each year really as I accept that identity, my only problems being the same ones: those who write nothing, those whose names I don’t yet know, added to all that the thrown together new course & its new reading list which means my reading not only the books assigned but 4 or 5 others for related material & coming in in a marvelous condition of confused overpreparedness. Compounded this week by my lightheartedly having assigned Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which I haven’t read for 20 years & suddenly find it’s 800 pages. Poor kids! Poor me! Got up this morning to page 329 & still must read, reread Sister Carrie & D’s biography, plus a little of Zola &c. . . . Well I asked for it. Panic every Monday evening & then roll back here Wed eve drained but pleased that it does all seem worth it to me & to them. [...]
Love to you both—Papa
Dreiser’s An American Tragedy [...] Sister Carrie: published 1925 and 1900, respectively. The biography was W. A. Swanberg’s Dreiser (Scribner’s, 1965).
Zola: Émile Zola (1840–1902), French novelist and critic.
To Sarah Gaddis
Piermont
Sunday morning 3 Dec 78
Dear Sarah.
How many letters do you suppose you’ve had from me opening: Well, I’m finally settling down & starting to get things together . . . Well I was just settling down & getting things together when Mathilda the Dutchess arrived in town so for reasons of old time friendship not Art I went with her down to some confused & I thought all quite unnecessary number at the old Phoenix Theatre, some sort of tribute to William Burroughs with readings some nonsense music & Allen Ginsberg all of it the avant-garde which is suddenly just old hat. That was Friday night, they had a big number last night scheduled to end up at Studio 54 the big disco everybody wants to go to because you can’t get in, but I thought I’d had enough so skipped that, probably it all ended up with lots of artistics & Ginsberg taking off his clothes which may have been a romp 20 years ago but would hardly be an edifying sight now. Anyhow with promise of awful weather later today I’m going in to have lunch with Mathilda before she leaves for Scotland tonight, why can’t people stay put?
What of course was odd was standing out in front of that theatre at 2nd Avenue & 12th street & looking up at the windows of our old apartment building & remembering, Christmases & that cage elevator & old Henry in his cap. This of course is the season for such things & for so many people a hard one to get through, rather than being able simply to look back & realize how marvelous it all was & how lucky to have it, something to do with that ‘living every minute . . .’
I’m glad I did make the San Francisco trip but somehow it was all rather unsettling & I don’t know exactly why, part to do with the sheer jamming it in between Bard classes & exhaustion of the trip itself but also with that entire week under the cloud of the Jim Jones nightmare in Guyana (his ‘People’s Temple’ a S.F. product) & their mayor shot the day I returned: it is one of the most attractive cities I’ve known & everyone seems attractive & relaxed & pleasant, none of that hostility in the air one feels in New York, but still there is something unsettling about the place. Matthew as I said seems fine but to tell the truth I think I will be quite relieved when he puts the place behind him.
So since coming back I’ve just been trying to catch up, Bard & dentist, Bard & dentist & a piece for IBM’s Think magazine which will thank heavens pay the dentist though apparently I’ve got to rewrite it because it’s as usual a little too much of my density for their audience: why can’t I just write simple sentences? But all of this to be over & done by December 20th; et puis? [...]
I long to see you, much love always & best to Peter,
Papa
Mathilda the Dutchess: Mathilda Campbell, Duchess of Argyll; see note to 28 November 1950.
2nd Avenue & 12th street: the Gaddises lived at 193 Second Avenue in 1960–61.
Jim Jones nightmare: on 18 November cult leader Jones convinced his followers to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.
their mayor shot: Harvey Milk, an openly gay politician, was assassinated on 27 November. et puis?: French, “And then?”
To William H. and Mary Gass
Piermont NY 10968
12 March 1979
Dear Bill & Mary.
You were right in your assurances before the fact back in January: it was High Old Times & I’m only now descending to the dismal cheer of home, correspondence & prepa
ring high-blown fictions for the IRS.
Even more, various impatient egregious elements were whetted for the spree at Notre Dame toward the logical notion of abandoning the lonely drudgery of writing for the parade circuit, fictions of ‘modesty’ left behind it is nice to hear the applause, & youth claps harder. More soberly, N.D. also offered a meeting with Larry McMurtry whose informed counsel on movieland convinced me to try to go through with the London producer prospect T shirts, comic strips, money 2 years distant & all; also informed thoughts on selling one’s ‘papers’ which I wouldn’t have anticipated, as it would never have occurred to me to put a rare book dealer & The Last Picture Show together in one man. (Apparently all the big MS money that was in Texas is now in Tulsa, which should tell us something.) So that, plus a nice note from Herb Yellin, may contain some hope against the daily horror from my front windows: a tarnished silver Senior Citizens’ van emptying 3 of them on their feet from hot lunch & God knows what God knows where (do you hear me, diapered John Dewey on a Key West roof?).
But all this is quite beside the point of this note which is thanks first of course for all the generous academic courtesies & private hospitalities but far more importantly the spirit from which it cheers me enormously to feel they sprang & will endure.
Again, extending my own rather more constrained hospitalities if you are east & not being put up at the Plaza by your publisher (our publisher?), I am now offering striped bass from the Hudson laced with PCBs from General Electric far up the river, all an unpredictable schedule which could, if it fell together, even accommodate children with a cat to torment; one way or another though I do very much look forward to getting together before too long again.
with all kinds of best wishes to you both,
Willie Gaddis (Capt.)
spree at Notre Dame: WG participated in the Notre Dame Sophomore Literary Festival in early March 1979.
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