Ormonde de Kay
talks about William Gaddis
in an interview with
Charles Monaghan
December 24, 1993

de K: I think it must have been around '46 or '47, in the Village.

CM: It wasn't at Harvard.

de K: No, it wasn't at Harvard, because, as I discovered only a few years ago, Willie was sick with some mysterious ailment in what was to have been his freshman year, so he didn't actually begin Harvard till September of '42. And so, of course, he hung around with the other freshmen in the class of '46.  He's technically in my class of '45.

CM:  So back to the Village. He lived on Horatio Street?

de K:  He lived on Horatio Street, and he was extremely active in the lady-pleasing department.  And, you probably know, he stole a girl away from Thomas Heggen.  He [Heggen] was famous at the time.  He wrote "Mr. Roberts."  And then poor old Tom Heggen committed suicide.  I don't think there was any cause and effect there.  I hope not anyway.

CM: Tell me about this incident.

de K:  All I know is that Gaddis spirited this girl away from...Of course, the champion womanizer then, and for many many years thereafter, in the Village, was Anatole Broyard. We all know that.

CM:  I know. Had you known him [Gaddis] by reputation at Harvard?

de K:  No.

CM:  So how did you encounter him?

de K:  Well yes, I had vaguely heard of him because he was head of the Lampoon.

CM:  Were you on the Lampoon?

de K:  No, but I used to contribute to the Lampoon.  But I was on the Advocate, which was the literary magazine, and there was some dumb rule you couldn't be on both.  I got on the Lampoon in 1966, as an honorary member between Elliot Gould before me and Natalie Wood after me.

CM:  Do you recall what the first time would have been [meeting Gaddis]?  At one of the Village bars?

de K:  It might have been the San Remo.

CM:  The San Remo, of course, is in The Recognitions, you know, as the Via Reggio.

de K:  Oh, is it?

CM:  It was heavily written about in the book.

de K:  It might have been at the San Remo, or it might have been at a party.  There were a lot of people giving parties then, bring-your-own-liquor parties.

CM:  Who were Gaddis's friends in the Village at that time?

de K:  My classmate Douglas Wood, I think, was one.  He's now dead.  And Donn Alan Pennebaker, the movie-maker. [The cinema verite film maker D.A. Pennebaker spoke at Gaddis's memorial program.]  Just out of Yale.  And I think he [Pennebaker] was married already.

CM:  To his first wife.

de K:  To his first wife, Sylvia.

CM:  Tell me about Douglas Wood.

de K:  Douglas Wood was working for one of the networks.  No, actually he had played an important role in putting together that series called "Victory at Sea."  And I think he was probably doing that at that time.

CM:  He was a Harvard man.  Had Gaddis known him at Harvard?

de K:  I don't think so, and for the same reason I didn't.  Because Douglas and I were in '45, and he was effectively in '46, although technically in our class.

CM:  Gaddis never graduated.  Apparently, there was some incident, and he had to leave school.

de K:  The story I heard was that he was at the Hygiene Department, being measured or weighed or examined or something.  And he was either smashed, or very, very angry about something.  Anyway, he jumped out of a second-story window onto the street.  And he was, I think, cashiered from the college for that reason.  He was very, very depressed and angry, I think, at the time.  He didn't like being in college in the middle of the war.

CM:  And when he lived on Horatio Street, he lived alone or had a roommate?

de K:  I seem to remember he had a roommate.  What was his name?  French name.  Not Broyard . . . Chandler Brossard.

CM:  And Donn Alan Pennebaker, they just became friends through the Village milieu?

de K:  Well, through Douglas and me.

CM:  You knew Pennebaker?

de K:  I knew him through Douglas.  Douglas and Penny lived together.  And then Penny married.  Douglas didn't marry until a few years later.  But we all kind of palled around together.  Knew each other.

CM:  How did Wood die?

de K:  Wood died under mysterious circumstances.  He got horribly sick on a Saturday, and his wife was out of town.  And, somehow or other, he couldn't get to a hospital.

CM:  When you first knew Gaddis, was The Recognitions . . .

de K:  He'd already started The Recognitions.

CM:  Was it called The Recognitions?

de K:  I don't know.

CM:  Did you ever see any of the manuscript?

de K:  No, never did.

CM:  He would work on it during the day, and then come out and party at night?

de K:  Well, I don't know what he did during the day.  Did he have a job at that time?

CM: I don't think so.

de K:  The mainstay, what kept Willie going, year after year, was a hundred dollars a month from the rent of his mother's house in Massapequa [Long Island].  And when he went to Panama, that was still coming in.  And when he went to Europe . . . 

CM:  Had his mother died?

de K:  Oh no.  His mother was still very much alive.  She was a very fine woman.

CM:  Bit she contributed part of the rent?

de K:  I think so, yes.  A hundred bucks a month.  It may have been the whole rent.

CM:  She lived elsewhere.  Out on the island?

de K:  I don't know.  I remember seeing her.  I saw her many times.

CM:  Can you tell me what she looked like, and what she was like?

de K:  She was a handsome woman.  I remember she had a strong nose, and a good, firm chin.

CM:  Did she look like Willie?

de K:  Well, I suppose if you saw them side by side, you could tell Willie was her son.  Of course, I never saw the father.

CM:  Did he ever speak of his father?

de K:  Never to me.

CM:  OK, so Gaddis ups and leaves for Panama.

de K:  He leaves for Panama.

CM:  Were people in touch with him when he was down there?  Did he ever communicate with you?

de K:  Not with me, no.  In fact, I really got to know Willie [well] for the first time in Paris.  And that was in 1949.

CM:  He makes some money in Panama, and then goes for a European grand tour, that sort of thing?

de K:  Well, he went to live in Spain for a while.  He loved Spain.  And he lived en prince.  He had a house and a servant and everything.  All for a hundred bucks a month.  What he was getting from the rent of the house in Massapequa.   And then he came to Paris.  And he immediately took a scunner against Paris. He didn't like Paris, but he stayed there.

CM:  Do you remember what time in '49?

de K:  No.

CM:  You had already established yourself there?

de K:  I got there, I think, in March '49.  I was a freelance screenwriter at the time.  Thank God for the Marshall Plan.  Willie was working on The Recognitions.  And he could live quite well in Paris for a hundred bucks a month.

CM:  You bet.  So did he move in with you?

de K:  No, we didn't live together.  But there was a time when I sought refuge from a Turkish termagant with him.  He lived in the First Arrondissement, which I thought was very characteristic of him.  Not to run with the crowd.  The First is very businesslike.  He lived in the Rue Chausee d'Antin.  

CM:  By the Stock Exchange.

de K:  It's very commercial.  It's not at all cozy and folksy.  It's not at all the Latin Quarter.  It's on the Right Bank.

CM:  What kind of apartment did he have?

de K:  Well, it was pretty small and pretty messy.  And I remember being there in Gaddis's apartment at the time of the Inchon landings [Sept. 15, 1950].  And one of his hangouts was . . . instead of hanging out at the Flore or the Deux Magots . . .

CM:  Which is where you guys hung out?

de K:  Where all the pretentious litterateurs, American, English, hung out.  He hung out at a place called the Electricity Cafe [presumably Cafe d'Electricite], which was entirely unknown to tourists.

CM:  Where was it located?

de K:  I think it was the Boulevard des Italiens, but I couldn't swear to it.

CM:  Was it a regular cafe, with tables outside?

de K:  I guess with tables outside.  But it was a workingman's cafe.  It had nothing to do with tourists.

CM:  Did he have friends in Paris.

de K:  Oh sure.  Of course, his best friend was Margaret Williams.

CM:  Tell me about Margaret Williams.

de K:  Margaret Williams was a really live-wire, wonderful, very pretty American girl, very bright, who is now married to Bob Ginna, who used to be editor-in-chief, I think, of Little, Brown for a while, and is now sort of a freelance.  Lives in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.  And she does, too.  Margaret was his [Gaddis's] great love, at that time anyway.  And inevitably, they broke up.  I don't remember any of that. I wasn't around.

CM:  How about any writer types he hung around with?

de K:  One writer I remember meeting through Willie was Otto Friedrich.  He was already a published novelist.  But I think his best friend was somebody from Harvard called Barney Emmart.  He was in Paris, I think, at that time.  Barney died about four or five years ago.  It was a crushing blow for Willie.  Very, very sad.

CM:  Where, do you know?

de K:  Well, he came from Alabama, and I think he was down south there.

CM:  There is a character, the Alabama Rammer-Jammer man, in The Recognitions.

de K:  That probably comes from the name of the University of Alabama humor magazine, the Alabama Rammer-Jammer.  The Lampoon exchanged copies of with all the other humor magazines in America.

CM:  There's also a character, a Harvard man named Ed Feasley.  Does that mean anything to you?

de K:  I don't think Ed Feasley does.  But there's a derisive jingle in The Recognitions" about somebody called Bernie Winebiscuit.  That's a takeoff on Bernie Winebaum, who was a classmate of ours.

CM:  Tell me about Bernie.

de K:  Bernie was a delightful rogue who never did anything much.  Well, that's not fair.  He worked for the UJA [United Jewish Appeal] after the war, I mean 1949 and '50.  And he was on the New Yorker for a while, but in the advertising department.  And he spent most of his adult life in Athens, living that kind of life.  He's dead now.

CM:  And when did Gaddis leave Paris?

de K:  Well, it must have been after I left.  I left when I felt I had to come home because the Korean War had started, and I belatedly realized I was in something called the inactive reserve.  I felt I had to go back.  If I'd stayed there, done nothing, nothing would have happened to me, but I could picture myself as a draft dodger.  But Willie was still there when I left, and that would be at the end of 1950.  So I really lost touch with him for a while.  I was back in the Navy from February '51 to May '52.  I was on the USS Braine.  I was known as de Kay of the Braine.  I saw Willie now and then in New York. 

CM:   How about the time The Recognitions was published, '55.  Were you in contact with him at that time?

de K:  Yes, I saw him then.

CM:  Parties of mutual friends?

de K:  Right.

CM:  Can you tell me some of the names?

de K:  Well, again, it would be Douglas [Wood].

CM:  Was Gaddis with Margaret in New York?

de K:  Yes, I think so.

CM:  What was happening with The Recognitions?

de K:  Well, The Recognitions was always growing, growing, growing, relentlessly, year after year.  And whenever Willie would speak about it, he would speak about Katie Carver, this wonderful editor he had.  You tell me that Bob Giroux . . .

CM:  Was connected at that time with it.

de K:  And that he was in favor of it?

CM:  Yes.

de K:  But anyway, I never heard him speak about that.  But he thought Katie Carver was just wonderful, and it was largely through her insistence that Harcourt Brace published it.  And, of course, I think it was quite respectably reviewed.  I think the reviewers didn't know quite what to say about it quite, so they kept dragging in James Joyce, Ulysses, just because it was such a bulky . . . 

CM:  It was badly reviewed.  It was panned, by and large.

de K:  Was it panned in the Times though?

CM:  Yes, Granville Hicks.  Do you remember Gaddis' s reaction to any of those reviews?

de K:  Alas, I don't.  I'm sorry.  It would have been interesting to know.

CM:  Was William Gass around New York at this time?

de K:  I don't think so.  I only became aware of the connection between William Gass and William Gaddis, oh, six or seven years ago, from what Willie told me. 

CM:  And Pat Black [the first Mrs. Gaddis]?

de K:  Pat was sweet, charming, very nice.  I guess to save money, they moved out of the city.  They lived in Croton, as I recall.  

CM:  They first lived on Second Avenue, didn't they? 

de K: They might have done.

CM:  Down in the East Village?

 de K: Yes, down in the East Village, long before it was the East Village.  It seems that around that time Willie was working for Pfizer, for the head of Pfizer, writing speeches for the president of Pfizer.  And he hated it, he just loathed it.  Couldn't stand it.

CM:  He didn't like the person.

de K:  He didn't like the person, and he hated the company.  And he thought they were cheating the public.  Rotten to the core. But anything for a buck. You have to . . . 

CM:  He had a family to support.

de K:  That's right.

CM:  He worked for the Ford Foundation for a while, doing a book on television.   Do you remember that?

de K:  Vaguely, just very vaguely.  And after that he did this freelance work writing documentary film scripts for Colonel Parker at the Signal Corps?

CM:  It was around that time.  After the publication of The Recognitions.

de K:  I was very jealous of Willie because I had, I thought, a much better, anyway a much longer, list of film credits than he did. Colonel Parker was always very pleasant to me, but he never hired me.

CM:  Who was Colonel Parker?

de K:  He was head of the Signal Corps film production unit in Queens.

CM:  In Astoria?

de K:  In Astoria.  In the old, I think, Biograph Studios.  It was a weird sort of place.

CM:  Do you remember what movies Willie made?

de K:  No I don't.  But I'm sure he does.  I'm sure he has them written down in his resume somewhere.

CM:  Did Willie come into town for parties and stuff like that?

de K:  Sure.  He did, and with Pat.  He was a good uxorious fellow.  Until they broke up.

CM:  Do you remember the cause of that?

de K:  No, I don't.  There are those who might have blamed Willie's, sort of, egocentricity, or selfishness.

CM:  A writer.

de K:  Yeah, that's right.

CM:  How about this second wife?

de K:  I knew her slightly, yeah. She was very neurotic.  Very pretty, very nice, but very neurotic, you know.  I met her through Willie.

CM:  Did you meet her before they got married?

de K:  Only after they got married.  And I remember a sort of telling scene with them at the 25th reunion of the class of 1945.  That would have been 1970, of course, June.   I was talking with a classmate called Justin Kaplan, the biographer.  And then the Gaddises arrived.  But Judy looked very unhappy.  And I heard that the next day, Willie left.  Because Judy said she must leave, they must leave. She just didn't like being with those older men, boring older men.  She was a lot younger than Willie.

CM:  Tell me about his new inamorata.

de K:  When he had the MacArthur Fellowship and was recognized as the great American novelist, back into his life swam the beautiful Muriel Oxenberg, now known as Muriel Oxenberg Murphy because she had married a garbage magnate, or a garbage-can maker, one or the other, named Murphy, who died, leaving her lots of money.  She had been a tremendous enthusiasm of Gaddis's when they were young.

CM:  At Harvard?

de K:  No, in New York.  In the postwar era. Muriel had worked for the Metropolitan.  She worked for Bob Hale, the curator of American painting at the Metropolitan Museum.

CM:  What era would this have been?

de K:  This would have been the late '40s.

CM:  Was Willie a friend of Bob Hale?

de K:  I don't think he was particularly a friend of Bob Hale.

CM:  Was Gaddis involved with art circles?

de K:  I think he must have been, and that could have been how he got to know Muriel.  Anyway, he was aggers-baggers about Muriel.  But at that time, so was half the male population of New York of that age group. And then, they came together after what, 35 years? 

CM:  Were they lovers at the time?

de K:  No, I don't think so.  I think that Willie burned to be her lover.  Muriel is absolutely beautiful.  And she's extremely intelligent.

CM:  She's the same age as Willie?

de K:  More or less.  But time has been very, very kind to her. She looks absolutely great.  It was really great for an old friend of Muriel's to see her getting together with Willie.  And they live pretty happily, I guess, out in Easthampton on Georgica Pond, where I grew up as a child.

 CM:  When was the last time you saw him?

de K:  A couple of months ago.  I think I just ran into him at lunch at the Century Club.  And I called him up for some reason.  Oh yes, I called him up to ask where he gets his elegant clothes.  Because he's really quite a dandy, as you know.  And I've always known he got his clothes at thrift shops.  And I wanted to know which thrift shop.  He's told me it's the Irvington Thrift Shop on 80th and Second Avenue.  Well, I went there and had no luck at all.

CM:  Did he always do that, from his Village days?

de K:  Always, apparently.

CM:  He is one of the dandies.  Double-breasted suits are his favorite.

de K:  He loves double-breasted suits, and he loves immaculate, beautiful sports coats with gray-flannel trousers.

CM:  The tape is running out.  Concluding remarks?

de K:  Well, the Village is those days was pretty great.  It was the land of freedom, and of libertarianism rampant.  But it was also my home town, because I was born in the Village, on Perry Street, then moved to West 11th Street...[Tape runs out]

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