William Gaddis

Steven Moore

A collection of definitive letters by the National Book Award-winning author of J R and A Frolic of His Own shares insights into his boarding-school education, his years in Mexico and other countries, his struggles with family life and the factors that influenced his acclaimed novels.

Letters of William Gaddis

Daryl Houston

I'm a Gaddis junkie but didn't anticipate hoovering this one up as I did. I had thought I might pick at it over a long period, maybe on the toilet or in dribs and drabs at bedtime. But I read every word of it over the course of about a week and enjoyed it a great deal. Plenty of it is routine, perhaps even outright boring, as a young Gaddis writes his mother dozens of letters to briefly report his location and ask for books or money, but there's plenty besides that, and even seeing the progression as Gaddis grows and struggles and publishes and struggles some more is fascinating. 

Writers of great books have always seemed in a way untouchable to me, erudite, talented beyond the grasp of mere mortals, maybe even almost vatic. As a sometime-scribbler, I've read work by the likes of Gaddis and felt simultaneous despair ("I could never do what he's done") and inspiration ("I should try!"), but in the end I've always come around to feeling like it must be somehow easier for such among the elect as Gaddis than it has felt for me. Reading his frustrations and false starts shows me that he is human and that putting out work like his is a task of staggering difficulty (which I knew, of course, but that, in fits of laziness, it's easy to forget). Reading the letters makes me feel, well, yes, still as if Gaddis is light years beyond me in intelligence and talent and work ethic, and, no, I could not do what he did in writing his great books... but maybe it's not as far out of my reach as it's easy to roll over and feel. So then there is a kind of hope in these pages for the sometime-scribbler.

I especially enjoyed letters from the time during which he was writing J R (my favorite of his books by a mile), and a few letters to his children are tender and lovely.

Probably this would be a snooze for anybody not already pretty well wrapped up in Gaddis.

Letters of William Gaddis

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