clearly-accounted accusation shows the result.
It must have been a fantastically big talent—and I feel that we are fortunate that she used it as she did, teaching by that example (when understood, as your piece helped me to do)—for in our time if we do not understand and recognise the responsibility of freedom we are lost.
I should look forward to a piece on Waugh; though mine is the accepted blithe opinion of “a very clever one who knew he was writing for a very sick time.”
Thank you again, for writing what you did, and for allowing this letter.
Sincerely,
William Gaddis
Markova [...] ‘Giselle’: Alicia Markova (1910–2004), English ballerina, known for her starring role in Adolphe Adam’s ballet standard Giselle (1841).
‘Pale Horse’: in Porter’s short-story collection Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939).
V.: an old scholarly abbreviation (vide: see) that WG occasionally uses.
Mr. Maugham: W. Somerset Maugham: English novelist and playwright (1874–1965). In 1947 Maugham began publishing a series of appreciative essays on classic authors like Flaubert, Fielding, Balzac, et al.
your letter: Porter explains that she has read virtually all of Stein’s books and that Stein “has had, I realize, a horrid fascination for me, really horrid, for I have a horror of her kind of mind and being; she was one of the blights and symptoms of her very sick times.”
Waugh: Evelyn Waugh (1903–66), English novelist (see letter of January 1949). Porter writes in the aforementioned letter in Harper’s that long ago she read Waugh’s Black Mischief (1932) and felt “that he was either a very sick man or a very clever one who knew he was writing for a very sick time.”
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[23 January 1948]
dear Mother—
Thanks, thanks again. And for having been so good as to take care of June Kingsbury. I must write them a letter. But can’t think of them at the moment, somehow makes me nervous to do so.
If your letter sounded lecturish certainly it was warranted by the outbursts I’ve been sending you. For which I apologise. I think I am getting hold now: the job, though still at times maddening when I am unoccupied, goes on with a minimum of difficulty. And the novel (in the most excruciating handwriting you have ever seen) is now two unfinished chapters, but I think good, and am comparatively happy about it—when it goes well I am fine, when not; unbearable. A black girl in the place where I eat occasionally accuses me of looking “vexed”—which in this West-Indian dialect means angry. So I tell her I’m vexed at the small portion she has put on my plate, and she tries to make up for it.
Two good letters from John Snow, to which I sent a rather excited answer—he probably thinks me insane by now. Also Eric Larrabee at Harper’s sent me the address of Katherine Anne Porter, a modern writer of some repute, and I have written her to say how much I enjoyed her piece on Gertrude Stein in the recent Harpers. Never done such a thing before, but that article certainly warranted it. Correspondence a good thing, though even it often seems a waste to me.
Please excuse my haste—my “lunch” (a munificent affair—one ham-cheese, one onion-cheese, one peanut-butter-marmalade sandw., all made by my busy hands) hangs from the light cord, so the ants won’t get it—and I must pull it down and be off.
Love
Bill
June Kingsbury: wife of WG’s Merricourt’s headmaster.
Eric Larrabee: (1922–90), managing editor of Harper’s from 1946 to 1958; WG met him at Harvard.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[29 January 1948]
dear Mother.
I have got the clock. What a charming little thing it is! to have the onerous duty of rousing me from good sleep or a good book—and I am finding so many—to send me out to the enclosed scene. And many thanks for sending off that story. Yes, it is supposed to end as you quote it—heaven knows if it should or not—but I can’t tell now, it is none of my concern now the thing is written I am through with it.
The lemon juice is me trying to see if there is anything in this world or the next that will make or let my face be itself without those horrible ‘things’—and at the moment it seems to be working! though it may be simply that the life I lead is one of exemplary dullness and regularity. But I shall continue the experiment—Lord, if it is as simple as that, a lemon a day. I can hardly think so.
Each of my letters, you know by now, asks some favour of you. This one is less involved than many—a book which I can’t get down here. In fact you may not be able to in N.Y.—it being only recently out in France. The author is named Rousset; the title La Vie Concentrationaire or Le Monde Concentrationaire. You might try a store called Coin de France on 48th St, or Brentano; and there’s a good French book store on that Radio City promenade. Don’t give too much effort to it, it may well not be available. [...]
A splendid letter from Jacob—after so many of the talks, the scenes I have been through with him, what I have seen him go through, you may imagine how happy I am that he can write: “When I’m alone I’m more content than I’ve been in years . . .” not that I don’t watch him with some element of unChristian jealousy!
Your mention of my “plans” sounding “glorious” is somewhat disconcerting. I must confess, they do not at all hold consistent, even from day to day. The illusion of studying again—at Oxford or Zurich or Neuchatel—something which I allow myself to indulge occasionally. If when the time comes I can manage it, all the better. But hardly ‘plans’! At least I am (1) earning and saving (2) thinking reading and writing—which is not time wasted dreaming. The novel harrows me all the time, sometimes it looks all right, at others impossible. (The latter at the moment). It must take time and quiet writing: there is so much of desperation in it, that it cannot be written in desperation, if you follow me.
One thing though: to keep away from America. Except for New York and Long Island, but America I have such pity for, fury at, why are Americans so awful, their voices, everything. You can’t imagine Pedro Miguel, what the Americans have done in “civilising” this strip called Canal Zone, how they have sterilized it. And why do they feel it incumbent upon them to behave with rudeness everywhere away from home? Barren ignorance is most horrible when it is in power—the picture of the American soldier abroad will never cease to make me shudder. And the prospect of another war, wanting to fight the good fight and not finding it in my country’s side, worst of all.
Sorry to end on a dismal note—end of paper.
Love,
