Gaddis Letters

[Erik T. Burns]

The Gaddis letters are great stuff.
As for his beat cred, I assume you know he was the model for Harold Sands
in Kerouac's The Subterraneans...

On Thu, Aug 17, 2023, 16:01 Cobi W.S. Powell <cobiwspowell at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>