B007RT1UH4 EBOK (127 page)

These eventually include Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States; Zorach v. Clauson; McGowan v. Maryland; Disney v. Air Pirates. But obviously the most intriguing current eruption must be Buchwald v. Paramount* aspect (
NYTimes
15 Jan ’90) B’s lawyer took it on contingency but the judge didn’t require punitive damages (or ‘reasonable attorneys’ fees’?) and the legal costs already exceed B’s winnings, which is just where I have foreseen my protagonist Oscar heading.

On the side here I am probably heading myself for an expensive education with filmdom: one currently quiescent item with an option on
Carpenter’s Gothic
with Keith Barish which he wants to turn over to a Larry Gagosian if I will modify our agreement in which they now indemnify me to read instead that I indemnify them and everyone else in sight (so I’ve said if they want to go on with this nonsense they must pay my lawyer’s consultations: silence); and the other embracing efforts by a young screen writer to option
J R
for a possible deal with the gang at Guber Peters which seems ridden with pitfalls. Rather than arming one’s self to sue, what seems to me paramount (excuse!) these days is to arm one’s self against being sued. I have certainly got some tigers by the tails.

Well, thank you for reading this far. I had hoped to have something more conclusive before reaching you again, and now with Muriel in town I am staying on here in the grey sky country empty house for a bit with no preoccupations but those skirted above.

very warmest regards and wishes for the new year

Bill Gaddis

*which seems to me very much to resemble Murray v. NBC, black star and all.

Ron Hubbard: founder of Scientology (1911–86); many lawsuits pursued him during his lifetime and his organization after his death.

Cahill Gordon &c: Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a prominent Wall Street law firm established in 1919.

Allen Peacock: (1954– ); he acquired the novel in 1987 for $275,000 (half a million in today’s terms) but left Simon & Schuster in November 1990. The following March, Peacock went to work for Henry Holt, where he would later acquire
AA
.

Buchwald v. Paramount: journalist Art Buchwald successfully sued Paramount Pictures in 1990 for breach of contract over the 1988 movie
Coming to America
.

Keith Barish: American film producer (
Endless Love
,
Sophie’s Choice
,
Ironweed
, et al.).

Larry Gagosian: high-profile American art dealer.

Guber Peters: American film production company (
The Color Purple
,
The Witches of Eastwick, Caddyshack
II
, et al.).

To Saul Steinberg

[
Romanian-born cartoonist and illustrator (1914–99), best known for his work for the
New Yorker
. He was an old friend of Muriel Murphy, who introduced him to WG in 1982. As WG noted earlier (6 August 1987), Steinberg’s famous
View of the World from 9th Avenue
cover for the
New Yorker
(1976) inspired the poster for the movie
Moscow on the Hudson
(1984), which led to a lawsuit for copyright infringement against Columbia Pictures, mentioned in the letter below. (The lawyers for Columbia claimed protection under parody, but the court found in favor of Steinberg.) The case is cited in
FHO
(31) and a deposition from the case was the model for the one between Oscar, Basie, and Pai (185–234), referred to below as “the Deposition.”
]

Wainscott, NY

21 January 1990

Dear Saul.

Rather than wait any longer on the formerly reliable chance of our all getting together for dinner with the vagaries of town or country, the weather &c where the promptings of conversation may serve to clarify one’s thoughts, I am trying to clarify some of mine by getting them down on paper here in some kind of order.

I have long been intrigued, and more recently troubled by, the collisions in human affairs caused by misunderstanding and ‘getting it wrong’ (this is in fact largely what
Carpenter’s Gothic
and especially the character Paul are all about); and I say ‘troubled by’ because in this past year it seems to have come home to roost on all sides: with Muriel, my son, and I’m sure elsewhere I don’t yet know about. Thus ‘the Deposition’.

Earlier in the summer my work on this law novel was not prospering, as I began to be aware of the complex mess I’d got myself into and the overwhelming source material I had assembled, including of course yours with Columbia where the Huff-Rembar deposition I thought offered a marvelous vehicle for parody of the vagaries of the legal process itself rather than the real people involved excepting insofar as it was heightened by your as always elegantly precise care for words and meanings harassed by the language at its most obfuscating in the mouths of otherwise intelligent lawyers, all this to the point where I felt in some odd way duty bound to pursue the parody as close as I could consistent with my protagonist’s (Oscar’s) dilemma.

Aside from the curious parallel of Columbia’s brief attempt to (misuse) parody as a defense, there emerged (in this ‘getting it wrong’ mode) the essential irony—irony being still to my old fashioned eye at the heart of fiction, certainly comic fiction—which this letter is at such obvious pains to deal with, where in the light of our many past conversations and my impression from them of pretty complete license with the legal pages, motions, interrogations, memoranda, depositions &c that all this was a prank which we, you and I, were playing on not any person but on the process; and it was in that spirit that I devoted most of July and August, and that I pressed the results on you a couple of months ago.

Thus I was concerned when I got the thing back from you with accompanying cordial items but without comment, and remain so, more so in fact since I have gathered that my concern was justified. All this I failed to recognize at the time since by the early fall some sort of gap seemed already to have opened which Muriel and I remarked, she of course more sensitively and more informed by your long association than I, but we worried for it and simply hoped, that from wherever the chill descended—whether your own private affairs where we hesitated to intrude, or evidences of our own abrasions spreading discomfort around us—it would all fade in a natural recovery of our old bonhomie. I suspect the latter (our own abrasions), for which I must assume the main responsibility I suppose, and am acutely aware as you must be of your immense importance in Muriel’s life at its every level.

For myself, if I may be allowed to put it this way, our friendship over this past decade has been one of the most surprising gifts Muriel has brought to me, making this apparent rupture doubly difficult since, again, I trust you know my awareness of my strong sense of indebtedness to you in at best an uneven exchange and at, again, so many levels, from such worldy arenas as the Academy to sheer relish in conversation embracing even some painful glimpses of self revelation, and moments of enlightenment, of which this may be one.

with all possible warm regards,

Gaddis

To Marc Chénetier

[
A French literary critic (1946– ) who taught and wrote about WG’s work throughout his long, distinguished career. The following undated note is handwritten at the top of a photocopy of WG’s “Trickle-Up Economics: J R
Goes to Washington” and was accompanied by the uncut version (
RSP
62–71), which was translated by Chénetier’s student Brigitte Félix as “J R
se met à la page” and published in
Europe
733 (May 1990): 112–19.
]

[April 1990]

Dear Marc Chenetier—

I am sorry to be so late responding to your letter of 14/03 but some recent confusion moving about and the question whether I might dig up something to send you for your edition of
Europe
—afraid this would not suit even if there were still time (though you’re welcome to use it) but thought that it might amuse you in any event,

best regards

William Gaddis

To Joseph Tabbi

[
Tabbi sent WG his essay ‘The Compositional Self in William Gaddis’
JR
,”
Modern Fiction Studies
35.4 (Winter 1989–90): 655–71.
]

Wainscott, New York 11975

1 May 1990

Dear Joseph Tabbi.

Thank you for sending me your Compositional Self piece from
Modern Fiction Studies
. It certainly reflects a wide and careful reading & I find the analyses & conclusions very much to the point & obviously pleasing to me.

My one moment of annoyance came with your very mild reprimand on p659 “It was, I think, erroneous and perhaps unfair of John Gardner to conclude in the
New York Review of Books
, simply from one character’s conceit of the unfinished work as a kind of invalid, that Gaddis himself ‘was apparently uneasy about bringing out
J R
.’” The whole point of that image was of course precisely the opposite, like most of Gardner’s points in that appallingly perverse misreading of the book right through to the end where he concludes how easy it is to portray the artist as ground down by commerce when, again, the point is precisely the opposite in Gibbs, Eigen & Bast constantly putting obstacles in their own paths to avoid facing the completion & consequences of the creative act head on, as crystalized in Bast’s resolution at the very end to do so. The whole ‘review’ was a transparent stunt he has pulled elsewhere (see his on was it Walker Percy’s?
Lancelot
), the flattering & utterly phony appreciative buildup packed with strawmen to be demolished in the conclusion (‘it fails as art’), a regular Procrustian bed tended by a man I have always been convinced simply eaten out by envy & I have never quite understood how he was allowed to run around loose for so long patronizing his betters, the epitome of course being his ridiculous number on ‘moral fiction’ (what was
J R
if not exactly that?). Now I grant it would be awfully difficult to be so vain a fellow publishing a novel the year the Pulitzer Prize—about his level if he’d ever got a prize (see Bill Gass on the Pulitzer in the
NYTimes
BR
a few years ago)—the year that is that they fail to give one in fiction because they find no worthy candidate, even worse I should imagine than seeing it go to some other pedestrian contender since there is very much the heart of the cancer: his writing was simply pedestrian, which he tried to make up for / divert attention from by providing bizarre (to his lights) characters like his ‘magician’ in
October Light
& some book about a giant boy locked up in a closet. Interestingly enough he was a great admirer of
The Recognitions
early on which finally soured, & perhaps it was the theme of forgery that spoke to him, later to blossom in borrowings & plagiaries, a little Sir Arthur Eddington here, some murky business about the
Canterbury Tales
there, so to find the poor bastard ‘perhaps’ erroneous & unfair is gentle handling indeed.

Addendum: poor George Steiner too (speaking of paranoia), in his own embarrassing attempt at fiction, some nonsense about carting Adolf Hitler out of the woods in Argentina was it? Brought to mind the Arab into Spanish proverb into English: Sit in the doorway of your house & watch the bodies of your enemies carried by . . . a long sitting but amply rewarded. (He apparently never noticed the inconsistency in calling a book unreadable & then reviewing it presumably having read it—though there was evidence otherwise.)