B007RT1UH4 EBOK (59 page)

New York City

4 January 1955

Dear Doctor Oppenheimer.

I have already taken a greater liberty than this, asking your attention to my letter, in having called Harcourt, Brace & Co., who are publishing a long novel I have written, to ask that they send you a copy. You must receive mail of all sorts, crank notes and fan letters of every description, but few I should think of half a million words. And since I can also well imagine that you seldom if ever read novels, if only for not having the time, it is an added imposition to have sent you such a bulky one.

But for having read your recent address at Columbia’s anniversary, I should never have presumed to do so. But I was so
stricken
by the succinctness, and the use of the language, with which you stated the problems which it has taken me seven years to assemble and almost a thousand pages to present, that my first thought was to send you a copy. And I do submit this book to you with deepest respect. Because I believe that
The Recognitions
was written about “the massive character of the dissolution and corruption of authority, in belief, in ritual and in temporal order, . . .” about our histories and traditions as “both bonds and barriers among us,” and our art which “brings us together and sets us apart.” And if I may go on presuming to use your words, it is a novel in which I tried my prolonged best to show “the integrity of the intimate, the detailed, the true art, the integrity of craftsmanship and preservation of the familiar, of the humorous and the beautiful” standing in “massive contrast to the vastness of life, the greatness of the globe, the otherness of people, the otherness of ways, and the all-encompassing dark.”

The book is a novel about forgery. I know that if you do get into it, you will find boring passages, offensive incidents, and some pretty painful sophomorics, all these in my attempts to present “the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue” as I have seen them: I tried to present the shadowy struggle of a man surrounded by those who have “dissolved in a universal confusion,” those who “know nothing and love nothing.”

However you feel about the book, please allow my most humble congratulations on your address which provoked my taking the liberty of sending it to you, and in expression of my deepest admiration for men like yourself in the world you described.

To John Napper

[
Napper wrote to say how much he enjoyed R, which was officially published on 10 March 1955. For a complete, inquisitorial account of the book-review industry’s negative response to WG’s first novel, see Jack Green’s
Fire the Bastards!
(Dalkey Archive, 1992). In this letter WG also reveals his engagement to Pat Black.
]

New York City

2 March 1955

dear John,

Enough of the foolishness has started to give some idea of what things may be like; and so you may, or possibly you can’t really imagine how much your congratulatory words mean, how deeply appreciated since I realise I was getting into your world, I mean painting; while mine it begins to appear is writing. But friendship (and chapter I at Chantry Mill) all aside, imagine how much more your understanding appreciation means than what is in prospect
here
. I think I meant it when Wyatt says that the artist is the shambles of his work, but here it’s those shambles they want to devour. One (women’s of course) magasine which considered publishing one chapter finally demurred (in frightened awe) but wanted my “picture” and what of my life I c
^d
spare: if you are a writer, they don’t want to buy and print y
^r
writing, but rather a picture and what you eat for breakfast, &c. But then good God! that’s what the book’s about—It’s difficult not to strike a pose, for being “eccentric” enough to try to get across that: What do they want of the man that they didn’t find in the work?—without insulting them all. Already before the thing is even out (10 March) the requests for radio appearance! And
no
is the only thing there. I’ve seen a couple of advance reviews, they promise to be good, qualified that is by uncertainty, fear of being committed. (I think so far
Time
magasine takes the prize for double-talk, and such gems of idiocy as finding Mr Pivner an attempt to re-do Joyce’s Bloom! I knew this sort of thing would happen but Lord! it does stop me in my tracks when I actually see it in print). But this is enough of all this for the moment; I think before the month is out there will be some real monkey business, which I’ll report.

Meanwhile like Manto I wait, time circles me; and since I’ve done nothing all winter but run into debt, I might as well hang on and see what the next few weeks bring in the way of “opportunity”. Meanwhile (
very confidentially to you and Pauline
) managing to get married and looking forward to being a “real” father by fall (early fall). Well here we are; and you may see scarcely in position to pick up and go [to] Africa (unless Sidi-bel-Abbès). At the moment cleaning up and hunting a clean shirt to lunch with Fred Warburg, which I’ll be doing about the time you read this,

to you and Pauline and best wishes and love,

W.

WG at the time of the publication of
The Recognitions
. “For some crotchety reason there was no picture of the author looking pensive sucking a pipe, sans gêne with a cigarette, sang-froid with no necktie, plastered across the back” (R 936). Photo by Martin Dworkin.

Wyatt [...] shambles of his work: “—this passion for wanting to meet the latest poet, shake hands with the latest novelist, get hold of the latest painter, devour . . . what is it?” Wyatt asks his wife Esther. “—What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology” (95–96). WG will cite this passage often in future letters and interviews.

Time
: Theodore E. Kalem’s anonymous review appeared in the 14 March issue (112, 114).

Manto: a quotation from Goethe’s
Faust
; see note to the May 1948 letter to Edith Gaddis.

To Miss Britton

[
A television executive, unidentified. The week
R
was published, WG was pitching projects like the one below and an article on the growing popularity of miniature golf to
Sports Illustrated
, which was rejected.
]

New York City

7 March 1955

Dear Miss Britton,

Here enclosed is the three-act outline of Conrad’s book
The End of the Tether
. I am delighted that you are interested in it, and that it is available for television; because frankly I’m a good deal more excited about it now, having gone through it in some detail doing this synopsis, than I was when I sent you the straight outline. Excited about it in its own great right; and I had not really realised that Conrad’s dialogue is so excellent that it will scarcely need (or bear) tampering with. And perhaps I shouldn’t have emphasized ‘tragedy’; I think you’ll find it here, as it is indeed in the original, pre-eminently a story of devotion and heroism, one of the most distinguished I’ve ever come across.

Incidentally, do you know of an actor named, I believe, Robert Newton, and British, who played Long John Silver in some recent
Treasure Island
film? I’ve been obsessed with how well he could do the part here of Massey if he were available.

I appreciate your interest, and do hope that it is rewarded.

with good wishes,

William Gaddis

The End of the Tether
: a short novel published in 1902 about an aging sea captain who, in order to provide for his daughter, enters into a partnership with a character named Massey.

Robert Newton: British film and stage actor (1905–56). He played Long John Silver in Disney’s
Treasure Island
(1950) and again in the Australian-made
Long John Silver
(1954).

To Rochelle Girson

[
In an article on
R
for the
Saturday Review
syndicate, Girson passed along rumors in “industry circles” that WG partly paid to have the novel published, then “slyly” wondered if he were rich. See
Fire the Bastards
, 20–21.
]

25 March 1955

Miss Gerson [
sic
]:

It would be a waste of energy on my part to upbraid reviewers who find fault with my recent book: they have, after all, done their best with the published work itself, and there is the book to confirm or refute their attacks. Your wanton ‘personal’ approach, on the other hand offers no recourse to its shoddy falsity. If I have seemed reticent in giving out information about myself and my personal affairs, it was in hope of avoiding such absurd corruptions as yours, which was just sent me by an irritated relative, clipped from a local paper. Your perversion of what facts were given you (and those in the spirit of confidence) was as surprising as your invention of those that were not.

As for your imputations concerning one of the most respectable publishers in the country, as absurd to those who know Harcourt, Brace (or, more immediately, to those who know my own personal circumstances), as they are sinister to those who do not, I frankly do not understand your motive in attempting to raise such suspicions while pretending to allay them. If I thought you had personal inducements in this matter, I might think your method, for all its lack of originality today, quite clever; but the rest of your copy makes such a conclusion as untenable as your insistence on perverting my personal affairs is strange to me. Is there, here, again, some personal motive? If there is not, I do not understand your fraudulent advertisement of my manner of living; while yours becomes more embarrassingly and more pitifully apparent.