Letters of William Gaddis. William Gaddis

my own conquest of the other language; I am tampering with it to some extent successfully in conversation, but it will take much more doing. And so as for plans I have none, in the way of study. I do think that before too long, perhaps about 3weeks, I shall leave Madrid and go down to stay at Sevilla; but I shall let you know, certainly, and the US Embassy address in Madrid will get me eventually. And so: if the tenants come through, will you please send half in a draft payable, if they are to make it thus, to me at the bank of spain; & the rest just cashiers check (which, I must add, must be received by the 16th of January, as that is when my visa runs out). Life here is not at all as cheap as I had hoped, but I do believe it is working out. And how wonderful that it can really be happening. Of course I have the constant feeling of the press it must make on you, and wondering always how you are making out, how you can make out, and as I foolishly repeat, eternally grateful.

      What with the holidays—and I must admit to a good dose of sentimental loneliness—I had thought of sending you a cable; but finally it was too late to send it to the Edison & I did not know what your address is now. And so I sent no cable, not even the smallest gift; but again, one day I shall make up for these ingracious silences. This experience now is certainly the biggest of my life, and it will eventually be turned profitably. And so I hope that you are having good holidays, have had a good Christmas today, and that the New Year will be a celebration for you of the sort you wish. I think of nothing more just now; shall write again soon, and my best wishes to ‘all those others’.

      and love to you,

      W.

      because I do not hope to turn again: the opening line of “Ash Wednesday” (1930).

      El Escorial: called San Zwingli in R; both Rev. Gwyon (I.1) and Wyatt (III.3) visit it.

      Tyrol: the mountainous region between Italy and Austria.

      sound of a brook running [...] cow manure: counterfeiter Frank Sinisterra (calling himself Mr. Yák at this point) also visits San Zwingli: “With this spring in his step he was soon up behind the town, where the sound of running water nearby, the braying of burros and the desultory tinkling of bells [...] reached him where he paused to sniff, and then stood still inhaling the pines above him and the delicious freshness of cow manure, like a man rediscovering senses long forgotten under the abuses of cities” (R 776).

      tenants: WG received the rent on the house in Massapequa, his major source of income until the mid 1950s.

      To Edith Gaddis

      Madrid

      [27 December 1948]

      Well well; dear Mother again.

      I had put this off until getting up to the Embassy, both to look for mail & to query Our Representative on the usual concerns of an innocent abroad. And so now I have been, queried & been queried, and got your letters. It is a nice feeling, a kind of re-affirmation of one’s identity after many days wandering in boats, trains, dark hotel rooms and strange cities, to see a familiar hand, read familiar words and names (in, I add vehemently, a familiar language). And many thanks for Barney’s note, a delight as always; but he of course is by now a rather continental person; and writes: —Spain sounds like a splendid thing, and it would be good to see you . . . he just off for a little time in Paris France &c. These fellow creatures of mine who have made Europe into one large madhouse, each capital a room, and they running from room-to-room, screaming & giggling (to use a phrase of Barney’s) . . . well it is all beyond me.

      By now I feel settled in a way, not for life in Madrid, but I mean mentally; such things as actually getting letters here makes it seem that I am still in the same world and not barefoot in South Africa as I felt earlier (though a rather glacial South Africa to be sure). But with this good-sized room and large window, pleasant girls among the ‘help’ who applaud my Spanish, and getting used to the food which is not bad, I suppose one might say dull, but food. And having been fortunate in my choice of books & papers brought over with me, some of Eliot I had not read which is The Answer (just this fragment, listen:

      “So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

      Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres—

      Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt

      Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

      Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

      For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

      One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

      Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

      With shabby equipment always deteriorating

      In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

      Undisciplined squads of emotion . . .” &c. But best his speaking of time, and just in line with Bergson, whom I was reading last summer, and all of it in line exactly with my attempts at thought and clear picturing of us all here &c &c. . . you know how this can go on, as it did many evenings before the fireplace in Massapequa, evenings I look back on with very poignant fondness; and apologise now for the rantings & ravings I subjected you to concerning The State of the Union & Mr Tennessee Williams (whose work, on reconsideration, I find: that he is not to be blamed, pilloried, spat upon (as was my attitude) because it is bad, because his work is simply a projection of the times, the degeneration of the Myth & the consequent looking from every heart for ‘a cheap sentimental humanism at someone else’s expense’—and wherebetter found than the theatre, where one does not have to leave the sticky mess with the feeling of guilt one ‘suffers’ after personal mummeries. No; the blame must go to the times which have allowed such work as his to be found good (because I gather that as far as the author was concerned these plays are ‘sincere’, ‘his best’, &c—but you see sincere on the same cardboard level as his audience. They are the ones to knock on the head. Eh bien. I am preparing something here to knock them on the head with.

      oh dear. Are such letters as this entertaining or edifying for you? One may well ask, —did he go to SPAIN simply to have 3000miles of water between him and the things he polemicizes? We shall get to Spain in a moment.

      I also have Dante here (in English, he admitted, cowardly) and find I am just ready for going for the first time through his magnificence. And am attending to many notes & ideas which have somehow lay dead in the hand these past months, feeling alive again. As for study; I am I do believe making some headway into the language; I can hold a passable conversation with the scullery girls or the Lady blonde (ersatz with a vengeance) who also lives in this very proper house and seems to want to go dancing . . . no I was talking about Study wasn’t I. Also reading, with great chains of ignorance, Ortega y Gasset (a contemporary Sp. philosopher, social thinker) and starting a play by Calderon de la Barca, a 17th century Sp. playwright, in Spanish, with the harried dictionary in hand. And so, as for plans. I am more fond of Madrid daily, and shall stay a few weeks more I guess, don’t know; but do have the feeling that, you know, something may happen (the feeling we all have today, heaven knows what the Something is, it never happens; I think this feeling of constant suspension laid in the Christian myth of the Last Judgement which heavy heavy hangs over our heads & imaginary souls). . . anyhow that I want to see Spain more before settling anywhere at anything. And think it may be the perfectly reasonable thing to do to leave most of my luggage with a friend here, buy a 3000kilomtre ticket (about 1800miles I believe) and go about, spend a week in Toledo, in Granada, &c., that ticket I think about 20$. As Walker Evans said when I saw him, —Don’t go over and sit in one place; move around, look at it all. He is right. I still must get papers straightened out, of which more later. [...]

      For the moment I have borrowed a bit from this ‘fine fellow’ Taylor, now in Paris but should be back here any day. Don’t worry over that, it is the sort of exchange that straightens itself out,