William Gaddis: The Letters of William Gaddis

East Hampton, NY 11937

9 November ’96

dear Miriam Berkley.

Where to start? The apology or the 3 cheers. . well, on the happier note I must say that if this were obituary time from all the pranks the camera has played upon me I should hands down the picture — more of a portrait really — of which you so kindly (& rare among photographers) sent me the large print, I believe it the bottom far left on contact sheet #4: it is in all my crude vanity the most straight no-nonsense item in the archive & I do thank you (paging the NYTimes ).

The apology is of course self evident in the time I have taken to thank you & return the contacts. For no reason I can imagine I spent the 2nd ½ of August at Southampton Hospital with a ‘compartmental syndrome’, a torn calf muscle which swelled the whole left calf marvelously with bad blood & tissue, enter the ‘sports medicine’ surgeon to cut open 2 long gashes & remove the detritus leaving 2 splendid scars & a foot still ½ numb to this day. I’d pictured going to Frankfurt (Rowohlt had said they would ‘send someone over to get me’!) but with the leg & other items unmentionable I pretty much lost my appetite for it & fell into a blue funk only now emerging from it. I felt very badly about it since both Rowohlt & Zweitausendeins had made such handsome books & been so generous I can only hope they felt rewarded by the raft of stunning reviews as obviously I was. The Recognitions is due out (by 2001) before too long & A Frolic &c in France (Plon) this spring. […]

Many many thanks again,

W Gaddis

To Gregory Comnes

[ Enclosed with a packet of German reviews of translations of J R and FHO . The salutation’s exclamation point mimics that in German letters. ]

East Hampton, NY 11937

3 December 1996

dear Gregory Comnes!

from a last year’s letter of yours I gather you read German? Or is it only Eigen (threatening suit v. J R Corp.) — much enough like ‘my’ German in the hands (mouth) of Gibbs on the train, since I can read practically none of the enclosed though it generally looks friendly, & I thought might amuse you &/or give you fodder. .

At any rate I have found it astounding, an entire REBIRTH. . & in German(y), far cry from Michiko Kamikaze & Co. I did not feel quite up to going to the Frankfurt book fair (Rowohlt even said they would send someone over to get me!) but a bad leg (‘compartmental syndrome’) interfered, nonetheless the books seem to have prospered mightily & The Recognitions due for the spring.

Indian giver as always, I send you this bundle with the request that you return it eventually, something to while away these long winter evenings. Soon enough (Christmas eve) I expect to go to Miami for a week or so then Key West for January & Feb, I cannot handle another winter’s snow & dark here again & will be in touch once I have something resembling an address there, meanwhile

Auguri!

— Gaddis

Eigen […] v. J R Corp.: in July 1994 Comnes sent WG a mock e-mail document in which Thomas Eigen, represented by J. R. Vansant, threatens to take action against WG for misrep-resenting his work in FHO .

To Liesl and Molly Friedrich

[ The daughters of WG’s old friends Otto and Priscilla Friedrich, whose memorial service he had missed. ]

East Hampton, NY 11937

13 December 1996

dear Liesl & Molly,

when I called the house that Monday afternoon aware, first, of the commotion of voices people phone ringings kitchen doings more people, where’s the bathroom? can you move your car? is there any gin? preparing for Tuesday morning’s event &, second, aware that I wouldn’t get there or even, finally, that either of you would pick up the phone answered nonetheless by a young lady, Julia was it? Molly’s daughter? most courteous but so young, which crept in upon me as I fell into an old man’s plaint over how the loss of old close & faithful friends somehow diminished one’s own sense of being to which she responded not with some dismal platitude for this self-serving notion but rather a positive cheerful alternative which I must say reduced me still further — ah youth!

Nonetheless it is true. Vanity? fear? the chill memento mori in old Spain’s ‘vida sin amigo, muerte sin testigo’? But however it is immensely true for me at any rate in the loss of Otto & Priscilla, almost half a century, imagine! of every kind of up & down on all hands, extraordinary courage on their parts & a kind of idiotic ‘it can’t happen here’ on mine from Paris to Massapequa leaving me feeling somewhat like the Easter Bunny Who Overslept, Priscilla running a rather distracting household, I in the cellar saying No water today, I have to sink a new well & install new pump, & Otto walking that rainswept mile to the LIRR to the NY Daily News but still, my abiding memories are of wide lawns in the sun & 2 small unclothed beauties gamboling by, how deeply fond my mother was of you both & of Priscilla especially. I’ve always regretted that Otto never got round to writing the short & venomous book he contemplated on what happened to that sweet old town. I last saw him at a party of Ted Morgan’s on a sunny New York rooftop, one whole side of him still as a board but that incorrigibly warm even twinkling smile of, well, generosity?

Generosity, yes, yes that was probably what I felt most from them both putting their own travails aside for it, as that last & indelible time I saw Priscilla &, of course, both of you that sunny afternoon I got out to Locust Valley thank heavens, limping around with my own absurdities & —Willie? can we get you something? some cheese? some ham? in that charming room, sun crisp slipcovers books books books & Priscilla as always filled with brisk good cheer & all of you concerned for me & not the loss that still hung in the air, & how glad I am that I had that last long chat with Priscilla (aside from a few subsequent phone calls when, expecting to find her in extremis, instead hear her plan for an October trip where was it, Turkey? & again, she is off for Block Island; & again, this parting bit of advice: Just remember, Willie, you don’t have to do what the doctors tell you. .

Character? Courage (which I suppose is a part of character?) So one can easily see how, for example, Margaret loved and admired her (with a rather wild kind of courage herself) & the efforts she made to get out there from New Hampshire to see her, makes us all want to go back (or feel we should) & read Emerson on Friendship.

So at any rate there you both are at this immense juncture & the responsibilities ahead that go with it but good heavens look at this terrific bunch of genes you’ve inherited to meet them. The last line in a marvelous BBC adaptation of Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga , after dealing with every kind of betrayal, financial disaster, passions runs amock &c, the family lawyer who had overseen all this, Soames, asks “What was it all for?” but I think we know: since Nature’s mission is prolongation of the race, the tribe, the family &c it is this next generation that all these travails are ‘for’, from my & Otto & Priscilla’s generation you both, and Niki & Amelia too, & even that brief light of Tony [Otto’s youngest son], and Sarah, and Matthew, ‘for’ the next generation you all bring along. We do & will always owe you all so much for what you have given us.

Auguri! and love,

Willie