B007RT1UH4 EBOK (81 page)

£750: about $7,000 today.

Harper’s
: published in its June issue as “Nobody Grew but the Business” (pp. 47–54, 59–66).

Bob Gottlieb: Robert Gottlieb (1931– ), then editor-in-chief at Knopf.

Janet Halverson: highly regarded jacket designer who worked from the 1950s (including
R
’s jacket) through the 1990s.

Lewis Lapham: (1935– ), managing editor of
Harper’s
at the time (promoted to editor the following year).

Rhoda [...] Rembrandt: the published cover photo is based on Rembrandt’s
Bathing Woman
(1654).

To Grace Eckley

[
A Joyce scholar who was researching a paper later published as “Exorcising the Demon Forgery, or the Forging of Pure Gold in Gaddis’s
Recognitions
,” in
Literature and the Occult
, ed. Luanne Frank (Univ. of Texas Press, 1977), 125–36.
]

Piermont NY

3 June 1975

Dear Miss Eckley.

I appreciate your interest in
The Recognitions
& have to tell you I’ve about reached the end of the line on questions about what I did or didn’t read of Joyce’s 30 years ago. All I read of
Ulysses
was Molly Bloom at the end which was being circulated for salacious rather than literary merits; No I did not read
Finnegans Wake
though I think a phrase about ‘psychoanaloosing’ one’s self from it is in
The Recognitions
; Yes I read some of
Dubliners
but don’t recall how many & remember only a story called ‘Counterparts’; Yes I read a play called
Exiles
which at the time I found highly unsuccessful; Yes I believe I read
Portrait of an Artist
but also think I may not have finished it; No I did not read commentary on Joyce’s work & absorb details without reading the original. I also read, & believe with a good deal more absorbtion, Eliot, Dostoevski, Forster, Rolfe, Waugh, why bother to go on, anyone seeking Joyce finds Joyce even if both Joyce & the victim found the item in Shakespear, read right past whole lines lifted bodily from Eliot &c, all which will probably go on so long as Joyce remains an academic cottage industry.

Clearly this matter of ‘influences’ is a floodgate which I’m afraid I’ve neither the time nor patience to open now & I apologize to you for sounding as impatient over the whole matter as in fact I am, but if I do not mail you this will probably end up appearing even more rude by never getting any response off to you at all, and hope your work goes well the above notwithstanding.

Yours,

William Gaddis

‘psychoanaloosing’: Anselm twice refers to the critic in the green wool shirt as a “three-time psychoanaloser” (
R
183, 453). In
Finnegans Wake
, Yawn boasts, “I can psoakoonaloose myself any time I want” (Viking, 1939), 522.

Rolfe: Frederick Rolfe, aka Baron Corvo (1860–1913), British Catholic homosexual novelist and historian. His works include the novels
Hadrian VIII
(1904) and
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole
, as well as a history of the Borgias.

To David Susskind

[
American producer (1920–87) of movies, TV shows, and plays, and a well-known talk-show host. Sometime in the 1960s WG had written a screenplay for a Western entitled
One Fine Day
—called
Dirty Tricks
in
J R
and described as the character Schramm’s World War II experiences transposed to the Old West with Faustian overtones (391, 396)—which was mentioned in
Time
magazine’s review of
J R
. Nothing came of the project.
]

21 October 1975

Dear Mr Susskind,

I greatly appreciate your direct call yesterday and your interest in this Western project of mine.

As I mentioned to you then, I’d just been going through it again with an eye to making certain changes which now seem important enough to me to take care of before showing it. I hope this delay will not cause inconvenience or a lessening of your interest, my agent will send a copy right on to you when I have it in shape and I hope there may still be opportunity to meet and talk with you.

Yours,

William Gaddis

To Sarah Gaddis

Piermont NY

Halloween [1975]

Dear Sarah,

As you probably know by now we were given an
excellent
dinner and evening by our mutual friend Mr Quesenbery last week, then on Wednesday very fancy lunch by Knopf so at least I’m getting some fine meals out of all this! (Even had dinner last night with Dick and Ruth Green in New York, all great except for a flat tire coming home—very
cold
).

Everything still in suspense except we have learned there will be a good review
next
Sunday (the 8th)
front page
of
New York Times Book Review
except
that apparently I have to
share
it with another writer named Donald Barthelme damn it! Well half a loaf is better than none?
And
—look in this coming week issue of
Newsweek
where I understand we are treated quite well.

Thank the Lord just this morning arrived a check from the English publisher of
J R
so I can send you the enclosed (will this tight rope walking
ever
end?). I wish it were more of course but at least you will have November allowance plus a new dress and I hope you can find one you like immensely (and Peter likes!)—I’ll probably talk to you again before you get this but meanwhile love always as you know,

Papa

Mr Quesenbery: William Doyle Quesenbery, Jr. (1930–2008), Dean of Admissions at Swarthmore College.

Donald Barthelme: his novel
The Dead Father
shared the front page; WG’s review was by George Stade.

Newsweek
: Peter S. Prescott’s enthusiastic review appeared in the 10 November issue, 103.

English publisher of
J R
: Jonathan Cape, released in 1976 (with some corrections that wouldn’t be made in American editions until 1985).

Peter: Peter Conley, Sarah’s future first husband.

To John and Pauline Napper

Piermont NY

1 November 75

Dear John and Pauline,

finally
a note off to you from the malaise that appears to follow publication and all the uncertainties that go with it, grand dreams of financial liberation in the midst of pounding debt because the American pattern is one of such absurd extremes in terms of “success” and “failure”—so we wait and pray for work, living for the moment on a rather pittance finally literally
wrung
out of Jonathan Cape who will bring the book out there (why I don’t know, who the hell in England as it is today wants to read about an 11-year-old American entrepreneur?)

I’ve mainly exorcised recent demons by laying a floor and building bookcases in the garage here which at last, now the studying is done, begins to look like a “study”—and have gone back to make some revisions on that Faust western as a film script which we hope to sell on the strength of
J R
’s publicity—God knows if or when it will become a book, it would be just such an immense pleasure to never have to write anything again except an occasional letter if only to report that we are still in mid-air, though at least the book is out of my hands at last and perhaps good things are ahead which will permit us some freedom and movement, meanwhile I’m glad the copy of
J R
did reach you and hope you like him, his offensive qualities notwithstanding —more news when we have anything real to report.

love from us,

Willie & Judith

To David Markson

[
When Christopher Lehmann-Haupt’s negative review of
J R
appeared in the daily
New York Times
on 30 October, Markson sent a postcard the same day to WG reading: “Dear Bill—Fuck Christopher Lehmann-Haupt!” (Lehmann-Haupt had also written a negative review of Markson’s
Going Down
five years earlier.) Gaddis’s reply, undated and without salutation, plays on a joke in
J R
whereby a foreigner takes literally a dictionary definition of “sympathy” (488–89); see 3 November 1975 for the reference to WG’s agent, Candida Donadio.
]

Problem with you Markson you’ve got no God damned fellow feeling in bosom, put yourself in the poor bastard’s place: like if your wife wrote a novel and the best agent in town declined to handle it, would you go around giving a free ride to the agent’s clients? I mean why the hell do you think some poor bastard wants to be a book calumnist in the first place.