B007RT1UH4 EBOK

by Gaddis, William

  see you very soon, with much love

  Papa

  Deauville: prestigious seaside resort town in northwestern France.

  Esquire: a chart in the August issue depicting the “Literary Power Game.”

  Linda A: Asher, fiction editor at the New Yorker at the time, and a noted translator from the French.

  Schnabel [...] wait till you see the thing: William Gaddis (1987), an oil portrait with broken crockery by American artist Julian Schnabel (1951– ); see Hallowe’en 1991 for more on the painting, and see WG’s brief tribute to Schnabel in RSP (137–39).

  Elaine’s: famous Upper East Side restaurant where literary (and other) celebrities hung out.

  Träslott: “wooden castle,” an architectural style that resembles carpenter gothic. Translated by Caj Lundgren, Träslott was published by Legenda (Stockholm).

  Torsten: Torsten Wiesel (1924– ), Swedish-born corecipient of the Nobel Prize in physiology in 1981. He taught at Rockefeller University in the 1980s and later married Jean Stein.

  To Gregory Comnes

  [A professor of literature and philosophy (1948– ) at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida, who had sent WG the J R chapter of his doctoral thesis, eventually published in revised form as The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Novels of William Gaddis (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1994).]

  Wainscott, New York 11975

  29 September 1987

  Dear Gregory Comnes.

  I have just read your paper (Fragments of Redemption) again and find it quite extraordinary, certainly far more informed than all but perhaps 2 or three of the numerous dissertations &c I’ve seen. And whether the book deserves it or not I must finally admit that it does demand a careful reading (recalling a review by ‘the late’ John Gardner who read the passage on the unfinished work as invalid as evidence of “In all fairness (sic) Gaddis was apparently uneasy about bringing out J R.”, among many other misreadings.) Unfortunately but of course, many more will have read his words than yours.

  This is to say nothing of all you bring to it, some I must confess as surprise (& delight) to me. No, though the name is vaguely familiar, I do not recall to have ever read Walter Benjamin, for the most glaring such instance; & probably the better so, I should have got myself even more entangled but how profoundly intriguing these parallels are, if only they might illuminate those who seek and demand ‘influences’—I am constantly regaled with my influence on Pynchon & vice versa—unable, apparently, to accept the notion of 2 writers preoccupied with similar ideas quite independently. Just as, in the case of Agapē Agape, I recently came across what it might have become in the hands of Hugh Kenner’s The Counterfeiters and felt, well damn! that settles it, mine will never be done; though something still remains that drives me to tear out & save anything I come across on mechanization & the arts to add to the 30 year hoard. All of it relating, in that never to be finished work* & in fact to the finished work J R itself, to the epitaph** (p 724) when the ceiling has fallen in on the painting, —look! if you could have seen what I saw there! You seem to have done so, and a good deal more at that.***

  *Notwithstanding, I shall certainly look out for Benjamin’s essays you mention (Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The Destructive Character) adding a bit to the pain of work undone though, looking back, better for me to have worked it into a fiction than my (& Gibbs’) original intention.

  **cf The Recognitions’ epitaph in its last 2 lines.

  ***for a fleeting instance, the further explication of the prolonged E-flat opening Das Rheingold and its extension to Mozart & Freemasonry.

  (Though, to pick, Isadore Duncan (your p28) was to play on Isadora as a confused/confusing echo in the inarticulate reader’s mind, an insolent solacement in effect.

  thank you again and warm regards,

  William Gaddis

  Walter Benjamin: German philosopher-critic (1892–1940). WG eventually read Benjamin and cites him in AA.

  Agapē Agape: the book Jack Gibbs is writing in J R, not the novel WG eventually published.

  The Counterfeiters: subtitled An Historical Comedy (1968), a wide-ranging study of mechanization and the arts.

  Duncan [...] Isadora: American dancer (1878–1927).

  To Klaus Modick

  [German writer and translator (1951– ). With Martin Hielscher (1957– ) he translated CG as Die Erlöser (“The Redeemer,” Rowohlt, 1988) and with Marcus Ingendaay translated J R (Zweitausendeins, 1996), as well as a German edition of my Reader’s Guide (Zweitausendeins, 1998).]

  Wainscott NY 11975

  7 October 1987

  Dear Klaus Modick.

  Thank you for your letter of 29 September just received. By happy chance I had just spent the morning with your colleague in translating Carpenter’s Gothic, Martin Hielscher, here visiting the US. We discussed the problems of translation at length and I believe cleared up any remaining small points. A title, for example, must be in your & Rowolt’s hands as knowing what sounds provocative in German, though I think A Locked Room sounds like our Nancy Drew girl detective and Patchwork conveys little or nothing. Das Holzschloss does at least sound substantial.

  I appreciate the pains you have gone to to produce a faithful & careful translation, but the vagaries of the publishing world will always elude me. As I mentioned, the Swedish took exactly 1 year from contract to finished book, though I cannot judge the quality of the translation of course; on the other hand, I have just received the Spanish edition of The Recognitions (Los Reconocimientos), and read Spanish well enough (as well as being familiar with the text of course) to see that they have done a very creditable job of it. Thus why Rowolt cannot publish Carpenter’s Gothic before spring and possibly not until fall a year hence is to me one of publishing’s mysteries. In fact perhaps that is why sometimes smaller publishing firms are preferable to the elaborate complications and schedules of large firms like Rowolt.

  Incidentally, it would surprise me if Rowolt has the rights to either of my books, as you mention. I recall many years ago perhaps around 1962, they paid a small sum for an option on The Recognitions, subsequently 2 translators gave up on it & I was told they now had a 3rd who had ‘translated Moby Dick into German’ so were quite certain it would work out, & I never heard from them again. Of course that option has long since expired; and I do not recall them making any offer on J R. However I will ask my agent here to check on that & Rowolt might also want to check their files.

  Martin Hielscher was also kind enough to give me the copies of the magazine Das Schreibheft you speak of containing translations from The Recognitions. Of course this is pleasing and flattering & might even help to gain an audience for the book itself, though I don’t recall them having any permission or making any payment as is the custom here.

  My plans for Berlin are unclear until I have them from the people there, an Alice Franck and Renate Selmer who are with the 750th BERLIN Program, I believe it runs 5–14 November. I may make a stop for a reading at Bonn but plan then to go straight to Paris for a few days and then home. So I may never meet you until your visit to the US whenever that occurs.

  with best regards

  William Gaddis

  Das Holzschloss: like the Swedish Träslott, literally “wooden castle.”

  Das Schreibheft: the final six pages of R were published in number 29 of this German literary journal as “Wiedererkennen,” translated by Bernd Klähn

  750th BERLIN Program: 1987 saw numerous celebrations and events hosted in Berlin to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the city’s founding.

  WG, Donald Barthelme, and Walter Abish, West Berlin, November 1987.

  To Sarah Gaddis

  [Wainscott, NY]

  21 December ’87

  Dear Sarah,

  for the number of times I think of you during the day and days I am appalled at how long it has been since I’ve written, even a note. Not as though I’ve been consumed at the typewriter snapping out page 104, 206, even 31 . . .
quite the opposite: days spent simply staring at this pile of books, notes, brilliant insights, & finally getting nothing down on paper even a note to you let alone whoever else. It is all simply this phase you have tasted & I blithely say —It’ll pass, don’t worry . . . until it happens to me again. That’s what is curious, it’s always as though it had never happened before.

  My timing has come off exactly as planned: preparing the ground with the piece in the New Yorker, Louis A’s piece in the NYT magazine, interview any day now in the Paris Review and a 30 or so page draft opening of the novel with a couple of pages ‘outline’ submitted to Viking to clear their option, they make an offer, we call it too low and now—this very day in fact—Candida is sending it out to other publishers who are breathing hard, Elis. Sifton & Aaron Asher in the lead but others too so that in the next few weeks there will be the contract & a substantial advance & I wake at night—that 3 o’clock in the morning business—with the What do you think you’re doing! age 65 starting the whole mad thing over again? with this trash heap of notes & paper? Looking at the whole project with ‘fear and loathing’ . . . Or may it be that I need that kind of pressure, the money drifting away & the kindly editor asking How is it coming along? It’s like those fellows running for president, all the energy enthusiasm Brilliant Ideas &c go into the campaign & then inevitably one of them’s elected sitting there thinking Holy Jeez what have I done! what do I do now? Or thinking: I’ve done it, haven’t I? Got a nicely high reputation for my work, why threaten it with this mess . . . not like the old days either when I had to have that $200. Why not just, Come on old boy, relax, you’ve done your work, go to parties, get on the lecture circuit, go to conferences, Berlin, Moscow, get your picture in the papers, be seen in Vanity Fair with the luminaries . . . but it simply doesn’t work that way.

  No, this isn’t a complaint, all just as I’ve repeated to you (from Arthur Miller), It comes with the territory. I wish I had those lines of Eliot’s about every start is a new beginning, “a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment, always deteriorating . . .” And so I can only think that there is something to the whole idea of the necessity for the artist to put himself in peril, & that that is what provides the energy for the work, as opposed say to the steady drone of a James Mitchner (who gave Swarthmore a cool million) but God knows, we shouldn’t read the apparent smugness of others for granted, he may have some perilous moments too.

  So here we are. A new year fairly packed with perils we have arranged ourselves—and of course Matthew is in here too!—which will call on us for the best we’ve got; and with all the evidence I have to believe we wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, you & he both know of my support in your perils every step of the way, but you may not be so aware of the strength you give to me and how fortunate I count myself for having it, having you both there and for the people you’ve become.

  my love always,

  Papa

  ‘fear and loathing’: a phrase popularized by Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) from Kierkegaard’s book Fear and Trembling (1843), alluding to the exhortation “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

  those lines of Eliot: from “East Coker”; see 27 December 1948 for the complete passage.

  To James Cappio

  [James Cappio (1953– ) was a law clerk at the time to Chief Judge Charles L. Brieant, and later practiced law at Cahill Gordon & Reindel and the New York Insurance Department Liquidation Bureau before leaving for Canada, where he became a legal editor. He sent WG an opinion he had ghostwritten for Judge Brieant that cites a passage from J R (201.20–33); see Carl Marks & Co., Inc v USSR 665 F.Supp 323 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), at 324–25. WG enclosed in the following letter a copy of the New Yorker version of “Szyrk v. Village of Tatamount et al.” (12 October 1987), adding by hand: “I should note that Judge Crease is about 90 years old—and have begun to suspect that his opinions are written by his law clerk who is (cf. Wagner in Goethe’s Faust) about as diligent & ill-informed as I am.”]

  235 East 73 Street

  New York, New York 10021

  10 January 1988

  Dear Jim Cappio.

  What a marvelous birthday gift! Enshrined in an Opinion (& clearly a significant & important one at that) by Brieant CJ—why, it’s infinitely more gratifying than, say, a PEN/Faulkner Award (where I was a runner-up), something about having a place in the World as opposed to self-congratulatory literarydom.

  You will see from the attached (I gather you hadn’t come across it) that my remarks are not at all fatuous: at this late date I have got myself hopelessly enthralled by the law, having read Cardozo’s classic Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co. a year or 2 ago & been seduced by a world wherein “reality may not exist at all except in the words in which it presents itself” (Ziff L., Literary Democracy 294, Dallas 1982) & now hopelessly out of my depth in gifts of Prosser & the 82 vol. American Jurisprudence 2d for a novel in the form of a network of lawsuits of every variety, & of which this Szyrk Opinion is the first. (I should note that it will be reversed on appeal & am now trying to dig up the grounds, which I’m sure are plentiful.)

  And so of course I would enjoy meeting & thanking you & falling deeper into this morass. We have just come in from the country & I’m trying to get myself & my ‘work’ into some kind of order but if you’ll call when it suits you we can work something out. And yes I do know John Holdridge, have not seen him for some time but he’s a good pal of my son from whom I have rousing reports, he is quite a fellow & really out there on the barricades. Finally I can even claim to have encountered Judge Motley, years ago as a member of a US Court jury pool where the lawyers for both sides promptly rejected me but I was greatly impressed by her.

  If it is seemly to do so, & assuming Judge Brieant is still about & you see him, do tell him of my great pleasure, many many thanks for your efforts & for your letter.

  Yours,

  W. Gaddis

  Literary Democracy: a book by Larzer Ziff (1982), quoted on p. 30 of FHO. Regarding Melville’s Confidence-Man, Ziff writes: “His theme drives toward pure wordplay; reality may not exist at all except in the words in which it presents itself.”

  John Holdridge: a lawyer known for his active opposition to capital punishment.

  Judge Motley: Constance Baker Motley (1921–2005), African American activist, lawyer, judge, and politician. She hired Cappio as a law clerk.

  To Sarah Gaddis

  23 Jan. 88

  Dear Sarah.

  Here is my annual letter. Or so it is beginning to seem, a year between them: I realize how long it is since you moved, & how few time(s) I’ve addressed you at rue tickeytun, to count my letters on the finger of one hand. Of course I could say “I’ve been waiting for these infernal pen refills to find their way from Germany to Parsippany NJ” to here & only hope they fit and work. Tiffany must have a store in Paris? If these don’t work I would march right in there and make a scene (like the Board member who quit over them).

  Or I could say, “I’ve been waiting for these Paris Review people to send their new issue with the interview” which is, in part, true. It does just seem damned chatty doesn’t it. I mean I’ve by now read a number of critical pieces and dissertations on my work which I find far more filled with insight, wit, clear thinking and interesting connections than this folderol which almost seems to trivialize the work; but it scarcely matters. The purpose after all was simply to do one fairly long interview in a ‘serious’ place & get it out of the way so that when people come with this same threat I can simply direct them to this one without appearing to be some reclusive nut, to say this one pretty much covers all I’ve got to say about my work though of course that is not true either, that’s the problem with interviews, those 2nd thoughts (as, p. 59, What moved you to write J R? why didn’t I say a large part of energy came from revenge on that horrid town that Massapequa became, the vandalism that was really traumatic &c.) But that’s the advantage of a fiction, that one can go back and ins
ert, clarify, rewrite, until it’s whole.

  Which is what I’m rather stumblingly doing now: folders with ribbons & ribbons of paper laying out the step by step of Oscar’s car accident insurance, his copyright lawsuit, Lily’s divorce, her malpractice suit, a dozen suits springing from the ill fated outdoor sculpture Cyclone 7, & many many more. I am rather aghast at what I’ve let myself in for in areas where I am marvelously ignorant. Most of my contemporaries seem to be fiddling around publishing reminiscences about what an interesting fellow I was at fifteen, how I Became a Writer &c. Yawn. All this trepidation obviously over having pretty much got (though I haven’t yet signed) what I wanted in this contract with S&S, everyone saying great, wonderful, me saying my God what have I done!

  So I’ve been trying to face the health area seriously, had a thorough physical examination where obviously the effects of the smoking show (though no scary spot on the lung &c). For this past week I’ve been trying to prove to all concerned, MHG Muriel you me &c that we aren’t dealing with an alcoholic, have had only 1 or 2 drinks daily (+ a glass of wine once or 2ce when guests at dinner), I certainly would enjoy a 3rd or 4th as of yore but do not feel driven to it or the need to go to some ‘drying out’ place. No, the real problem & battle is the tobacco, one more try this week going to see a hypnotist & if that doesn’t work I will take more extreme measures. Though MHG would like to see the more extreme measures right now he at least sees me making serious efforts along these lines for I think the first time, which I think gives him better spirits, planning to have him & some of his rowdy friends (Jeff, Jack &c) in on the 28th.* No words of course for all that your and his love and concern have done and are doing in all this so I’m working on the deeds.