To Thomas Sawyer III
[In April Sawyer wrote to Gaddis asking five questions for an essay he was writing on J R (eventually published as “J R: The Narrative of Entropy,” International Fiction Review 10.2 [Summer 1983]: 117–22): “1. Is the title JR intended to indicate that, in some ways, JR is the offspring of The Recognitions? 2. The narrative technique of extended conversations is used in sections of The Recognitions. Did any other work or author (maybe Ivy Compton Burnett’s A Heritage and Its History?) have any influence on the narrative technique used in JR? 3. Is the use of Wagner’s Ring as a foundation for JR to suggest (in addition to the effects of capitalism) an ironic contrast between the harmonies in Wagner’s operas and the dissonance of JR’s conversations? 4. Did Hawthorne’s Marble Faun or Melville’s Confidence Man have any influence on The Recognitions? 5. Can you indicate what about Graves’s The White Goddess impressed you the most in terms of a potential source of some of the images or motifs in The Recognitions?”]
3 May 1982
Dear Tom Sawyer.
Sorry to be no help with your questions of 26 April, briefly: 1) read in what you like, I wouldn’t think of J R as offspring; 2), 4): I leave questions of influences &c to critics & reviewers, haven’t read I C Burnett, doubt the Hawthorne & never finished the Melville; similarly for Graves (5) read so long ago I can’t take time to go back picking through it. 3) you’re welcome again to read that ‘ironic contrast’ in, whether or not it was among my primary intentions.
You may be interested to know that Univ of Nebraska Press is scheduled to bring out this month a book titled A Reader’s Guide to The Recognitions which may be some use to you (I haven’t seen it).
Yours,
W. Gaddis
I C Burnett: British author Ivy Compton Burnett (1884–1969) wrote seventeen novels—similar to each other but to no one else’s—consisting, like J R, primarily of dialogue.
To John and Pauline Napper
[Handwritten around a photocopy of the New York Times’s announcement (14 July, A-16) that WG, among others, had been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called genius award, amounting to $50,000 ($120K today) a year for the next five years. Frederick Karl told me he was the one who had nominated WG.]
Wainscott, N.Y. 11975
14 July 1982
dear John & Pauline—Can you imagine this! The entire thing a stunning surprise to me & I am still trying to absorb it after those 40 years of mistrustful approaches to the world and fortune: 5 years of “security”! making a good number of 180° turns in my head and of course for the first time really some tangible reason simply to live for another 5 years—
We think of you often often though seem to make no steps or plans nearer to England but hope you are well and the work going on since what else finally is there?
love from Muriel & kids &
Willie
To David Markson
Wainscott, NY 11975
20 July 1982
Dear David,
Thanks for your generous note. How odd it is: running back to 1955 if I’d got the (equivalent) prize then I’d scarcely have been surprised; instead (surprise!), Granville Hicks. 25 sobering years later & it is The Surprise (& a sobering one at that): somewhere in the book Wyatt observes that the present is constantly reevaluating the past, —I was right all the time . . . or, —I was wrong all the time . . .
How about that.
Best regards,
Willie Gaddis
Granville Hicks: one of the original naysaying reviewers of R. the present is constantly reevalutating the past: see note to letter to Sheri Martinelli (Summer 1953?).
To Steven Moore
[My Reader’s Guide appeared in June; I had written to ask if it would be possible to follow it with a manuscript study of R.]
Wainscott NY 11975
23 July 1982
Dear Steven Moore.
I’d put off answering your letter waiting for a glimpse of the Nebraska Press book which (after another call there) has finally just arrived. And from just a glimpse it is prodigious, right down to the maddening task of assembling the Avon errata. At some point—should it prove useful to you—I will try to go through it & clear up some of your nicely handled speculations (as, for example, whether Graves pointed me to The Golden Bough: I had already devoured it entire, and then read his White Goddess in Madrid & hurried up to Deya to talk to Graves and ask for suggestions regarding what religion might a Protestant minister becoming unhinged turn to. He came up with something about Salem witchcraft (I later dug up the Mithras solution elsewhere) but was such a fine and generous man that we had numerous talks and, in fact, he was to become somewhat the physical model for Rev Gwyon).
Concerning your requests regarding my papers, I am right now in some sort of state of transition brought on in good part, obviously, by this stunning surprise of the MacArthur Fellowship Prize with its assurance of 5 entire years of security. I haven’t the papers here & am trying to work out plans for a house I have which is now rented & where most of my things are stored, so I will have to let you know how things sort out.
It would be a disservice to your work & ingenuity (to trace down absurd books like Les Damnés de la Terre!) to comment further, until I take the time to sit down to it right; for the moment simply, my aghast appreciation.
Otherwise, I haven’t seen the Contemporary Review of Fiction (if that’s the title), called Gotham Book people who said they’d send it & haven’t. But enough for one day!
with best regards
William Gaddis
Les Damnés de la Terre: a 1935 novel by Henri Poulaille mentioned on p. 81 of R.
Contemporary Review of Fiction: when he did receive the issue of RCF, WG sent a postcard [postmarked 6 August] to John O’Brien saying simply, “Many thanks for sending the copy of the Review along to me. I always learn something new.”
Gotham: Gotham Book Mart, the prestigious literary book store on West 47th Street in New York City. A bookman there named Matthew Monahan (d. 1990), a neighbor of WG’s in the Hamptons, handled most of his requests.
To Steven Moore
[I was writing an essay on the parallels between WG’s and Thomas Pynchon’s work—published as “‘Parallel, not Series’: Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis,” Pynchon Notes 11 (February 1983): 6–26, which ends with the text of the postcard below—and asked whether he believed, as some critics maintain, that R influenced Pynchon’s V. (1963). He and Pynchon shared the same agent, Candida Donadio, which may explain how WG “understood” that Pynchon felt he had not been under the influence. The postcard is undated and lacks a salutation.]
[Wainscott, NY]
[postmarked 6 August 1982]
I haven’t read Pynchon enough to have an opinion either of his work or whether it might have been ‘influenced’ (perilous word) by mine, though I’ve understood he feels not & who’s to know if he’d ever read mine before V? Always a dangerous course,
Gaddis
To Tom LeClair
Wainscott, New York 11975
17 October 1982
Dear Tom LeClair.
Thanks for sending me your J R & Excess, clearly thought out & followed through I thought in this heart of the matter runaway systems area: well done!
I gave Kuehl/Moore a few paragraphs of talk for a book of pieces they have been collecting on my work; but as for this ‘interview’ business, I’ve known from George* for a couple years that Paris Review has been interested but I right now have none, & thought you disposed of it nicely in your good piece in Holiday was it? the ‘transcript’ not to be published or paraphrased, & that you’d given up being tiresome about it.
The most stunning stretch I remember was from Sparta west through the mountains to Pylos,
yours,
W. Gaddis
*Plimpton
J R & Excess: see note to 23 February 1980.
George: Plimpton, editor of the Paris Review. See 4 January 1986.
Holiday: i.e.,
Horizon, where LeClair published a piece entitled “Missing Writers” (October 1981, 48–52) featuring WG among other reclusive novelists.
Sparta: LeClair too had visited Greece and knew the country well.
To John Napper
Wainscott NY 11975
6 November 1982
Dear John,
THERE IS NO EQUITY. I wailed that for years & can repeat it now, albeit from a rather different vantage point. The Lord knows—less well perhaps than you & I—that having the money burden lifted for 5 years late along the way is an undisguised blessing: I say undisguised advisedly, since had I got such a ‘prize’ on the heels of publishing The Recognitions I’d really have been a good deal less surprised than now, would most likely have taken it as due under a logical system of just reward for fine work executed; but here it comes undisguised by such illusions of the world & the place of one’s work in it, & serves rather to underline the capriciousness of both. No one cavils when some egregious effort brings $1 million in a paperback sale, $3 million from the movies, all disappeared tomorrow. Should one now?
Of course having spent a lifetime at caviling it’s hard to change one’s ways, but it’s the damndest thing: has this recognition spurred a rush of high paperback offers on either book? no. Or movies? no. Or W German, Swede publishers bidding wildly or at all? no. My last statement from Harcourt Brace reads debit of $4.29, incorporating the 33¢ they overpaid me on my last royalty check 6 months ago of $11.48. (J R—not I personally thank heavens—still owes Knopf some $37 thousand.) All not that unlike S[c]hepperman’s sale of his paintings to Mrs Selk [in J R] locking them away from vulgar concourse with the public eye in hopes of cornering the market or ruining him, one.
So while I cavil I certainly do not complain, but rather marvel at this splendid further evidence of the inconsistency that I’ve celebrated from the start; for in the USA real money is the only proof against taking ‘defeat from every brazen throat’.
Meanwhile the subterranean procession continues: where in the world did you happen upon Steven Moore’s Reader’s Guide? With less than no help from me he’s done a rather incredible job of digging I must say, the near misses & lacunae notwithstanding; & he threatens to bring out another book of collected pieces on me or my work, I’m not sure & thus somewhat apprehensive. Of course (in USA) I haven’t seen his book mentioned let alone reviewed anywhere, just as I haven’t been elected to the National Academy of Arts & Letters (where Joyce Carol Oates and J Updike are prominent mambers—an honest typo): yes, the damndest thing. But again, to be rude about it what books like Moore’s accomplish (in USA) is a fair guarantee of a good price—far more than the books themselves ever earned in the ‘marketplace’—for my notes, papers, drafts &c from some large Texas sort of university engulfed in the serious industry of doctoral dissertations. (Hang on to those letters! they may yet buy you a bottle of Tres Cepas, even a case . . .)
So taken all together there’s a certain satisfaction in having done it backwards; having done, perhaps like Melville, the monumental work first (though I too prefer J R), & looking at the present work with a somewhat jaundiced eye, one more ‘raid on the inarticulate’ where one’s weapons are always deteriorating, shorter and smaller in scope in some inadvertant response to the only comment I’ve seen in the public press on my work recently, wherein a John Montague in the Guardian (reviewing a new book on Joyce) refers to the ‘elephantiasis of the imagination in such writers as Gaddis and Pynchon, to name only two . . .’ Surely in a world like this one integrity, if only a shred of it, is the only thing left, & there’s even something to be said for obscurity. [...]
love to you both,
Willie
‘defeat from every brazen throat’: a line from Yeats’s poem “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” (1914) and used in J R (131).
large Texas sort of university: eventually the Nappers sold their Gaddis letters to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas.
Tres Cepas: a Spanish brandy.
‘raid on the inarticulate’: from part 5 of Eliot’s “East Coker.”
John Montague in the Guardian: untraced.
To Steven Moore
Wainscott NY 11975
26 November 1982
Dear Steven Moore.
Your queries regarding the publishing history of The Recognitions raise a touchy area, & in confidence—I think for the moment you needn’t share with anyone—I’ll try to tell you why; & also I must ask you, as a condition I’ve never made elsewhere as you know, to send along to me a copy of what you write on the subject before publication so I can check it out.
Briefly the point is this: for 20 years following its original publication, I tried every way I could to regain the book’s rights from Harcourt, which is to say from Jovanovitch who sank his teeth in it &, despite its miserable earnings record & their total disregard for it, has never let go. The reason I don’t want those murky details gone into right now is that, with the changes going on in publishing & specifically to & within Harcourt, I still hope for a reversion of rights through some hook or crook & don’t want that possibility faint as it may be to be jeopardised by my intemperate observations. Thus for the time being it would be best to confine your record to what ‘facts’ there are without my involvement as your source.
I’m quite impressed by the amount of information you got from this Devlin person (I don’t know him) at Harcourt, more than I ever received from them. I’d heard the original printing was around 5 thousand but never knew the figure; wasn’t of course informed of the remaindering beforehand though it was quite soon (for those days) after publication. (My then wife saw it in a window for $1.98; the latest price I’ve heard paid for that first ed. is $130.) I wasn’t informed of a 2nd printing in 1964, that I think was about the time of the Meridian ed. & I suppose they hoped to cash in a bit on that (v. Tony Tanner’s long review in the Times.) Regarding the Meridian ed.: it was done by Aaron Asher who was responsible & decent enough to let me make a number of corrections (many or most of them caught by Jack Green) which he stripped in. I don’t know how large the Meridian printing was. Part of the Meridian deal was their sale of sheets to McGibbon & Key (check sp.) in England for I believe 1500 copies. Thus those are the only ‘corrected’ editions. I didn’t know till by chance a week or so beforehand of Harcourt’s 1970 paperback ed.; had they let me know I’d have suggested they offset the Meridian ed. rather than their own original but of course they used their own & retained errors. I didn’t know the hardbound ed. was ‘officially’ declared OP in 1976 but, as Devlin notes, ‘of course paperbound editions are in print.’ All this of course & as you surmise has got simply to do with their retaining the rights, the book virtually unattainable for many years (I think Koenig paid $25 for his) while ‘officially’ in print, & the slack taken up later by these paperbacks. As I recall, I knew nothing of the Avon deal till it had occurred (Harcourt not contractually obliged to consult me as per my old fashioned 1st novel contract), simply got ½ the $11 thousand they were paid by Avon when, 10 years ago? & not 1¢ since.
Regarding foreign editions: there was an agreement with Fred Warburg (Secker &) in 1953 or 4, who had been touted on it as the new Ulysses as his fatuous letters to me witness; however, seeing its initial reception here by such boobs as Granville Hicks, he hastily backed off with the excuse of being unable to find a printer in England who would do it because of the obscenity laws & wrote me a marvelously inane letter on the duties of the artist to ‘select’ his material, simply wanted it cut down to cut his costs & I said to hell with him. The Germans (Rowolt)(sp?) optioned it, ran through 2 translators who gave up, finally said they were starting afresh with the man who had translated Moby Dick into Ger & I never heard from them again. The French took some 9 years from their option date & finally, after an acrimonious exchange with Claude Gallimard, brought it out. Mondadori brought it out in 2 vols. & I suspect a rather hack translation though never checked carefully & don’t off hand recall the It.
title, something like la Pereze, the pilgrim or some such. It’s now being translated into Polish, no contract of course.
Incidentally, a story you might say you picked up by hearsay (not that is from me), I heard at the time that the man who was setting type for the book, a good Catholic, was enough dismayed at what he considered sacrilege & obscenity that he consulted his priest who told him to refuse to set it, the printers (Quinn & Boden, sp?) notified Harcourt accordingly but a good fellow there at Harcourt, Gerry & damned if I can remember his last name, told them to set it or it would be the last job they got from HB & so they did. Hard to imagine all that but recall these were the times when books were being banned in Boston (a distinction I frankly craved as a spur to sales elsewhere). (It wasn’t.)
To your points: yes I did tell Janet Halverson my idea for the jacket & she came through I think triumphantly (cf. the cover design for Harcourt’s paperback for trashy contrast). Of course obviously also I asked for her for the jacket for J R where again I think she did stunningly (this time her own design with no suggestion from me). I have no information on the BOMC ed. & the only thing I can think of is that they did bring one out when J R was published & its trade paperback on the front cover of their QPB monthly catalogue; BOMC may just have bought some warehoused copies from Harcourt God knows, I don’t think I ever had any accounting from Harcourt (or $) & gather neither book did too well for BOMC. And I’ve no way of knowing whether HB(J) ever did a 3rd hardcover printing, their OP in 1976 may simply have been the last of the 2nd hoarded in warehouses &, as above, dumped on BOMC: the dates would seem to correspond (J R pubd in 1975 & the Natl Book Award in spring ’76); & since Devlin’s net hardbound sales of 4722 copies is just 163 under the initial 4885 printing (could be those handed out for reviews, publicity &c), that whole 2nd printing of 1000 may have been dumped on BOMC & remaindered by them despite Devlin’s disclaimer. God knows what the price of the prepublication copies in black paper wrapper is now (I think there were 200 of them), last I heard was one of those Santa Barbara places asking $335. The usual writer’s complaint: at the 1955 publication I believe HB put 1 ad in a Thursday NYTimes, prompting a friend to observe that rather than being published the book had been privished.
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