B007RT1UH4 EBOK (77 page)

To John Leverence

[
A graduate student at Bowling Green State University who was working on an essay on
R
, eventually published as “Gaddis Anagnorisis” (
Itinerary
, Summer 1977; rpt. in
In Recognition of William Gaddis
). After teaching at California State University at Long Beach, Leverence (1946– ) became the producer of the annual Emmy Awards.
]

Piermont NY 10968

19 August 73

Dear Mr Leverence.

Although I have been gratefully aware of Eugene McNamara’s interest in
The Recognitions
and I think had brief correspondence with him some years ago about it, I don’t recall the passage you quote from his
Queen’s Quarterly
piece and frankly cannot then or now imagine an ‘almost abject apology’ of any sort issuing from the book’s publisher.

Despite the attractive (I hesitate to say characteristic) conspiratorial flavour to this report of Fr Flood, whoever he may be or have been, my own far more mundane recollection of the book’s being ‘mysteriously withdrawn from the shelves’ is that a good portion of the rather modest first edition was simply remaindered—dumped at ‘below cost’—a year or so after publication, earning me, if not royalties, perhaps a wider readership, and the somewhat chill pleasure of seeing it quoted now at $22.50. Whether that remaindering reflected the rather substantial management and editorial changes at Harcourt Brace about the time the book was published is matter for speculation. They have recently reissued it in their paperback ‘Harvest’ series with what I find a singularly unattractive cover at $4.95 which—as Fred Allen said when New York’s subway fare went from 5¢ to 10—should ‘keep the riff-raff out’.

The book did have another epiphany about 1962 in a paperback issued by Meridian which carried a good many corrections of the meticulous sort you query in ‘Epiclantos’, largely through the diligent good offices of Jack Green, though whether this particular correction, if it is such, was made I don’t know and haven’t a copy to check; unfortunately the ‘Harvest’ reissue, of which I was unaware till its appearance, remains uncorrected, since it was apparently simply photo-offset from their own earlier edition.

Catharine Carver is I believe a good deal happier at Oxford University Press in London.

Yours,

William Gaddis

Eugene McNamara: this Canadian critic (1930– ) included WG in his “The Post-Modern American Novel,”
Queen’s Quarterly 69
(Summer 1962): 265–75.

Fr Flood: unidentified.

Fred Allen: American humorist and radio personality (1894–1956).

Epiclantos: on p. 10 of
R
, the monk Fr. Eulalio “was surnamed Epiclantos, ‘weeping so much’”;

Leverence pointed out this is a typo for “Epiclautos,” but WG neglected to correct it in later editions of
R.

To Matthew Gaddis

Piermont, NY

29 December 73

Dear Matthew,

I don’t know whether you need this English course list or not but am returning it with really great regret that in the Christmas confusion we didn’t spend time going over it together, though I gather you’d already chosen Modern Poetry (though whether because of or in spite of A. being in the class I’m not sure: the former might be a rather shaky basis for academic selections). I’m sure you will get a kick out of AE Houseman, who identifies with Shropshire & you may think of J Napper as a current native there, and whose verse is filled with images I am sure will be very familiar to you in terms of “carried half way home or near pints and quarts of Ludlow beer” (see pages 88–9, 73) from your recent trip doing just that . . .
also
Houseman is quite filled with rather soured images on Young Love which may come in handy sooner or later (see poems pages 31, 42,
26
) and discouragement and futility (pages 110, 131, 109, 197, 25) in fact I just had an idea, as my birthday present I have just called and am getting hold of a copy (just “sent” Judith to Pickwick for it while I finish this letter) and enclose it here to get you off to a head start. You may find it all a bit too neat (Houseman’s verse) and not ‘up to’ Dylan, but I guarantee if you read a little you will want more . . . (“Shoulder the sky, my lad, and pass the can” (of ale)). (These are lines I recall from 30 years ago; and I’m sure I’ve quoted to you that parody of Houseman somebody wrote (see poems page 68, 66) which went, in part: “If your throat is slit, Slit your girl’s and swing for it; For bacon’s not the only thing That’s cured by hanging on a string . . .” last lines I think are “Lads whose work is still to do Will whet their knives and think of you.” (You might spring those lines on Ms Averill to get things off to a rousing start.)

Enough Houseman; right now I haven’t much comment on the others but if you get into Yeats and Eliot you are certainly in good hands. (Speaking of Creeley though I remember him one night in my room in Adams House bloody head in hands having just turned his mother’s car over in a ditch—of such things are poetry made?) (You tell me at the end of the course.)

Heaven knows we miss you and Sarah; and I guess the house will gradually drain of strange (I mean unfamiliar not fully looking) faces, and JR’s and Basts’s will return to take the place of {***}—they are nice boys certainly, but at some point Judith observed that despite your age difference with them she felt that you were more mature—she wasn’t simply tossing compliments either. And I myself am constantly impressed at both your and Sarah’s sensitivity to other people and their feelings, which with all his good points I don’t really think one can say for {***}, and it is an admirable quality to have. Perhaps it is one that develops from trying to resolve one’s own self doubts and confidence, as I know you and Sarah are still working out, and in your different ways trying to be honest with yourselves about it, which takes a good deal of courage working toward the never-quite-realized Greek ideal of “Know thyself”. I suppose any man who ever can do that will never disappoint himself no matter what he accomplishes or doesn’t accomplish, and of course one’s self is where satisfaction, or accomplishment, or disappointment lies, rather than in others even those we love. So even though, on a birthday like this with my work unfinished, I am tempted to feel the fear of disappointing you or Sarah or Judith (let alone Aaron Asher and Candida!), you are all only mirrors for disappointment I feel in not yet having reached goals I’ve set for myself—so the next step is simply to keep trying to reach them.

Of course the problem is setting the goals in the first place; many enough ‘successful’ men end up drunks for having fulfilled goals the world set for them and then finding they’ve fulfilled nothing in themselves; many enough kids end up junkies for having decided the world’s goals aren’t worth trying for and being unable to set any of their own. A few fortunate combine the two (I don’t mean drink and drugs, but meaning your own and wordly goals), and your education and growing up now are vitally important because learning the world’s goals (even marks in school) gives you the material to form your own—and don’t misunderstand, I
don’t
mean that by your 16th birthday you should know whether you want to be a poet or an astronaut, but only have a hungry curiosity in all directions for anything that brings you and your mind to life. (This is why for instance I think it’s unfortunate that you cross off the film-a/v area at school because of the people involved in it; if you’ve looked that area of work over and have no interest in it at all, that’s one thing; but if you avoid it simply because of the other people taking part you can really be missing something of
yours
, and after all what’s the world going to be when you’re out in it but fields of interest where everybody certainly won’t exactly suit your liking?)

At any rate, what I started to say at the top here is that we ourselves are our only real receptacles for disappointment. If I am not disappointed in myself I cannot disappoint you or Sarah or Judith or anybody who loves me; and so long as any of you do your best and don’t let the little disappointments in yourselves that are inevitable add up to one big one, you can never disappoint me, and none of you ever does. In different words it goes back to those often quoted lines of Shakespear (
Hamlet
I iii), in which Polonius is advising his son:

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

This is perhaps more the sort of letter I would have written you on your birthday than on mine, but it is really appropriate to both since birthdays are inevitably times of reevaluations, disappointments, resolutions (improve work habits!) and certainly for both of us satisfactions in what we have done so far.

with much love always,

Papa

pages 88–9: in
The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman
(Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965).

Pickwick: probably Pickwick Books of Nyack, NY, still open today.

Dylan: Matthew read Thomas’s “Where Once the Waters of Your Face” to WG when visiting him.

“If your throat is slit: by British writer Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949), a parody that Housman judged “the best I have seen, and indeed, the only good one.”

Ms Averill: Mary Averill, who taught Modern American Poetry.

Creeley: poet Robert Creeley; see 20 September 1993.

To Candida Donadio

Piermont NY

16 January 74

Dear Candida,

Without agonzing preamble to what must be a ‘progress’ report I obviously would rather avoid giving you and/or Aaron: I have got a Summons for service on a Federal jury starting on 4 February. Since I wrote them last fall and got a postponement this time I think I should appear in person to plead for another. What I am forced to admit to you here of course is that, unless the lightning ease of other days strikes me this morning, I expect to be still working on this damned book Feb 4th &c, and obviously US Southern District Court downtown daily would be disastrous. However I don’t think my plea for another postponement would be taken very seriously unless supported by a letter from you or Aaron, spelling out as unkindly as I deserve the fact that I am now completing a book which is substantially behind deadline and for which a good deal of money has been advanced me, and that interruption at this time would work an extreme inconvenience and constitute undue hardship for all concerned.