B007RT1UH4 EBOK (103 page)

Finally I should note that given uncertainties about the mail situation between us, and when you will receive this, we plan to leave New York at the end of the month for February and March in Mexico and that should you write me again late this month I might not have your letter till we return in early April.

very best wishes & regards

William Gaddis

conditions in Poland: martial law had been declared a month earlier. Mirkowicz hid Warsaw Solidarity leader Zbigniew Bujak in his apartment for a while.

Anders: as noted earlier, Jarosław Anders’s translation of a section of
J R
appeared in
Literatura na swiecie
.

To John R. Kuehl

[
The cover letter to Gaddis’s answers to the questions Kuehl and I had set for him. Disappointed at the brevity of the interview, we decided against including it in our book and offered it instead to John O’Brien for his special issue of the
Review of Contemporary Fiction
(vol. 2, no. 2
[
Summer 1982
]
), where it appears on pp. 4–6 (and currently at the Dalkey Archive website).
]

12 January 1982

Dear John Kuehl.

While not as detailed as you might wish, I trust that the enclosed will serve your purpose (taking you at your word to write ‘as little or as much’ &c). For your information (3,4) I have little enthusiasm right now for reviving the
Lampoon
period, didn’t know John Hawkes at college, believe I had an English survey course under Guerard but nothing beyond that. Items like (10) I’d leave to the critics, the kind of question for which I simply don’t have an offhand answer & the full & real one would just take too much entirely distracting time which is the problem with all these things, somebody else now after me wanting to publish an interview I gave to a Pole & it all just breaks up the day the mind & the work, however much I appreciate your interest & efforts.

Incidental to that, I wrote John O’Brien/
Review of Contemporary Fiction
that no, I didn’t want anything published from work in progress right now & no, I couldn’t send him a critical piece right now either. But I wouldn’t mind at all if you wanted to share any of the enclosed with him, quite up to you of course (I didn’t mention such a thing to him). We’re leaving in early February so I hope this wraps things up.

Yours,

W. Gaddis

(3,4): questions 3 and 4 concerned WG’s Harvard years: his work for the
Harvard Lampoon
, whether he met John Hawkes while there, and whether he studied under the prominent critic Albert Guerard (1914–2000).

(10): regarding the impact of
The Waste Land
on
R.

To John and Dorothy Sherry

[
From a popular tourist destination in central Mexico, accompanied by a newspaper article entitled “Older American Corps Draft Proposed.”
]

Terraplin, 5

San Miguel de Allende

Gto. [Guanajuato], Mexico

[February or March 1982]

NEWS FROM SANDY DELL: DRAFT DODGE HAVEN FOR THE ‘GOLDEN OLDIES’

Thanks for your cheerful letter—cheery that is in light of ice & elbows, oh dear. Joints are too tricky; as for the sling I had the 6 weeks of that as you recall & can sympathize with that outrage.

Tempting fate here, I’ve no misfortunes to report. It is in fact all just glowing. Caught up with your fast set—Kimballs &c—who send best wishes & we’ve had a little wine&dining back & forth. Marc & consort quite mellow which is another warm note here. And even a Peter Glenville evening, most most elegant, 2 tables of real swells & most of the conversation about murderers everyone seems to know (Claus & Sunny, Mrs Harris’ doctor &c)—no way in our modest digs we can repay in kind especially the touch of taking the resident live duck around to tell everyone goodnight . . .

I have a nice tan which is not what the Guggenheim folks had in mind financing; what they did have in mind proceeds at a more glacial pace than any in memory though I am at it every morning & most late afternoons. [...]

And so, as we prepare for our annual Sunday pm backyard cookout for some of the above mentioned, the sky takes on a real South Fork grey, the air chills, and we say goodbye from Sandy Dell. Our best to Carol & Lucia, that is a very hard one as we know from our own; but we’ll see you all soon, back to NY the 29th March & Wainscott soon thereafter. Tell Carol her Clinique benisons were received with squeals here.

love from us both & all

W—

Kimballs: unidentified.

Peter Glenville: English actor and director (1913–96), who owned a second home in San Miguel de Allende.

Claus & Sunny, Mrs Harris’s doctor: socialite Claus von Bülow was tried in 1982 for the attempted murder of his wife Sunny; his original conviction was later overturned. School principal Jean Harris made national headlines in 1980 for murdering her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, author of the best-selling
Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet
(1979).

Carol & Lucia: Carol Phillips (1922–2006), a former editor at
Vogue
, founded Clinique (skin-care products) in 1968. She was a close friend of WG until his death. Lucia Haile was her sister.

To John R. Kuehl

[
To thank WG for the interview, Kuehl and I sent him a coffee-table book on Flemish art. He sent me a letter almost identical to this one.
]

Wainscott NY 11975

20 April 1982

Dear John Kuehl.

Simply a note to thank you for the marvelously thoughtful gift from yourself & Steven Moore waiting for me when I returned from Mexico: those pictures do one after another of them recall an intense time in my life (What only youth could mount, and folly ride . . . if I have it about right).

I understand incidentally that, somehow subliminally, Avon has anticipated imminent activity by printing 5000 more of their bad fat little edition this time to go at $5.95. Perhaps some day my children will see that 1973 advance earned back.

Needless to say I look forward with some curiosity to the various fruits of all your efforts ahead,

best regards & thanks again

William Gaddis

from Mexico: at this point in his letter to me, WG added: “particularly when I’ve felt that you might have found me less responsive to all of both of your efforts on my work’s behalf than might have been hoped.”

What [...] ride: see note to 24 May 1980.