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
Thomas McGonigle
