But here is something, in this picture of goodness as an attribute of ‘simplicity’. And this falls in with what you said in your letter, the business of — Yes, but he was smart, &c. And also with the ruction I was (am) in over being ‘anticipated’. I had made a note, perhaps with your words subconsciously in mind, that today the general attitude is that anyone can be Christian, it is ridiculously easy and rather foolish — I think of that word ‘sucker’ which is such a worldly condemnation — and that the only way to gain respect is to be worldly, sophisticated (in acts not just words or cigarette-smoking) ‘smart’. Well, after that revelation I came on this, written by a Bishop Butler in 1736 (quoted in Toynbee’s (abridged) Study of History):
It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.
Well; to not only be anticipated by 200years, but by one with such style as Bishop Butler! It was very disconcerting. And one goes back to the attempts that have been made to show the Christian goodness personified in an ‘idiot’, Dostoevski’s greatest attempt, and the foolish father of the young man in Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness. Still there seems to be a great rift between them and Bunyan’s Pilgrim. Now there is a man called Silone, I think you must have read his Bread & Wine and And He Hid Himself, who fascinates me, because I do not make out where he stands with himself, as regards the problem of Communism and Christian practice. Did he disown the former in Bread & Wine? I believed so, and certainly even in the Communist preaching he did do there he contradicts himself. And where that may have been vague, there was nothing vague about the finish of one character as a (the) Crucifixion. And one remembers Nathaniel West throwing away the political hope of Communism (in A Cool Million) and embracing the Crucifixion (—Each of us is Christ, and each of us is crucified. Miss Lonelihearts (?))
For reading, I must say again all of my allegiance to this work of Toynbee; if it is it not the most triumphant work of reason in our time. I have finally finished the abridgement, which I think is magnificent, and am wondering if I have the nerve to start the original work, or rather to start and finish it. Such perception is to my confused accumulation of mind fantastic; for instance, that he can find Spengler as quickly and cleverly (but never cleverness for its own sake) as this: [“]Spengler, whose method is to set up a metaphor and then proceed to argue from it as if it were a law based on observed phenomena. .[”] And since I feel the verge of fatal enthusiasm, I do not want to say more of this work, it has been so busy teaching me, articulating so many things that I have been suspecting and almost thought.
Your saying that you are investigating writing among young people and students brings a question to my mind: I am exceedingly curious about how much of the influence of the NewYorker you are finding. You know, there are a lot of people in NewYork who have a war with that magasine finally that they simply live on the bitterness their experiences with it has engendered. They are older ones, but I know so many younger who have lived under its shadow for years; and I speak for myself, because from my college work on it was there. And since I do not want to waste any of my energy in bitterness, what greater waste, I have drawn a line through it. But I do think about it, remember how much time I spent assaulting it. After college I worked there for something over a year, and when I quit it was with the sole idea of selling them something written. Starting with a tragedy of youth, an exhaustive history of the Player Piano, which I still have and treasure as I am told mothers do their strangely-shaped children which the world derides. But the influence on those trying to write fiction. One thing: certainly the NewYorker does not ask it of anyone; simply there it is and if anyone wants to waste his life trying to sell them something he may, that is not their concern. Is it because there are so few places that publish good fiction and pay well? I wonder that I have never seen anything of yours in that magasine, I wonder if it is simply by chance or if you have dark reasons too. The point is that their influence seems so horribly disproportionate; have you found it so?
For magasines, I see your name on the prospectus of something called the Hudson Review. I gather that the magasine itself is out by now, someone sent me this prospectus months ago, and I sent them a story which was returned with a very kind letter, I don’t care it was a good story, it will be re-written.
But is the magasine as good as it sounds it could be? “. . will not open its pages to those whose only merits lie in their anguish, their fervour, and their experimentation,” how wonderful to read that. (And I find the comments highly entertaining: yours is fine, Mr Blackmur’s ‘It looks like the place where one can put one’s work’ makes me burst out in laughter: who is this ‘one’? I love that.) It sounds like a very positive step for our side.
The revolution here has been over for some time. I got up here in time to get out to Cartago, and be there fighting in the fighting. There is too much to say to chatter here. But of the disinterestedness of all of the people, the almost entire absence of grasping, of self-promotion. It was a real people’s revolution; and now I have a great admiration for the CostaRicans; you cannot imagine the kindness they have showed me. But still the self-sufficience: that they were pleased that I should come and volunteer with them, but you know still they did not need me, and in the kindest most genuine ways they showed this. Because CostaRica is still traditional — and largely I suppose due to the hold of the Church — and the family is still family, and it is splendid and interesting to see the hospitality that such a traditional society can afford, as to one rootless, which our (eastern) society cannot because it is rootless itself. And it brings more and more of questions: is it presumptuous to fight in other people’s revolutions? &c &c.
And so I wait for a boat; it is a very peaceful feeling. I cannot work on US boats because I am not Union, God knows how one gets into the Union, it is very strong; and so hope to get a CostaRican, they run small banana boats up to Tampa and I think it can be managed. Meanwhile the girl who has been cleaning my floor with half a cocoanut has finished telling me a long story, it was highly adventuresome but I am not sure what about since it was in Spanish, I think it was about a flood, it started out with the news that once recently it rained here day and night for a month; she is very cheering. And from Mr Eliot, — It won’t be minutes but hours, it won’t be hours but. . days? years? I don’t remember.
Sincerely, my best regards to you,
William Gaddis
