with much love
Papa
*no, now he says one of their 50¢ Indian restaurants
vandalism: WG’s studio next to his mother’s Massapequa house was vandalized on 8 November 1960 by some teenagers, an event dramatized in J R (137–43).
Jeff, Jack: Jeff and John Holdridge (mentioned in the previous letter).
To Mary McCarthy
6 February 1988
Dear Mary.
Many thanks for your note and enclosure. As I get older I must say I recall more frequently my mother’s Panglossian view that ‘everything happens for the best’ (she also counseled me to always remember that there is more stupidity than there is malice in the world) —here demonstrated once again. I too found our ‘translator’ rather painfully self important, & was less surprised than annoyed when he quit on Carpenter’s Gothic to work in films where he saw more money thereby delaying publication with the search for a new translator. However during that delay Ivan Nabokov fled Albin Michel for, is it Presses de la Cité (more money) where he’s taking the book on condition he also signs up J R. I’d liked the girl Nina Salter at A-M- for her straightforwardness (& a stunning lunch at the Closerie des Lilas) but could not deprive J R the opportunity to speak french.
Meanwhile I am pressing my luck here signing up for another (& I trust mercifully last) novel, after many gyrations, with Simon & Schuster, now all that’s left to do is to sit down & write it. [...]
best wishes from us both to you and Jim,
Willie
‘translator’: unidentified; the task was taken over by novelist Marc Cholodenko, who also did J R (Paris: Plon, 1993).
Ivan Nabokov: Ivan Nabokov (1932– ), younger cousin of the novelist, was at this time Editorial Director at Christian Bourgois éditeur. He had previously been Editorial Director for Foreign Literature at Editions Albin Michel, and subsequently held the same position at Editions Plon, where, under his Feux Croisés imprint, he also published French translations of J R and AA.
To Donald Oresman
Wainscott, New York 11975
16 June 1988
Dear Donald,
I haven’t thanked you or even acknowledged your earlier mailing, very aware time was passing but now quite embarrassed to see that it was a good month ago. Your brief succinct treatise on law & equity clears that up for me for the moment & appreciated accordingly as is all the Salinger material; & in fact it is your further good offer regarding complaint & answer in a case that accounts for my procrastination, thus:
In the central case in the novel, the main character has written an unproduced Civil War play and is suing a movie company; the issues are infringement and ‘fair use’. Since when I work I always need to know where I’m going, I decided to work out the Appeals Court decision (reversing the District Court) first, which won’t occur until about chapter VI, & then work toward it. This may not have been too wise: I am now flailing about among Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures (Learned Hand); Harold Lloyd Corp. v. Universal Pictures Co; Murray v. National Broadcasting Co.; & my correspondent (a young law clerk in the office of Constance Baker Motley) has even supplied Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd. The Hand material is marvelous & my case largely based on (lifted from) that. Then to go back to Chapter II & work toward it, involving the letters & private papers (Salinger) & the briefs &c where rather than content I will only need form (“As and For a First Cause of Action” kind of thing) which should not go on at too great lengths if I can only restrain myself, and for which I guess almost any such brief, complaint & answer &c will serve as a model. From the foregoing it’s apparent how I double even triple the amount of work for myself but at this point despair of starting out fresh.
Your last mailing, the Serra v. G.S.A. appeal, is a delight with such straight-face lines as the work now “coated with what the artist refers to as ‘a golden amber patina’ and what the sculpture’s critics refer to as ‘rust’.” And the nice twist on the First Amendment privilege as now belonging to the Government, all most useful plunder when I get back to Szyrk.
We go to Italy in August presumably to work on this at that Rockefeller Foundation compound at Bellagio, meanwhile plodding onward and when I have any fragment that looks half finished I’ll send it along for your amusement.
with best regards,
Bill Gaddis
Salinger material: author J. D. Salinger recently sued British author Ian Hamilton for unauthorized use of his letters in a forthcoming biography.
Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn [...] Murray v. National Broadcasting Co.: all cited on pp. 406–8 and 412–13 of FHO, where WG also quotes from Judge Hand’s Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation.
Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrissongs Music: ex-Beatle George Harrison was sued in 1970 for unconsciously adapting the melody of “He’s So Fine” for his song “My Sweet Lord.” WG didn’t use this material.
Serra v. G.S.A.: sculptor Richard Serra unsuccessfully sued the General Services Administration to prevent removal of his Tilted Arc (1981) from its site in Lower Manhattan.
To Don DeLillo
[Don DeLillo (1936– ), American novelist who in 1982 praised Gaddis in a New York Times profile “for extending the possibilities of the novel by taking huge risks and making great demands on readers” (October 10). DeLillo would later attend WG’s memorial service and contribute a brief tribute to the portfolio about WG that Conjunctions published in fall 2003.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
19 July 1988
Dear Don DeLillo.
Why in the world have I waited till the day your Libra gets its nihil obstat from Christopher Lemondrop to send you a note. It showed up in galleys in New York 2 or 3 months ago when things were ghastly (health) about the time I saw you, I looked into it then & should certainly have written without waiting to read it through because my response was immediate, it is a terrific job. I don’t know all your work & also hesitate to say to any writer whatever comparing one of his works to another but in this case must tell you I find it far far beyond White Noise. Obviously if we take our work seriously we do not try to clone one novel to its predecessor so comparisons are indeed odious, & equally obviously the constantly shattered & reknit & fragmented again style of this new book appeals to me rather more than the linear narrative, when it’s always 9 o’clock in the morning at 9 am & 3pm at 3 in the afternoon if you see what I mean; but the hard cover arrived here a couple of weeks ago & I’ve just read it & confirmed all my earlier impression, its marriage of style & content—that essential I used to bray about to ‘students’ in those grim days—is marvelously illustrated here I think & especially as it comes together at the end as we know it must, speaking of the ‘nonfiction’ novel if we must but why must we, except that concept does embrace the American writer’s historic obsession getting the facts down clear (from “tells me more about whales than I really want to know” to Dreiser tapemeasuring Clyde’s cell at Sing Sing, or Jack London’s “Give me the fact, man, the irrefragable fact!”) & again one marvels at what you’ve marshaled in this impressive piece of work. We’ll be out of the country for August but may hope to see you in town in the fall, meanwhile high marks.
best regards,
WG
Christopher Lemondrop: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt’s approving review of DeLillo’s ninth novel appeared in the 18 July 1988 issue of the New York Times.
“tells me more about whales [...]”: obviously a response to Moby-Dick (1851), but source unknown. WG notes Melville’s poor critical reception in FHO (39) and AA (55).
Dreiser tapemeasuring: near the completion of An American Tragedy (1925), Dreiser toured Sing Sing prison where Chester Gillette, a factory worker accused of murdering a young woman, and the model for his novel’s Clyde Griffiths, was interred.
Jack London’s [...] fact!: from The Iron Heel (1907). WG quotes the same line in J R (571).
To Donald Oresman
[Accompanied by Judge Bone’s opinion, disc
ussed in WG’s previous letter to Oresman, and eventually published on pp. 399–416 of FHO.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
4 August 1988
Dear Donald.
While I enclose this item for your passing entertainment, I believe it is a good deal less amusing than the earlier Szyrk Opinion. Satire as in that case assumes a certain distance, whereas here this Opinion is more imitation than parody. That is because not simply does it play an important part in the novel, but because the Civil War ‘play’ referred to does actually exist (and fragments of it will appear in the book) and as I lifted material from Judge Learned Hand both in quoting and bodily lifting from his Opinions, I found myself filling with righteous indignation as evidence of this piracy mounted and felt at times like I had seen the infringing movie. I am still paranoid enough about it to refrain showing this about too widely for fear that someone will steal the whole thing literally (as a war picture) lock, stock and barrel: as a lawyer in the novel tells its protagonist, —You can’t copyright the Civil War, Oscar . . . [FHO 17] At any rate this for the moment is simply a draft and I am back entangled with the novel’s text where Oscar is just getting together his Complaint.
I haven’t yet approached the book’s next legal confrontation, whether it will involve product liability (in Oscar’s being run over by his own car), or the reversal of his father Judge Crease’s opinion in Szyrk, or begin to face the Episcopal Church v. Pepsico(la) for all kinds of infringement (mainly I suppose the Lanham Act) exploiting the (subliminal) possibilities of the trade name’s anagram (Pepsicola/Episcopal) getting into quite deep waters, whether as Judge Pierre Leval suggests, the court’s consideration of the complaint constitutes in itself a forbidden ‘establishment’ of a religion, whether a religion can be guilty of laches &c; let alone digging up chores of the corporate origins of Pepsico (I wrote them once for a corporate history but got only some slick Annual Report material in return); let alone writing the whole thing and having Pepsico and the Episcopals sue me . . .
At any rate we are off for the Rockefeller’s 54 acre Study Center on Lake Como (Bellagio) to ponder these problems more deeply and hope to return in September with something to report.
with warmest regards,
Bill Gaddis
Lanham Act: 1946 law prohibiting trademark infringement, false advertising, etc.
laches: unreasonable delay seeking legal claims or damages.
To Gregory Comnes
[Comnes, his wife Judith Chambers (1943– ), also a critic, Joseph Tabbi, and I met with Gaddis for a few hours on the afternoon of 6 October 1988 at his Manhattan apartment. The Comneses brought him a T-shirt with the last line of J R printed on the front (“Hey? You listening?”). At this time Comnes was revising his dissertation and afterward asked some questions about influences, which elicited this postcard, without salutation.]
5 Nov. 88
To your queries:
I’d never come upon Walter Benjamin till this same query from 2 or 3 directions this past year or so, & at that point looked his work up.
Rilke no comment but I doubt of any greater concern than other liftings.
I have no notion of what GMHopkins ‘ideas’ are (the danger of ‘tracing down’ sources, ask Steven M.).
I enjoyed meeting you all & your wife’s charming letter, & for the shirt
Yours
W. Gaddis
To Joseph Tabbi
[Tabbi (1960– ) was revising a chapter on J R from his dissertation for publication in a journal and wrote asking about WG’s background reading in mechanization and communication (aside from Wiener’s Human Use of Human Beings). He also asked if he could send him the published essay.]
235 East 73rd str.
New York NY 10021
13 March 1989
Dear Joseph Tabbi.
To your queries of 28 February these unsatisfactory responses: Regarding Walter Benjamin, I have read nothing but his mechanization & the arts essay which was called to my attention only within the past 2 or 3 years & thus aeons after researches & readings on the subject for the player piano project (& J R); but found the parallels most striking.
Unfortunately I cannot go down the shelves of my library since it is almost entirely—or for those years quite entirely—locked away in a house I have rented out. Doubtless many of them would recall themselves to me on sight; they were very far ranging & having largely to do with organization (Hull House, crime, John D Rockefeller &c); Hollerith (sp?), early punched card innovations (from Jacquard(sp?)’s loom & Thos J Watson (pere) selling pianos off a truck; Plato’s warnings & exclusion of the artist; Babbage (sp?); v. Neumann(sp?)(which I found largely beyond my comprehension); & I cannot recall his wellknown name doing time/motion studies in the very early 1900s for industrial efficiency: all these flood back but there was far far more however all this was done before (though spilling a little over into) the composition of J R for the never to be completed Agapē Agape whose premises—measurement & quantification as indexing thence dictating order & performance (cf. McNamara’s Vietnam body counts)—have long since caught up with us. Alas it will never be realized but in massive notes & marked margins in the hands of some beleaguered doctoral candidate, since I am now immersed in an equally mad enterprise.
I cannot say how I became interested in player pianos, it all started about 1947 in hopes of a (rejected) piece for the New Yorker’s Onward & Upward with the Arts & gathered winds from there well into the 60s. RIP
I am of course always interested in seeing intelligent commentaries on J R.
Yours
William Gaddis
Hollerith: Herman Hollerith (1860–1929) is credited with developing the modern tabulating machine in the late nineteenth century.
Jacquard [...] Babbage: Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752–1834) invented a loom in which the hooks lifting the warp threads were controlled by cards perforated to a desired pattern, a technique adapted by later by Charles Babbage (1791–1871) for an early calculating machine.
Thos J Watson: Thomas John Watson, Sr. (1874–1956), founder of IBM.
v. Neumann: John von Neumann (1903–57), Hungarian-born American mathematician, noted for his work on the theory, design, and construction of computers.
wellknown name: E. L. Thorndike (see J R 581).
McNamara’s body counts: Robert McNamara (1916–2009), Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson.
To Rodger Cunningham
[A professor of English at Sue Bennett College in Kentucky. On the basis of his dissertation “Cabala to Entropy: Existentialist Attitudes and the Gnostic Vision in William Gaddis’s The Recognitions and Julio Cortazar’s Rayuela” (Indiana University, 1980), I had invited him to contribute to In Recognition of William Gaddis, but his submission was in the end rejected by Kuehl for reasons of inaccessibility and style. It was eventually published, in somewhat revised form, as “When You See Yourself: Gnostic Motifs and Their Transformation in The Recognitions,” Soundings (71.4 [Winter 1988]: 619–37), which he sent to WG.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
10 May 1989
Dear Rodger Cunningham.
Just a note to thank you for sending along your Gnostic observations in When You See Yourself. I do think it unfortunate that they didn’t see fit to include it in the In Recognitions &c volume, it is indeed light shed from another direction & doesn’t seem that ‘inaccessible’ (a word that is anathema here) &, as sometimes happens in these cases, I learn things I was unaware of.* The concluding analysis of the end of the book breaking off ‘where perfection is still possible’ is interesting, in the light of this recollection: I worked then (as now) with fairly detailed outline notes & had literally at hand notes for what would have been perhaps another 20 or 30 pages (not the discarded final chapter) when, sitting back one night to review my progress, read that last sentence (‘. . . though seldom played.’) & was stunned, elated, dismayed, by the realization of the fact that this was the end of the book, for all of its strivi
ngs &c it ended, that is to say it ended itself, right there. Anything further would have been the (to me inexcusable) author stepping in & elucidating & thus milking, painting the lily (gilding the gold), killing with kindness, destroying the whole thing & its intent & integrity (that pompous & essentially dishonest wretch “John Gard(i?)ner”’s whine regarding nihilism notwithstanding, cf. his ridiculous reading of J R (NY Rev. of Books), the plagiarist for ‘moral fiction’ indeed).
*The Hymn of the Pearl bird/letter parallel is especially remarkable. I very much liked & have enshrined your closing quote (Aunque sepa los caminos . . .),
Yours,
W. Gaddis
closing quote: the epigraph page in the bound galleys of FHO has “Aunque sepa los caminos / yo nunca llegaré a Cordoba” (Although I may know the roads / I will never arrive at Cordoba—quoted by Cunningham from R. D. Laing’s Facts of Life), but the published book has a remark by Henry David Thoreau instead (first used in R).
To Steven Moore
[My monograph William Gaddis was published by Twayne in May 1989, at which time I sent WG a copy. I also told him I had left New Jersey for Illinois to work for Dalkey Archive Press/ Review of Contemporary Fiction.]
Wainscott, New York 11975
14 June 1989
Dear Steven Moore.
Many thanks for sending me your book. On a brief examination it looks like it should put an end to such industry for a good while & the exhaustive range of references is quite impressive (though I confess I’ve made a number of starts at the classic seminal Melville’s Confidence Man & not progressed & must give it another try).
A bright moment addition to your charting of trivia last week when I was given a Governor’s Arts Award, aegis of NYS Council &c with a fancy turnout at the Metropolitan Mus. & fancy company (Miles Davis, Baryshnikov (sp?)) & I must say I was quite impressed by Mr Cuomo, quick, humour, energy, informed (but will it sell books?).
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