B007RT1UH4 EBOK (79 page)

Jack: Jack Hoffmeister, a neighbor.

Hal Sharlatt: S
c
harlatt, editor-in-chief of E.P. Dutton and the
Dutton Review,
had just died.

Benny Goodman Story
: 1955 film starring Steve Allen as the legendary clarinetist.

To John Leverence

Piermont N.Y.

4 March 74

Dear John Leverence.

I have to disappoint your request for help on advance proofs of this novel
J R
since it’s simply not that close to that stage yet and I can’t make any predictions, especially in terms of a July date which seems to me almost down our throats. (I didn’t see the
Antaeus
ad, they have a very small 10 page or so not especially representative (if there is such) fragment of it.)

I appreciate your sending the Tanner piece which I find heartening even at this distance from the sort of reviews that greeted
The Recognitions
’ original publication. In contrast to those I enclose reviews from
Le Monde
and
Figaro
which may interest you; I find them* especially pleasing for their refraining from making Joyce’s
Ulysses
the book’s parent which it was not, that extraordinary Wisconsin review piece notwithstanding. A cheap edition of the book is being published by Avon which I hope to heaven will at last solve the longstanding problem of its unavailability. Inept as it may sound for me to wish you luck with your essay, that appears all that’s possible at this stage and so of course I do.

Yours,

William Gaddis

*excepting for the lapse in
l’Express
(manifestement!) also enclosed.

Tanner piece: British critic Tony Tanner (1935–98) included a chapter on
R
in his
City of Words
:
American Fiction 1950–1970
(Harper & Row, 1971).

Wisconsin review: Bernard Benstock’s essay; see letter of 21 August 1964.

To Judith Gaddis

[
The Avon edition of
R
was favorably reviewed by Tony Tanner in the
New York Times Book Review
(14 July 1974, 27–28), accompanied by a photo of WG by Jerry Bauer rather than one by his old friend Martin Dworkin. His sympathetic biographer writes: “In the early fifties, Marty was crucially involved in Willie’s work on his first novel,
The Recognitions
. There are some thirty-eight conversations involving Willie and Marty that got into the book. They were of such importance that Marty remained convinced until the day he died that Willie should have acknowledged them in a separate essay” (Looks,
Triumph through Adversity
, 91).
]

[16 July 1974]

Dear Judith.

[...] Last evening Martin called, did not seem at all put out that the
Times
had used the Bauer picture, elaborated a long discourse on the book including passing mention that it contains 38 conversations between him and myself, and on to shaded recrimination that we should get together: I threatened him with Joe and Heidegger, he retreated; regarding my coming in, I asked what evenings were best for him, he said he had so much work to do that any time was pretty bad, so we left it that I will call him sometime, once again. [...]

John (your father John) called yesterday pm with congratulations on the
Times
review; then 5 minutes ago (this is 9:05 am Tuesday) Henry Homes called, getting to the
Book Review
over breakfast, with similar warm words. So sooner or later my secret is discovered. Though I guess the Otto Premingers don’t read. This morning’s paper reports him making a movie in which John Lindsey will play a Senator. $4.5 million in bonds is missing from Mayor Beame’s city vaults. Jack has enough money to buy a car. And it is very hard to write satire anymore.

So I will return to this wearisome task, so far mainly cutting out what seemed clever 5 years ago and rather desperate to get up to the part that may still seem so: oh to be shed of it! Freed! And they all clapped when we arose for your sweet face and my new clothes . . .

I hope you are
well
, and must be brown and getting rested. We all miss you I most of all,

with love to Paz and everything to you always.

W.

Joe and Heidegger: the latter is the German philosopher, but the former is unknown.

Henry Homes: a neighbor of Judith’s parents in Scarborough.

Otto Preminger: prominent film director of the time (1905–86), then working on
Rosebud
(1975).

John Lindsey: Linds
a
y (1921–2000) was mayor of New York City from 1966 to 1973.

Mayor Beame: Abraham Beame (1906–2001) was mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977.

And they all clapped [...] my new clothes: from a poem in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay “Sleeping and Waking” (1934), included in
The Crack-Up.

Paz: Judith’s mother, Ariadne Pasmezoglu, who under the pen name Ariadne Thompson wrote a memoir entitled
The Octagonal Heart
(1956).

To Warren Kiefer

[
American novelist and film producer (1929– ), whom WG had known since the late 1950s.
]

Piermont, NY

28 July 74

dear Warren——

it’s unfair to sit down to write you this God damned weary of everything, problem I get up in the morning and think any positive energy has simply got to go to this God damned book & by this time of day haven’t a kind word left for anybody including the attachment hereto which should confirm your worst hopes for Winning: at this moment I suppose because of the feeling that I’m doing the same God damned thing all over again with this book & will be 70 for the same idiotic reward, get your God damned picture in the
Times
and $5500. royalty on it while just your God damned teeth are threatening $8000. . . .

Try to start again. I ‘finished’ this book 1004 (legal size) pages am now on page 180 cutting ruthlessly nothing to make you wearier of yourself than artfulness when you were 10 years younger whole God damned proposition like living with an invalid real God damned terminal case you keep hoping will pick up his God damned bed and walk like the good book says, tobacco stained and full of whisky and an old dog heaving quietly on the floor behind me.

Try to start again. Really so God damned lucky splendid wife son and daughter own a house car the roof goes up and down had a boat too but it burned. Judith is still a marvel, went down to Florida to drive her mother back up here in a week or so never presses or blackmails but Hopes. Right now Sarah’s here with me working in a nickel and dime luncheonette for $400 toward her Swarthmore tuition (while I send her mother $300 support for her not being there) Matthew is though, keeps her busy enough destroying him so Sarah’s fairly free of that at any rate, worth the God damned $300 I guess.

Try to start again. well I took your advice before you gave it really, have Knopf in the hole for a fairly substantial amount of money (though of course, of course it’s in buying out contracts already previously bought out so come right down to cash it’s fairly comic) not fair as I said to open, mainly just the God damned day after dayness of this ‘second’ book which has just about devoured everybody close to me (see above) attended, as its completion is if not in grasp in sight by Eliot’s That is not what I meant, that is not what I meant at all . . . must be any honest man’s dying words when you picture the equal terms Eisenhower and JFDulles (not to speak of Allen) met their maker though I like to think that sublime son of a bitch Johnson got the message at the last minute and this poor shabby bastard we have now must be getting it.

Try to start again? Next letter then, honestly for what I’ve put in the whole God damned proposition (which is to say the crap I’ve shirked putting in) I’ve really been blessed by fortune so whine only in the decent terms that do not prevail, any day (like Sept? Oct?) you’ll have a cheerful picture postal from Sussex? Aix-? saying it’s all more, more than worth it but would hope to write you better before then, meanwhile if I don’t send you this another day goes that I send you nothing so this to fill the gap

[carbon copy: unsigned]