B007RT1UH4 EBOK (122 page)

Incidentally, it would surprise me if Rowolt has the rights to either of my books, as you mention. I recall many years ago perhaps around 1962, they paid a small sum for an option on
The Recognitions
, subsequently 2 translators gave up on it & I was told they now had a 3rd who had ‘translated
Moby Dick
into German’ so were quite certain it would work out, & I never heard from them again. Of course that option has long since expired; and I do not recall them making any offer on
J R
. However I will ask my agent here to check on that & Rowolt might also want to check their files.

Martin Hielscher was also kind enough to give me the copies of the magazine
Das Schreibheft
you speak of containing translations from
The Recognitions
. Of course this is pleasing and flattering & might even help to gain an audience for the book itself, though I don’t recall them having any permission or making any payment as is the custom here.

My plans for Berlin are unclear until I have them from the people there, an Alice Franck and Renate Selmer who are with the 750th BERLIN Program, I believe it runs 5–14 November. I may make a stop for a reading at Bonn but plan then to go straight to Paris for a few days and then home. So I may never meet you until your visit to the US whenever that occurs.

with best regards

William Gaddis

Das Holzschloss
: like the Swedish
Träslott
, literally “wooden castle.”

Das Schreibheft
: the final six pages of
R
were published in number 29 of this German literary journal as “Wiedererkennen,” translated by Bernd Klähn

750th BERLIN Program: 1987 saw numerous celebrations and events hosted in Berlin to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the city’s founding.

WG, Donald Barthelme, and Walter Abish, West Berlin, November 1987.

To Sarah Gaddis

[Wainscott, NY]

21 December ’87

Dear Sarah,

for the number of times I think of you during the day and days I am appalled at how long it has been since I’ve written, even a note. Not as though I’ve been consumed at the typewriter snapping out page 104, 206, even 31 . . . quite the opposite: days spent simply staring at this pile of books, notes, brilliant insights, & finally getting nothing down on paper even a note to you let alone whoever else. It is all simply this phase you have tasted & I blithely say —It’ll pass, don’t worry . . . until it happens to me again. That’s what is curious, it’s always as though it had never happened before.

My timing has come off exactly as planned: preparing the ground with the piece in the
New Yorker
, Louis A’s piece in the
NYT magazine,
interview any day now in the
Paris Review
and a 30 or so page draft opening of the novel with a couple of pages ‘outline’ submitted to Viking to clear their option, they make an offer, we call it too low and now—this very day in fact—Candida is sending it out to other publishers who are breathing hard, Elis. Sifton & Aaron Asher in the lead but others too so that in the next few weeks there will be the contract & a substantial advance & I wake at night—that 3 o’clock in the morning business—with the What do you think you’re doing! age 65 starting the whole mad thing over again? with this trash heap of notes & paper? Looking at the whole project with ‘fear and loathing’ . . . Or may it be that I need that kind of pressure, the money drifting away & the kindly editor asking How is it coming along? It’s like those fellows running for president, all the energy enthusiasm Brilliant Ideas &c go into the campaign & then inevitably one of them’s elected sitting there thinking Holy Jeez what have I done! what do I do now? Or thinking: I’ve done it, haven’t I? Got a nicely high reputation for my work, why threaten it with this mess . . . not like the old days either when I had to have that $200. Why not just, Come on old boy, relax, you’ve done your work, go to parties, get on the lecture circuit, go to conferences, Berlin, Moscow, get your picture in the papers, be seen in
Vanity Fair
with the luminaries . . . but it simply doesn’t work that way.

No, this isn’t a complaint, all just as I’ve repeated to you (from Arthur Miller), It comes with the territory. I wish I had those lines of Eliot’s about every start is a new beginning, “a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment, always deteriorating . . .” And so I can only think that there is something to the whole idea of the necessity for the artist to put himself in peril, & that that is what provides the energy for the work, as opposed say to the steady drone of a James Mitchner (who gave Swarthmore a cool million) but God knows, we shouldn’t read the apparent smugness of others for granted, he may have some perilous moments too.

So here we are. A new year fairly packed with perils we have arranged ourselves—and of course Matthew is in here too!—which will call on us for the best we’ve got; and with all the evidence I have to believe we wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, you & he both know of my support in your perils every step of the way, but you may not be so aware of the strength you give to me and how fortunate I count myself for having it, having you both there and for the people you’ve become.

my love always,

Papa

‘fear and loathing’: a phrase popularized by Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) from Kierkegaard’s book
Fear and Trembling
(1843), alluding to the exhortation “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

those lines of Eliot: from “East Coker”; see 27 December 1948 for the complete passage.

To James Cappio

[
James Cappio (1953– ) was a law clerk at the time to Chief Judge Charles L. Brieant, and later practiced law at Cahill Gordon & Reindel and the New York Insurance Department Liquidation Bureau before leaving for Canada, where he became a legal editor. He sent WG an opinion he had ghostwritten for Judge Brieant that cites a passage from
J R
(201.20–33); see
Carl Marks & Co., Inc v USSR
665 F.Supp 323 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), at 324–25. WG enclosed in the following letter a copy of the
New Yorker
version of “Szyrk v. Village of Tatamount et al.” (12 October 1987), adding by hand: “I should note that Judge Crease is about 90 years old—and have begun to suspect that his opinions are written by his law clerk who is (cf. Wagner in Goethe’s
Faust
) about as diligent & ill-informed as I am.”
]

235 East 73 Street

New York, New York 10021

10 January 1988

Dear Jim Cappio.

What a marvelous birthday gift! Enshrined in an Opinion (& clearly a significant & important one at that) by Brieant CJ—why, it’s infinitely more gratifying than, say, a PEN/Faulkner Award (where I was a runner-up), something about having a place in the World as opposed to self-congratulatory literarydom.

You will see from the attached (I gather you hadn’t come across it) that my remarks are not at all fatuous: at this late date I have got myself hopelessly enthralled by the law, having read Cardozo’s classic Palsgraf v. Long Island
R.
Co. a year or 2 ago & been seduced by a world wherein “reality may not exist at all except in the words in which it presents itself” (Ziff L.,
Literary Democracy
294, Dallas 1982) & now hopelessly out of my depth in gifts of Prosser & the 82 vol.
American Jurisprudence
2d for a novel in the form of a network of lawsuits of every variety, & of which this
Szyrk
Opinion is the first. (I should note that it will be reversed on appeal & am now trying to dig up the grounds, which I’m sure are plentiful.)

And so of course I would enjoy meeting & thanking you & falling deeper into this morass. We have just come in from the country & I’m trying to get myself & my ‘work’ into some kind of order but if you’ll call when it suits you we can work something out. And yes I do know John Holdridge, have not seen him for some time but he’s a good pal of my son from whom I have rousing reports, he is quite a fellow & really out there on the barricades. Finally I can even claim to have encountered Judge Motley, years ago as a member of a US Court jury pool where the lawyers for both sides promptly rejected me but I was greatly impressed by her.

If it is seemly to do so, & assuming Judge Brieant is still about & you see him, do tell him of my great pleasure, many many thanks for your efforts & for your letter.

Yours,

W. Gaddis