Gaddis Letters

[Cobi W.S. Powell]

I'm always so taken with that pynch letter to Condadio. she suggests he
write an autobiography; he responds: "I'm always trying to spill my life
story. It just seems that no one wants to listen."

the biography that the opening of the huntington library archives will
inevitably produce will be quite the eye-opener. how much of his work is
covertly autobiographical? makes sense too, all of his characters and
narrators are so afraid of reticulation, of being assigned coordinative
placement on the grid... i seem to remember him saying once that Gravity's
Rainbow is a novel in which he put "all his friends," but a quick google
has proven this quote difficult to find, so more likely than not it is
apocryphal, like so much of his life.

cp

On Thu, Aug 17, 2023 at 9:38 AM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hiya
>
> Making my way through the NYRB edition of Wm Gaddis letters, edited by
> Steven Moore. I'm not surprised the letters are erudite, sarcastic,
> self-deprecating, etc etc, but having read gaddis for many years, I can
> only claim them to be revelatory. It feels like when Get Back  was released
> a few yrs ago, having read so much about the sessions and seeing what
> transpired in living color decades later. The letters provide one with such
> insight into his thoughts, struggles, travels, etc. that you can see how he
> ended up writing what he did. Granted, i'm in the Recognitions years.
> Kudos has to go out to his mother, since in the early years that is who he
> wrote to predominantly, hearing his pains and goofs, helping with money and
> books and clothes.
> Gaddis is ever the traveler, mentioning how Robert Louis Stevenson and
> Eugene O'Neill and others bounced from city to city, odd-jobs here and
> there and writing, though Gaddis had more money troubles which he laments.
> Of course, all the wittiness in the novel is in the letters. His letters to
> Katherine Anne Porter are particularly eye-opening. He met many other
> luminaries along the way: Walker Evans (Wyatt Jr's appearance is based on
> him), Auden, Robert Graves, Evelyn Waugh (who was aware of him at least),
> and more I'm sure.
> What shines through is his 'beat-like' perspective but without any of the
> pretentiousness (think Zappa and his attitude to the rock scene), a man
> with similar characteristics to those later known in the scene (I know he
> knew Ginsburg and others), but still an outsider.
> It also led me to think what would a Pynchon equivalent look like--who were
> his main recipients over the years. But I realize these letters did not
> appear until decades after Gaddis' death.
> In any case, a pleasant addition to the Gaddis canon.
>
> rich
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>