William Gaddis - The Letters of William Gaddis

To Edith Gaddis

[ In January 1945, after an incident involving the Cambridge police (causing a public disturbance while drunk), WG was asked to leave Harvard. He returned to New York and was hired by the New Yorker as a fact-checker, where he worked from late February 1945 to April 1946. In the summer of 1945 he went on vacation to Canada. ]

Mount Royal Hotel

Montreal, 2, P.Q.

[1 August 1945]

Dear Mother—

Frankly the more I move along the more I find that every city is quite like the last one. Perhaps there are sights in Montreal which I have missed (I have not visited the Wax Museum). But I feel little like gaping at anything.

At any rate tonight the boat leaves for Quebec and I expect to be on it.

Jacob did not arrive — and though I felt he might not when he did not show up I found myself vaguely disappointed. Really, in the little kicking about I have done I think I have had enough of wandering around cities alone. And shall probably be home before very long—

Love

Bill

Jacob: Jake Bean (1924–92), a Harvard friend who later became a connoisseur of Italian and French drawings; he was the curator of drawings at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for thirty-one years.

To Edith Gaddis

Hotel Louis XIV

3 Place Royale

Quebec

[4 August 1945]

Dear Mother—

Coincident with yr. letter came news from Beth that Je — plans to be married as soon as possible, to this fellow.

Oh — the thoughts that run through you as you read this — they are similar to mine, I know. Consequently I shall try to say little.

Yes, it is very difficult, but there is finality, and therefore something on which to build. I have nothing more to add — I shall leave here soon and see you the earlier part of the week, both of us a little stronger people, I think.

Again thanks, and love

B

To Edith Gaddis

[ Final surviving page of undated letter on New Yorker stationery. ]

The New Yorker

No. 25 West 43rd Street

[late 1945 or 1946]

[…] received notice from draft board concerning occupational reclassification[.] needless to say at this point in my career I am rather terrified — how I hate to be manipulated.

meanwhile job goes awfully well — worked until 8 tonight

B

To Edith Gaddis

[ In the spring of 1947, WG left New York for several years of traveling as he worked on The Recognitions , which began as an early effort entitled Blague . He began by heading south for Mexico in a Cord convertible with a friend named Bill Davison. ]

New Orleans, Louisiana

[6 March 1947]

dear Mother—

after much fortune and misfortune we are off to Mexico, I hope this afternoon. I trust that you got my wire, so that when we reach Laredo I shall have birth certificate and be able to get visa. It must be a student’s visa, however, which disclaims any attentions on my part to get a job while there, since they have a sort of protective immigration. The point being that it will take a little while after I get to Mexico City to arrange through any contacts I may have to get a job, a little to one side of authority, as it were. I hope that you will be able to send me some money there — can you conveniently? We are leaving here with next to nothing, as you may imagine, and are taking on a passenger, the fellow who has been our host, and who I gather will be able to finance a good part of the trip from here on. You may gather from my letters the state that things have been in. But I just feel that once we get to Mexico city, and if you can send me some money there, that things will start to shape up well. The address is c/o Wells Fargo Express Company, Mexico D. F., Mexico, and to be marked Please Hold.

Also to add a touch of trouble, my leather suitcase stolen from the car last night, therewith all of my shirts, neckties, and all of the work I was taking with me. As for the work, it is too bad, but perhaps for the best since I plan to start rather freshly with writing when I get down there, and now will not have these things which I have written over the last year or two to distract me. The business of the shirts and ties, of course — infuriating. and the bag.

I want of course to write you a real letter, describing the pleasant parts of the trip, and what this city is like — certainly how much you would like it. But one minute we are to stay; the next, to leave; the next, to leave with a passenger. And now suddenly when it looks like we may get off in about an hour things are rather flurried. Health, and such things that may be worrying you, are all all right.

My love,

W

To Edith Gaddis

Rhodes Apartment Hotel

611 La Branch St.

Houston, Texas

9 March 1947

dear Mother—

Here we are, our plans made for us this time by a pretty ghastly breakdown of the car. and so I can take the opportunity to write you rather more of a letter than I have been able to manage in some time. And perhaps modify a few things which have perhaps troubled you; coming as they have in peacemeal sentences as bulletins on a consistent state of calamity.

Still I know what you are feeling under it all: even if there are occasional concerns (I imagine that the story of the suitcase gave you rather a turn) it is much better because things are happening, and moving, and alive, and not in one corner of Greenwich Vill. — and as long as I am eating and sleeping & everything is all right. Good. I feel just that way.

Washington, as you could gather, was a pretty messy business, chiefly because of the cold. So windy and cold, and the blizzard, and sleeping on Mike’s floor, chiefly difficult because we were both so discouraged at being stuck so near to NewYork, as if we might never get further. And so when we could leave we streaked out for South Carolina, and stopped at Chapel Hill. There a man of about 40 named Noel Houston teaches, and I have read a few of his pieces in the New Yorker , quite good. Well over a year ago a girl named Alice Adams who was at Radcliffe whom I knew quite well, mostly through Jean and later (and in New York) through Mike &c had told me that she wanted me to meet him. At any rate, we got there in the middle of the afternoon, drove out to his house and introduced ourselves, and spent until almost 7pm having a couple of drinks, and he talking at length about the NYer and its stories, the business of writing, &c&c, all in all very pleasant. We had, having heard of how affable he was, hoped that he might put us up somewhere for the night, but on arrival discovered that his wife and two children were ill, and so could hardly presume. Decided that the only thing to do was drive straight through to Atlanta and warm weather, Chapel Hill being similarly cold to everyplace we had left. Well, the drive that night was about the coldest thing I have ever managed. Oil being eaten up by the car, so that we must stop and try to pound holes in oil cans with nails and a rock, dark, and our hands and fingers like sticks. The only thing that saved it was good humour and a little profanity, for Davison is good in both. Finally, after one of those nights we always remember because they defy ever coming to an end, we got to Atlanta for breakfast, about eight. And never again mention Peachtree Street to me. It may have been magnificent after the War Between the States, but now the most tumblesome hurly-burly of trollycars, pedestrians, idiot drivers, and unattractive storefronts I have ever seen. We escaped about an hour later. The most infuriating thing, of course, was the weather — Georgia was quite as cold as Washington had been. And then at a town called Newnan, the radiator, which had to be flushed out, boiled, dipped, and all manner of endless treatments. The only thing was 2$ worth of room for the night. Which we needed. And so found it, and there a bath, shave, and suddenly nothing to do at 6pm. Odd dismal supper, and now 6.45—what but the movies? Two or three glasses of beer might have passed a pleasant hour, but no beer in Newnan. And so we sat through (and I am afraid almost enjoyed) a monstrosity called The Strange Woman , as Hedy Lamarr preached against such sins as Newnan probably never dreamt. Out on the street (in the courthouse square, needless to say), the clock struck — one could know the number of tolls before they were over — it was 9pm. Not a soul stirring, and a beautiful night. Stars, and not a sound. And so, after a brief walk, back to our home, where we collapsed.