B007RT1UH4 EBOK (142 page)

Feb. 17’95

“Words ruin one’s thoughts, paper makes them ridiculous, and even while one is still glad to get something ruined and something ridiculous down on paper, one’s memory manages to lose hold of even this ruined and ridiculous something. Paper can turn an enormity into a triviality, an absurdity. If you look at it this way, then whatever appears in the world, by way of the spiritual world so to speak, is always a ruined thing, a ridiculous thing, which means that everything in this world is ridiculous and ruined. Words were made to demean thought, he would even go so far as to state that words exist in order to abolish thought . . . In any case, words were bringing everything down, Konrad said. Depression derives from words, nothing else . . . It was comforting, one of those rare times when one feels that everything is possible again, Konrad is supposed to have said to Fro. Suddenly everything . . .

—Thomas Bernhard,
The Lime Works

. . . is sad, Konrad said to Fro, that was not my word, Konrad said, it was not my word but it was the perfect word, it was the word that took in everything, the whole past present even perhaps the future while looking for the words to forestall that future because none of this was new, it had been going on for months, even years, even all the years since the dreadful third party came into the picture to help, I want you to help me with her the dreadful third party said gradually shifting the burden over months and finally years having to explain, having to account, being called to account Konrad told Fro, but every explanation or rather every attempt at explanation only demanded further explanation which was disregarded, every appeal was disregarded, shrugged off by the dreadful third party, the last thing I ever want to do is hurt her I told Fro, hurting her is absolutely the last thing I want to do so that finally it seems (I am told) all I do whatever I do or say hurts her until I hardly know what I am saying (or doing) which is the last thing I want to do (or say) because the next to the last thing I want to do is to enrage her but as the years go by and turn into months and finally the months turn into weeks everything I do or say seems to eventually enrage her I tell Fro, I’m going to run down and get the newspaper I’ll be back in a minute in my coat, standing there in my coat she is suddenly enraged because I thought there would be an interview with me in the newspaper (of course there wasn’t I tell Fro), none of my small triumphs seem to please her when I had thought they would please her when what I thought would please her is usually met with silence or even derision or even what seems like contempt because it means that I have put other obligations first, that is what hurts her and angers her, wouldn’t any woman feel that way I ask Fro? Is there anything surprising about
that
? That I put other obligations or what I think are obligations before my obligations to her, work obligations social obligations (contracts) the house obligations to her house here but she is not the house she is not talking about the house the house has nothing to do with her so that every attempt at explanation demands further explanation, with Q & A with a siege a veritable siege of Q & A living under siege at every encounter overflowing with conditions ultimatums assignments all totally unpredictable because the only thing that is predictable is its unpredictability overflowing with evidence of commission and omission which are always my sins of commission and omission I tell Fro, thoughtlessness carelessness memory lapses for insignificant moments or what I thought were insignificant moments become momentous events harbouring secrets which would only complicate things and which always complicate things on trial being on trial when One is not aware of being on trial because one is always on trial and any gesture of autonomy even the simplest gesture or the most complicated one becomes an evasion of control, or being controlled leading to assignments ultimatums conditions, there must be no conditions Eric is supposed to have said, I tell Fro, he (Eric) is a doctor and not only a doctor but a serious person making the statement “there must be no conditions” looking for relief, looking for blessed relief in the morning paper which may explain everything I tell Fro, here is a headline in the morning paper MEN AND WOMEN USE BRAIN DIFFERENTLY, STUDY DISCOVERS (“Using a powerful new method for glimpsing the brain in action”) which may explain everything . . .

third party: the psychoanalyst WG mentions in his letter of 4 January 1993.

Eric: unidentified.

headline in the morning paper: an article by Gina Kolata in the 16 February 1995 issue of the
New York Times.

To Candida Donadio

[
Some time after April 1995, WG moved to a small house in East Hampton, where he lived for the rest of his life.
]

[#1 Boat Yard Road

East Hampton, NY 11937]

10 August (full moon, watch out!) 1995

Dear Candida,

so these are the Golden Years! Most reading seems to be obituaries, Elkin, Friedrich, Bazelon, most social events wakes, most news pain & abandonment still the sun comes up in the morning & goes down at night. I am quietly holed up in my 4 room house out here by an East Hampton boatyard (Muriel reels between Wainscott & NY) each day finding a new way to exercise my bad judgment: the latest was saying Yes to a request from the Natl Endowment for the Arts to serve on a ‘panel’ for fiction grants which means reading 275 x 30pp (= 8250 pages) of 98% hopeless MSS + writing a brief commentary for each, why why why did I do it!

Mainly though preoccupied with ‘getting my affairs in order’, while I try to figure out where my ‘career’ goes from here, meanwhile trying to corner what assets I have so the kids can make sense of things when the time comes. The past 4months entangled with selling the house in Piermont with every possible hitch, not least will be paying something like 41% IRS/NYS taxes on the sale; my other tangible asset being the boxes & boxes of my socalled ‘archive’ which we’ve talked of my selling for years now the time seems to have come. MSS, notes, galleys, correspondence &c and then this occurred to me: to complete it, what of our correspondence over the years, decades, from my letters to you over outrage with the Jovanovichs & Gottleibs of this world on & on & on (I’ve most I think of yours to me), are these packed away in some sort of dead file and could I ask for them back? They would fill out the endless ups & downs of this writer’s life & provide such a terrific record of the battlefield, could you let me know?

I think of you & yours often enough & painfully, have reports from your office that things are going along ‘as well as can be expected’ as they say, my own discomfirts pale beside yours of course, the sciatica gone I think & in its wake a ‘colonoscopy’ & now they would like to do a stomach-oscopy, & wondering what/how your plans are taking shape & by now how real any of it really is, do write or call & let me know.

love

Willie

obituaries: Stanley Elkin died in May 1995, Otto Friedrich a month earlier, and composer Irwin Bazelon on 2 August 1995.

To Jeff Bursey

[
The Canadian novelist and literary critic (1963– ) had sent a letter to the editor of the
New York Times Book Review
protesting Columbia professor and novelist
Robert Towers’
s review of
FHO
(9 January 1994, 1, 22), which was not printed. A year and a half later—by which time Towers had died—Bursey sent his letter to WG.
]

16 Sept ’95

dear Jeff Bursey,

thanks for your letter to the
Times
book review; it certainly won’t change things but they do need to be
reminded
. . .

The problem with academic reviewers like Towers (especially those in the modest/failed novelist category who ‘teach’) seems consistently to be (as Christina remarks [
FHO
11]) being taken seriously, hosannas for Melville (or on whomever they wrote their dissertation) but ponderous damns with faint praise for unruly contemporaries: Tom Clancy, anyone?

best regards,

W. Gaddis

Tom Clancy: best-selling novelist (1947– ) of techno-military thrillers.

To Judith Gaddis

East Hampton, NY 11937

29 Nov. ’95

dear Judith,

well! as my grandmother used to say, “one fire = 3 moves” & that is certainly the case with Piermont (the moves I mean) & what has disappeared over these 40 years, Massapequa, Saltaire, Piermont . . . usually only myelf to blame especially in the last case, people who’ve had a fire say that for years afterward they keep abruptly missing things: start with the attic in Piermont where I went with Matthew & a sturdy young man with a van (if you remember our van ride getting lost from my mother’s 19th str.), some things came down I’d forgotten (Chinese dolls) but where,
where
an original Lionel train set (probably worth some $900 now), I can
see
it where I’d put it, but no; painfully, that wonderful balloon picture I sought specifically, instead only the big phlox painting from grandmother house in Woodstock; of the 2 stove plant lithographs of Napper that hung in the guest room, only one; &c &c —could one of my awful string of tenants have climbed through the ceiling for them? Madness. [...] Records? God knows. An original roll of sheets from 1st printing of
The Recognitions
? ditto; a filing cabinet (next to last tenants)? same. Afghan throws & quilts by my grandmother’s hands? Well maybe, maybe those or some of those are with Sarah’s things in storage in Princeton since
her
divorce 100yrs ago. And the Roliecord camera I carefully hid somewhere in the house & never saw again. The mulberry tree was finally cut down, greatly overgrown & dropping its berries ankle deep.