Paterson (Revised Edition) (29 page)

48     by the mind’s/of the mind’s     
Partisan Review
, which also adds a following line “Walking:—”.

48     If that situation … for us     A continuation of the same letter [April 1943? ] from Marcia Nardi quoted on p. 45. See note to that page.

Z     Reads “H” on E5, probably Harvey Breit.

49     Shortly after midnight … fun     From
The Prospector
, October 29, 1936, 4. The minor verbal differences from the source—table at/table of, too small/rather too small, the cellar/a cellar, a lightning/lightning—occur with the Buffalo retypings.

53–54     Dear B … kill     Although KH annotates as “Bill’s cousin in Green-point” [Brooklyn] on the UVA typescripts, Thirlwall’s copy of
Paterson
identifies “B” as Betty Stedman “a Post-Grad Hospital nurse.” Betty Stedman is the source of a later prose passage, see note to p. 144.

Thirlwall’s identification is confirmed by Mr. Stanley Stedman, who writes in a letter to Christopher MacGowan, December 15, 1990:

There was a letter about our dog Musti but it has long since disappeared. We were away from home and our neighbor Florence Plarey was taking care of our dog. Sometime after we returned we noticed that the dog was swelling and my wife suspected that [the] dog might be pregnant. She questioned Florence about it and received an evasive answer. Florence was a sweet girl without too much backbone so she went home and wrote the letter. This was in 1935 or 36.

I don’t recall whether we knew Dr. Williams then or not. At any rate the letter was a gem and we saved it and eventually Elizabeth showed it to Dr. Williams. He said he would use it in Paterson and we waited eagerly for the book to come out. When it did we compared it to the original. There were minor differences and we felt that the original was superior to the published version.

A longer version of the letter appears in the UVA and Buffalo E25 typescripts. WCW marks most of the excisions on one of the E25 drafts. In the longer version the second sentence begins, “Also I did not want to shove the blame onto George [Florence’s husband] but …” Between “beat it” and “George” WCW cuts “and I was afraid he would bite me when he was in that mood. George was working so he wasn’t of any help. Gosh I’m nervous I can’t talk—I mean, write.” The words “had happened” are underlined in the earlier version, which then reads to its end:

I’m so excited I even left a piece here that I must write in now. I’ve been watching her and would have soon told you if you hadn’t already asked. Please forgive my carelessness and don’t be angry although I know you’ll be cursing like a son-of-a-gun and probably won’t ever speak to me again for not having told you. But it just goes to show that I have no backbone and if I have it must be one of a jellyfish. Don’t think I haven’t been worrying about Musty. No doubt that’s why I’ve been losing weight. She’s occupied my mind every day since that awful event. You won’t think so highly of me now and feel like protecting me. Instead I’ll bet you could kill me.

Well let’s get off on another subject unless I get a crying spell from sheer nervousness.

These early typescripts read “plenty hell” for the printed version’s “plenty of hell.”

(Readers might be relieved to hear that Mr. Stedman reports to the editor that Musti went on to complete a successful pregnancy, and give birth to five puppies.)

57     the lost/Eisenstein film     Weaver 207 cites a version of
Que Viva Mexico!
shown in New York in late 1941 and titled
Time in the Sun.

62     I see they … undermine us?     Thirlwall’s copy of
Paterson
annotates as [August] Walters (see p. 180), as does Norman Holmes Pearson’s copy—although Pearson received much of his information via Thirlwall. Weaver 207 offers the plausible suggestion that the passage is from a letter by WCW’s friend Fred Miller, who edited the left-wing magazine
Blast
(see Weaver 71). But the comments are not in the approximately one hundred letters from Miller to WCW filed at Yale and Buffalo.

The passage may be WCW’s own prose, perhaps a record of a friend’s comment. On Buffalo E17, possibly the first appearance of this passage, the lines are handwritten, rather than typed in the manner of the transcribed letters, and the passage undergoes revision more radical than WCW’s usual treatment of letters. The E17 version reads:

I see the Senate is trying to throw out Lillienthal and deliver the bomb to a few choice industrialists. I don’t think they will succeed but even those party leaders here who hope to be elected to power are among them. That’s what I mean when I refuse to the oppose the communists.
Are
they any worse than the shits who are trying to undermine us?

It is terrifying to think how easily we can be destroyed.

The Buffalo E23 version is also quite different from the printed version. For David E. Lilienthal’s comment to Weaver see Weaver 207.

64     an old man     Thirlwall wrote to Sankey that the sermon was based on one “Williams heard at Lambert Tower ‘sometime before the war’” Sankey 92.

64     There are people … upon me     A further extract from the April 1943 [ ? ] Marcia Nardi letter, see note to p. 45. On Buffalo E5 the paragraph reads as in the printed version except that “few months” reads “past few months” and “maladjustments” reads “maladjustments, if necessary.” WCW omits the final sentence of the paragraph: “And my economic situation has been involved, of course.” On the Buffalo E25 draft the text is as the printed version.

66     The detectives … detective said     With the Buffalo E16 typescripts is an October 19, 1943, letter from WCW’s Paterson correspondent David Lyle (for Lyle see note to p. 15), which begins: “I remember your saying once you had thought of going around with detectives etc, on their duties, but abandoned it as being all the same thing. Here’s a going around, cut and indexed to be absorbed in ten minutes, of a going around in Paterson.”

67     Hamilton saw … worse than any … Especially … Jefferson Possibly WCW’s own prose summary. In early Buffalo typescripts the language is included with prose material that is clearly WCW’s.

68     America the golden … in hand     See Weaver 207–208 for an extensive annotation on this parody, which is to the tune of “America the Beautiful,” and for background detail on John Peter Altgeld, governor of Illinois in the early 1890s.

69     As with some of the prose, the periods in the poetry mark WCW’s omissions from his own earlier drafts.

69–70     As a corollary … manufactury     Although Sankey 95 cites the Federal Writers’ Project’s
Stories of New Jersey
(New York, 1938), this passage is closer to the version in the four pages of the Federal Writers’ Project publication
Stories of New Jersey
, December 1936, School Bulletin #11—“prepared for use in public schools.”

The first paragraph in the passage may be WCW’s version of the source’s “Though the Revolution had left America politically independent of Great Britain, leading minds soon realized that the fruits of liberty would be bitter if the new country could not secure her industrial independence as well.”

The next two paragraphs follow the language of the 1936 text closely, with the exception of some minor changes in punctuation and definite and indefinite articles that occur through the retyping and rearrangement of these passages, and of the differences noted below.

Between the two paragraphs in
Stories of New Jersey
appears a sentence on Washington’s coat at his inaugural that WCW revises and inserts as verse in a subsequent prose passage from this material, see p. 74. Other major differences:

Hamilton/Alexander Hamilton WCW’s revision, on Buffalo E25

a great Federal City Added by WCW. The title of the
Stories of New Jersey
article is “Paterson, ‘The Federal City.’”

a national manufactury Added by WCW, picked up from a later passage in the source that WCW inserts into
Paterson
, see p. 74.

72     that cold blooded … get it     The details fit the crime and hanging of John Johnson, see notes to pp. 197 and 202.

73     The Federal … high taxes     Extracts from a mimeographed sheet—addressed to “Dear Citizen”—put out by Alfredo and Clara Studer and dated January 1947, see Sankey 98–99 for more details. WCW includes further excerpts below, and excerpts from the pamphlet “Tom Edison on the Money Subject” which accompanied the sheet. The Studer sheet is filed with Buffalo E17 and marked by WCW at the top, “Following the preacher’s clownish talk.”

Clara Studer wrote to WCW on April 18, 1946, telling him that she had written to Pound and received “back several little notes” which included a request “to write and tell you what he ‘actually did say’ … [in] his [Italian] broadcasts.” Studer asks if WCW is interested in receiving some Social Credit materials (Yale uncat.). For Social Credit and WCW’s attitude and involvement see Weaver 103–114.

WCW’s second paragraph reproduces the third paragraph of the sheet with two minor differences, which are present in the Buffalo typescripts. The source reads “over and over and over,” and “in war or peace.” The first paragraph reads in full: “The Federal Reserve System is a private enterprise. Ever since 1863 (1863 to 1913 it went under the name of National Banks) a private monopoly has had the power—given to it by a spineless Congress of that time—to issue and regulate all our money.”

The paragraph WCW omits charges that “this was an act of treason” that “surrendered, to a handful of merchants, the most sacred right given to the people of the United States in Article I of the Constitution”; a “treason … committed as a result of pressure by … [the] Bank of England.”

73     Witnessing the Falls … they called it     Probably WCW’s own prose, see note to p. 67.

74     The newspapers … his place     Apart from one verbal difference (“all the cotton”), verbatim from
Stories of New Jersey
, see note to pp. 69–70.

74     The prominent … goods     From BH 408, the only remaining sentence from the earlier drafts of what was originally a longer extract from their entry for Paterson. BH reads “cotton cloths,” as do the drafts up to Buffalo E25.

74     In other … work     The fourth paragraph of the Studer mimeographed sheet, which reads “the Government of ours” for “our Government” (as Studer on Buffalo E23, but as printed on E18).

74     In all … up     Sentences taken and rearranged from the pamphlet that accompanied the Studer sheet, “Tom Edison on the Money Subject.” The original pamphlet, about two thousand words, is filed with Buffalo E23. The pamphlet reads “If people ever” and capitalizes “per cent to the stated cost.” The differences are on the Buffalo typescripts. For fuller details of the pamphlet see Joel Conarroe,
William Carlos Williams’ “Paterson
”
: Language and Landscape
(Philadelphia, 1970) 156.

76     Whatever … fashion     From the same Marcia Nardi letter quoted elsewhere in Book II, see note to p. 45. WCW omits two paragraphs between this and the previous extract, on p. 64, paragraphs in which MN discusses her difficulties in obtaining employment.

that note of yours     WCW’s note of February 17, 1943, ending his side of the correspondence.

part … Nor     WCW omits “For you to consent to see me as you might consent to see one of your patients outside of office hours, in that entirely impersonal way—no, thanks; not that for me.” WCW marks the excision on the Buffalo E19 typescript.

The Buffalo E5 version has four other differences from the printed text. The differences occur through the E19 and E25 retypings:

mechanical/the mechanical

at your office/there at your office

some of/some one of

written you/written to you

78–79     The descent … indestructible     WCW printed as a separate poem in his 1954 volume
The Desert Music.
See CP2 245–246, and the accompanying note on page 486 in which WCW links these lines to his concept of “the variable foot.”

are towards/are toward     
Partisan Review
(1948),
Pictures from Brueghel

to waken/to awaken     
Desert Music, Pictures from Brueghel

80     Missing was … age     From Mary McCarthy,
The Company She Keep
(New York, 1942), 239. McCarthy’s prose continues: “Jim reread these masters and tried to reproduce the tone by ear, but he could not do it. He became frightened and went back to the public library; perhaps, as someone had suggested, the material was under-researched.” The remaining eleven words of the
Paterson
prose passage appear as verse in early drafts.

82     My feelings … damned thing     From the beginning of a letter by Marcia Nardi, [May?] 1943. See note to p. 45. The original letter is not filed with any of WCW’s correspondence or typescripts, to my knowledge, although the Buffalo E5 typescript contains a longer version, which may be a transcription, and the Buffalo E19 typescript also contains this particular passage. The long prose section that closes Book II is from this letter, see note to p. 87, which also discusses a version of this letter at HRC.

In the three typed drafts of this paragraph on E5 and E19 “responsibility” reads “all responsibility.”

85     Seventy-five … last week     Possibly a reference to one of the international conferences held by Princeton University in 1946 to mark its bicentennial.

86     full octave/slow octave     
Partisan Review
(1948)

87–91     My attitude … pages     A continuation of the letter from Marcia Nardi begun on p. 82, see note above. A blank page preceded this prose in IST.

Although, as noted above, the original of this letter is not among WCW’s papers, the HRC holds a version in MN’s hand that she sometimes claimed many years later was a copy of what she sent WCW. The HRC document differs in a number of ways from the Buffalo E5 version and the printed version, and some of these differences have been discussed by Theodora R. Graham in “‘Her Heigh Compleynte’: The Cress Letters of William Carlos Williams’
Paterson
” in
Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams: The University of Pennsylvania Conference Papers
(Philadelphia, 1983), ed. Daniel Hoffman, pp. 164–193. Professor Graham, working with what appears to have been a copy of the HRC document provided by MN, suggests that WCW rewrote parts of the letter to produce the printed version.