Tuesday, March 18, 2014

STEPS TO LITERARY INHUMATION

      Freumbichler writes, what you are about to read is an attempt probably futile to escape the fate explained by the title, but as it would seem the author of this blog is teetering as is often said on the edge of passing into another state though readers of the books of Thomas Bernhard are familiar to similar situations and Freumbichler writing--- as he addresses himself in this manner--- is no accident and while dying in 1949 it is true that  is still no reason not to hear from him since such shadows remain forever within the village limits of Patchogue.

                  
4                                        
 In 1962  my mother typed my first story WAS IT WORTH IT? since she knew how to type and I sent the story off to the Saturday Evening Post, the only magazine other than SIGN MAGAZINE  my family subscribed to.  Of course the story came back with a little printed rejection slip. 

                   5
IN 1970 I asked Lawrence Durrell if he ever thought about his future reputation and he replied, "What has posterity ever done for me?"  
      
                  6
Dalkey Archive Published two of my books: THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV and GOING TO PATCHOGUE.  Northwestern University Press did PETKOV in paperback.  
Dalkey Archive two years ago contracted to publish ST. PATRICK'S DAY Dublin 1974 but have told me it has been postponed.  So one can say it forthcoming... I hope, still.

                   7  
Over the years Richard Seaver, Sam Vaughan Daniel Halpern have all said nice things about manuscripts I have shown them but sadly they are not prepared to predict sufficient sales to convince whoever it is... but I have learned this is all really a matter of accident and whim and these men have not been prepared to give into my sentences in fortune telling as they have been able to do for others.  This is called spilt milk.

8
It is not unusual for writers to talk and write about being posthumous as I first heard of this from Edward Dahlberg now more than 4o years ago and have always known--- in that place--- but I have tried to hold to Durrell's comment even as he has mostly disappeared from the public world of reading...

so, here I am showing you what the backhoe reads like when it comes for the steps a writer takes to self-inhumation in the form of two letters to editors who I thought possibly powerful, possibly might be interested.  They are self-explanatory and to date come with no replies.  I did sent them by that most unconventional means possible today: the United State Postal Service so of course both letters might have been lost in the mail---though Freumbichler writes: no way can you descend to that level of stupidity

                                                                      *****

3 MARCH, 2014

Dear Kate Medina,
                   Toward the end of June 1972 you wrote me a little note after reading “A Son’s Father’s Day” in the Village Voice.  You had asked if I had anything I might show you and I think I did send along something and nothing happened as it was probably not meant to be.  Possibly, Harriet Wasserman who I had met  through Hannah Green and Sam Vaughan,  had been in touch later with you but all of that is so long ago though your little note was very important to me as a writer back then.
          You might know Dalkey Archive published two of my books: THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV and GOING TO PATCHOGUE.  PETKOV appeared and is still in paper from Northwestern University Press and PATCHOGUE was eventually finally done in paper by DA two years ago.  They have another novel ST. PATRICK’S DAY Dublin 1974 under contract but I have been told by John O’Brien that he has to postpone it into some dim future time.
          Both books were well reviewed in the New York Times (they even found Andrei Codrescu to review PETKOV) and reviews of PATCHOGUE appeared in Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, The Voice and the LA Times.  I well know that this was all another time and have seen the changes as I have reviewed and written with some frequency for all of the major newspapers here in the US and in The Guardian in London.
          The manuscript I am writing you about is JUST LIKE THAT and I have in mind a long subtitle:  A book from the Sixties of the last century: a beginning to that moment and the end with no distinction between truth and fiction.  The book concludes in the year after you wrote to me.
          The first section, a beginning, has a young man going from Dublin in the Spring of 1965 to the DDR.  The opening of the book finds two young men in bed together in Leipzig  and the question asked by the German, “Are you Jewish?” 
          Of course the place, the question and a poster noted:  HÄNDE WEG VON VIETNAM
          Barbara Probst Solomon, who I am sure you know, published the opening and concluding parts of this section in subsequent issues of her journal THE READING ROOM (2002). 
          The second part of the book:  the end of the Sixties is located on the Upper West Side and is held in place by the death of the narrator’s father Upstate while he is living on 114th Street. 
          A long section from this part was published by William O’Rourke in the Notre Dame Review in 2012 and is centered on the narrator’s relationship [what a terrible word] with Anthony Burgess and others in the bars near Columbia along with the theatrical recreations of the life and times of Charlie Manson and  the intense racial and sexual goings-on inside the Sullivanian world of those large apartments on Riverside Drive are not missed as is the nightly pilgrimage between The Gold Rail, The West End and Forlini’s along there on Broadway.  (The piece in the Notre Dame Review was listed as a notable essay in The Best Essays of 2013)
          Now the reason for this actual letter:  the manuscript exists as a manuscript.  It was typed on Word Star.  I held on to that program for the longest time.  I have partial versions in more contemporary e-forms but the complete manuscript exists as just that.
          Of late, I did have the pleasure, obscure as all such things are, of discovering that Nadine Gordimer in the 1990s had read my reviews in the LA Times and who remembered I had been in her class at Columbia and she was pleasantly surprised that I had survived my former existence.
          All of this is possibly irrelevant to the actual reading of JUST LIKE THAT.  And my most recent post at abcofreading.blogspot.com (of course the homage to Pound in the name) can serve as a sort of immediate calling card:    http://www.abcofreading.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-remains.html
          Finally, I am enclosing a photocopy of an article George Garrett asked me to do for the last yearbook of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, “A Writer’s Life.”

                                                All the best,
                                               
                                                Thomas McGonigle
                                            



                                                                     *****


5 February 2014

Dear Geraldy Howard,

At the end of 2013 we exchanged notes about Malcolm Cowley and I was pleasantly surprised to learn  you also knew him.  When I looked at the notes we exchanged I realized I had misspelled your first name and the ghost of Cowley was there again:  I was a terrible proofreader of my own work which Cowley had read down at Hollins College and he was telling me of why the first editions of Fitzgerald’s books are riddled with spelling error.  Max Perkins believed  an author knew best when it came to his own text, but he did not realize Fitzgerald was a lousy speller and contrary to what people thought  the errors in those early editions were not Scribner’s fault.
But the occasion for this letter which I am sending as a real letter is about my own work and my hope that you might be interested in reading one of my manuscripts.  I prevail upon the fact of having known of you since we were introduced or was  it only that Angela Carter at Keshkerrigan Bookstore told me of you so many years ago at her shop down there in the wilds near Chambers Street? 
You might know Dalkey Archive published two of my books  THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV and GOING TO PATCHOGUE.  PETKOV appeared also in paper from Northwestern University Press and PATCHOGUE was eventually finally done in paper by DA two years ago.  They have another novel under contract ST. PATRICK’S DAY Dublin 1974 but I have been told by John O’Brien that he has to postpone it in spite of a contract into some dim future date.
Angela must have introduced us as I published--- to this date--- the only Irish and Irish American literary journal ADRIFT and thought you had shared an interest in such and possibly in particular William Trevor... and while I was interested in Trevor Francis Stuart held my interest as did Ralph Cusack's CADENZA which lead to Gil Sorrentino and Jack O'Brien.  The small world.
          The book is JUST LIKE THAT and I have in mind a long subtitle:  A book from the so-called Sixties of the last century: a beginning to that moment and the end with no distinction between truth and fiction. 
          The first section, a beginning has a young man going from Dublin in the Spring of 1965 to the DDR.  The opening of the book finds two young men in bed together in Leipzig  and the question asked by the German, “Are you Jewish?” 
          Of course the place, the question and a poster noted:  HÄNDE WEG VON VIETNAM
          Barbara Probst Solomon published the opening and the concluding parts of this section in subsequent issues of her journal THE READING ROOM. 
          The second part of the book:  the end of the so-called Sixties is centered on the Upper  West Side and is held in place by the death of the narrator’s father Upstate while he is living on 114th Street. 
          A long section from this part was published by William O’Rourke in the Notre Dame Review in 2012 and is centered on the  narrator’s relationship [what a terrible word] with Anthony Burgess and others in the bars near Columbia along with the theatrical recreations of the life and times of Charlie Manson, the particular racial and sexual views of Johnny Green of Green County Alabama---  Green will subsequently die of AIDS, but that is another story.  Of course the Sullivanian world of those large aopartments on Riverside Drive are not missed as is the nightly pilgrimage between The Gold Rail, The West End and Forlini’s
          And now the reason for this actual letter.  The manuscript exists as a manuscript.  It was typed on Word Star.  I held on to that for the longest time.  I have partial versions in more contemporary e-forms but the complete manuscript exists as just that.
          Two editors/publishers have read versions of the manuscript, Richard Seaver and Daniel Halpern.  They both decided that they could not make money on it.  Of course I heard a version of that comment when after GOING TO PATCHOGUE came out and even with full page reviews in the Voice, in the Chicago Tribune and long articles in Newsday and the NY Times.. I was told by an agent, I can’t eat lunch off of you. 
          Of course years ago through Hannah Green I had Harriet Wasserman as an back in the early 70s when two little pieces appeared in the Village Voice, Goodbye W. H, Auden and A Son’s Father’s Day.
          So I court that terrible knife edge of age--- I remember that I even had a note from Kate Medina and Sam Vaughan…  though I hope this note is not an elaborate necrologue but as one gets older as I am sure you know…
          I used to review for Newsday, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and for the LaTimes until that paper ran finally out of money.
          Of late, I did have the pleasure, obscure as all such things are, of discovering that Nadine Gordimer had read my reviews in the LA Timea and remembered I had been in a class with her at Columbia.
          All of this is possibly irrelevant to the actual reading of JUST LIKE THAT. And my most recent post at abcofreading  (of course the name form {Pound)  can serve as a sort of immediate calling card:    http://www.abcofreading.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-remains.html
          Finally I am enclosing a photocopy of an article George Garrett asked me to do for the last yearbook of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, “A Writer’s Life.”

                                                All the best, 
                                                 Thomas McGonigle