B007RT1UH4 EBOK (136 page)

At any rate I hope you will find the final product entertaining & perhaps even, as Conrad had it, with that little bit of truth we’d forgot to ask for.

Yours,

W. Gaddis

civilization and its discontents: title of a late work by Sigmund Freud (1930).

Conrad: from his preface to
The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’
(1897): “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you
see
. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.” WG quotes this passage in both
J R
(449) and
FHO
(363).

To David Ulansey

[
A professor of philosophy and religion. His book
The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World
was published by Oxford University Press in 1991. The letter is damaged; the brackets enclose tentative reconstructions.
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

30 July 1993

Dear David Ulansey,

most thoughtful of you to send me the copy of your
Mithraic Mysteries
which I’m now happily able to peruse at leisure rather than with the frantic research bent I’d have approached it those decades ago—1949 or so [having just] read Robert Graves’
White Goddess
&c, [living] in Spain & embarked on what became
The Recognitions
, went up to call on Graves in [Deya,] (Mallorca) hoping for help in finding some [alterna]tive religion which a despairing rock bound [Protestant] preacher might turn to, a futile mission in that regard (Graves was still immersed in god & goddess & we somehow got off into the Salem witch trials) but the great treat of time spent with the man himself who became in a way, through his youthful enthusiasm, the physical model for Reverend Gwyon. At any rate I finally stumbled on what I thought the perfect vehicle in Mithraism & what seemed mercifully small amount of information on it but sufficient to my purposes probably all for the best since had your work been available I’d probably have become submerged & perhaps never surfaced. Thank you again,

Yours,

W. Gaddis

To Pierre N. Leval

[
A jurist (1936– ) who had just been appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York, Connecticut, and Vermont), known in literary history for his role in J. D. Salinger’s case against Ian Hamilton’s use of quotations from the author’s letters in his forthcoming biography; Judge Leval found it within the bounds of fair use, but his decision was reversed on appeal, a finding WG supported. The “Beatrice” of the first sentence is unidentified.
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

10 August 1993

Dear Pierre,

discussing the unreliability of the
NY Times
with Beatrice here over dinner last night but this morning’s edition does confirm the fine news she’d already given us of your elevation to the US Court of Appeals (“considered just a question of time” says the paper, indeed!) but we are not so blasé and find it most exciting and send our warmest congratulations.

It is even more impressive in the light of my own district court judge who dies on the eve of his confirmation for a seat on the appeals court at age 97 (‘an interim appointment’) in the book which is at last finished and going into print under the title
A Frolic of His Own
(Joel v. Morrison, 1834, 6 C.&P. 501, 172 Eng.Rpt. 1338); and it would have been appropriate to thank you for your generous interest and support on some sort of acknowledgment page but then I thought better of it since it must inevitably contain some legal howlers that would hardly reflect well on your good offices.

I will hope for the chance to see you out here before the summer is over, meanwhile Muriel sends her love and best wishes to you both and again, congratulations.

Bill

To Sarah Gaddis

14 August ’93

Dear Sarah,

I have your letter & I know you are discouraged, have known it of course for this long time & know it all well because as you know I’ve been there myself—right from our start really from just the time you were born, living till then with and for this Great Book I was writing, had written, saw it drop like a shot & started a new life ‘raising a family’; 2 years writing a long play & saw it as hopeless; 7 years writing another Great Book & saw it drop like a shot . . . & another marriage with it . . . easy enough to say, the 2 books as ‘classics’, that it was all worth it but I certainly didn’t know that at the time—& with Eliot writing 50 years ago ‘Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure . . . and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious’ and that was 50 years ago, the times are certainly far less promising now for publishing good work or making good movies with MHG in facing the same vast tide of trash overwhelming all & everyplace, publisher or film studio, interested only in the ‘bottom line’ including my own Simon & Schuster I just thank heaven I got the book finished & got the advance when I could, all spent now but I could hardly ask for a deal like that again & may even sell a few copies.

All of which isn’t really what all this is about anyway, it’s more about stopping & regrouping rather than ‘giving up’ as you say, giving up hopes & illusions perhaps but not the thing itself to ‘always do it and be drawn to it’ as you say again but, again as I’ve done more than once, to know when the time comes to give it a rest & turn one’s efforts & energies elsewhere when one’s own work done under conditions of desperation cannot be as good as it should be & eventually will be. I must say the whole area of foundation work does seem more suitable to you than anything I’ve ever heard & I should think your resume sounds made for it. The Lannan people I’ve talked with (notably Patrick himself) sound extraordinarily cool civilized throughtful & steady calm in this chaotic corner (the arts) of this chaotic world & these chaotic times we live in & that any help they can give you sincere & real & to your credit seeing things in you that perhaps you’ve somewhat lost track of & I’m glad you’re pursuing it & giving it a chance out there [Los Angeles] before you give up on the place itself, a little more time for it before you think of another major move. I must quickly make a minor one (to the post office) & will send you word of the nutty adventures at this end when I have it probably next week or so, wait & pray.

much love always

Papa

Eliot [...] unpropitious: from part 5 of “East Coker.”

To Judith Gaddis

[
Enclosed in a copy of
Flaubert–Sand: The Correspondence
(Knopf, 1993).
]

[late August 1993]

Dear Judith,

I’d been reading this back in last rather grim winter & since your letter in the spring mentioning your imminent trip to France and Mme Sand’s environs had meant to send it along before now, suddenly seeing that September when you plan to go is only days away. It is certainly one of the more touching friendships spawned by literature & its discontents & clearly I felt more than a little kinship with Flaubert though here of course the 17year age difference is reversed & it’s she who has the children & he the mother . . .

I look at the book I’ve just finished & wonder if it has any relation to life as we’ve lived & known it (though I’m sure the reviewers will straighten me out on that when it finally appears around the end of the year) . . . certainly it embraces little of the generous warmth of this letter of yours; & in a way the only real mirrors I have are Sarah & Matthew who are neither of them having an especially smooth or easy or happy time of it. It’s all rather like the epigraph I’d chosen (but have since replaced) for this new novel: aunque sepa los caminos, yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba—in spite of knowing all the roads, I will never get to Cordoba.

I probably exaggerated the hospital episodes from my own apprehensions & communicated elsewhere what Modern Medicine regards as quite routine & proved to be no more than thoroughly unpleasant discomfort, plumbing repairs in a word, but I have deeply felt your wonderfully generous love & concern & so we go forward counting our blessings as it were, I hope your France trip is a marvelous one,