Hello Bill,
I was very happy to get the letters and to know that your work is—well I don’t know how to finish that sentence . . . I like to hear about it and I really do study the catalogues I have here. I agree with most of what Jo says in her write-up, except the idea that it is ‘devoid of the tragic view of life’: for instance the painting, Muscatine Diver, is full of agony and helplessness. There is the trust that Jo writes of but it is the trust of man in his own helplessness, and surely this is a view into or out of a place of tragedy . . . don’t mind my inflated meanderings. I feel this, though. I suppose you have to bear with what people say of your work. Remember we were talking of Francis Bacon and his distorted mirror-faces? It occurs to me that they’re also people caught in a world without gravity (g), in wind-tunnels of outer space—are there winds in outer space?
In your paintings people grow like plants out of their surroundings, they are their surroundings, and as with the woman and the dog (this is how I see that) they divide into different species and still be part one of the other. In the scene of the woman and the deer the woman is the deer and the deer is the tree.
In Paul’s paintings the objects seem to be gifts or visitors out of the sky, perfectly formed as the egg is perfectly formed, a life-gift or visitor. Gifts stay or are retrieved by the giver; visitors leave. Paul traps them in bottles and glasses and in a human skull; in postcards and books and sometimes just in an area of colour—or on a crucifix: I think this is very exciting.
Now read on:
Christmas came and went. I was alone in the house with a cheesecake and every few hours I hacked at it until it gradually diminished. I enjoyed the quietness. Jo called from South Hadley and as usual had a delightful tale—how Rural Violence trapped her in the basement when she was hanging out her undies, offered her a huge glass of whisky which she drank and then she was drunk for three days . . . Elnora called from Philadelphia where she was surrounded by people, I think, a nephew of eight and a niece of four. She seemed to be engaged in playing chasing games and my imagination quailed at the thought of her rushing up and down the stairs chasing and being chased, as she said was happening. I’m going to New York on Tuesday and I’ll be with Elnora until I’m due at Yaddo on January 5th.
I look forward to getting a New Year portrait! Mine may be delayed—well I don’t know how long they take to print & I haven’t put in my choice yet.
You’re right about F. in the W. (my way of saying lewdly Faces in the Water). I mean it’s written & that’s that. Were I writing it today I should make many changes. You may not believe this but I purposely omitted much & ‘toned’ it down so as not to make it too grim. I haven’t read it for years but I remember the people I wrote of and thinking of them from time to time I am still moved by their plight. I think that was hardest—to see so much suffering.
Enough.
I’m sending you a copy of the story that will be in the New Yorker some time, I don’t know when. The funny marks, including the E at the top are merit marks, I suppose, & E is lowest. They’re holding it because it is not a fashionable story—I think.
O to be in Santa Barbara, not in Baltimore,
for whoever wakes in Santa Barbara sees through the patio door,
dear cunning Ned about to shower
his urine on the paradise flower.
And after morning when mid-morning follows
& the vitamins have been taken in swift swallows,
see where the apricot-cat becomes a menace
to Ned as he contemplates the stones of Venice.
Love
J
a German word for eternity—common in Rilke and Goethe
JANUARY/YADDO
The arrival of Janet’s muse, part man, part woman, part bird, part cat, made in a collage drawing game.
“Thank you for the inspired drawing of my muse . . .” [Letter 19]aa
Illustration based on a parlour game that involved several participants drawing on a folded sheet of paper.
13. Elnora’s Place January 1970 (handwritten)
Dear Bill,
Your curious (black & white) drawing arrived today and shall be appropriately framed whereupon you & Paul & collaborators go down in history. Your letter was a delight, also the communication from the Alters Art Gallery, also the extraordinary evidence that Ned is beginning to express himself in English & that his number work (as his calendar sensitivity) is commendable. The rewards of your training him must be uplifting to your body and soul.
Meanwhile I write from New York in a bit of a daze and haze from Elnora’s womb-like apartment where she lies most hours enveloped in sleep, in human hibernation—I guess the only way to resist the world & its pressures. We’ve had fun, in her waking hours; her New Year meal was delicious & it was when I was sodden with black-eyed peas, corn bread & salt pork hocks, collard greens, that I whispered my timid hello into the N.Y.—L.A. telephone line. O to be in . . . . etc.
My publisher has given me a copy of one of his magnificent books, for Christmas: Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry & as Braziller was the only one in his office I was able to help myself to some of my books which he fetched from the store room: 2 Pocket Mirrors. I gave one to Elnora. Would you like one? And another I’ll give to Jo. Next week I get the galleys of my ‘shocking, wildly comic, lyrical, tragic,’ etc. etc. etc. book & if I can I will treat the editor who wrote the blurb with my new kind of Death Ray—I’m awfully sorry but the bottom has fallen out of the Peedauntal Business and I can’t for the life of me understand why, or what happened, or whether it was my business acumen that failed or simply the cheap material used in the manufacture of the peedauntals.
I’ve gone into the Death & Thought-Ray business, quite modestly, and I still offer the deluxe limited line of Peedauntals. My Death Ray will be useful for editors who write blurbs and, later, for critics. It may help at Yaddo also. I know it’s not a very original product but my advisers recommend (through a spokesman of course) that I be conservative in my business interests. Thought-Rays, Feeling Rays, Death-Rays have (apparently) a steady market. So far, I’m the only one I know who uses them—at least my model which has many extras & a hi-fi tuning device & people-selector. It can fit, of course, like any small object or animal—say, raccoons & suchlike—into any pocket or recess & that’s the beauty of it, the users say.
Enough of news of the dull work-a-day world. Here is a curious (handwritten) verse.
He wore gold braid. His blood shone
like urine in the sun. He was afraid
of water, fire and heart transplant,
of mountains higher than seven thousand feet.