JG Farrell in His Own Words : Selected Letters and Diaries

Works in Progress: London 1965–66

Works in Progress London 1965–66 To Russell McCormmach Balholm Saval Park Road Dalkey Co. Dublin 22 December 1964 Dear Russ, Our correspondence seems to have taken another low dive again. This is something in the nature of a signal rocket to re-establish contact ... My life continues in the same vein. Getting older but not wiser. I planned to spend the winter in Marrakesh where I have a doctor friend but got bored after a couple of months when the scenery had worn off and so came home. I’ll spare you my impressions of Morocco and Arabs. I had no money, of course, or I’d have stayed in Paris again. I have another book 1 coming out sometime, probably next Fall, possibly in the summer. When he first read it the publisher was ultraenthusiastic . He gave it to his readers who were infra-enthusiastic. There was some haggling about whether they were going to publish it. Finally they decided they would, largely I suppose because my other rotten book got good reviews. I should have been watching all this with the coldly sardonic smile of the Genius watching lesser mortals make fools of themselves but I had a sneaking feeling that so many readers (3) couldn’t be wrong. Besides, I needed the money ... pitiful amount though it be. I’m still waiting for it, of course. Generally speaking, though, I think this book is better than the last. If only because it’s more original. I’m now dashing off a sub-Chandler thriller 2 which I hope will make me some money ... 77 The other vague purpose behind this letter is to enquire whether [your] college is likely to need a French Assistant ... Last year I met some Americans who had enlisted as post-grad. students and had been given grants to teach Beginners’ Courses although they could not speak French and only had the most elementary idea of the language ... If I’m ever to get back to the States this seems the most likely way to do it – until I become a seedy Grand Old Man of Letters that is. I don’t think I can wait that long. I’m toying with the idea of doing a play about Gilles de Rais, 3 a very bizarre contemporary and friend of Joan of Arc ... A merry Christmas uh huh. Let me hear from you. All the best, Jim Diary fragment [undated] 1965 Coming off the Irish boat early, an old man in the tube on the way to Marble Arch. He looked rather like an older and more unkempt Martin Gilbert, 4 something to do with the way he peered from behind his glasses, I think. ‘I wish I was dead!’ he kept saying. His wife had died three years previously; he’d spent the night sitting up. He, at first, refused a shilling I offered him for a sandwich. He had a good pair of boots, said he often spent the night in church. To Russell McCormmach 170 Westbourne Park Road 5 London W.2. 15 February 1965 Dear Russ, ... I haven’t much news and what I have isn’t good. The first reactions to my thriller weren’t good. The main trouble being, apparently, that I turned it into a satire on itself. This was a calculated risk. I got bored with it, you see, but thought that there was enough humour in it to make up for the decrease in horror. I could re-write it, I suppose, and maybe I will. For the moment I have a craving to write something good, however, and wouldn’t mind letting it slither away down to the limbo to which all my attempts to J.G. Farrell in his Own Words 78 make money appear to be doomed. I’ve been ruminating the idea of doing a love-story. To write a love-story that would be moving without being naive, simple-minded, sentimental, sordid, unreal or any of the other thousand and one ghastly things it might be – this seems a supreme challenge ... [A] few days after I’d written to you I plunged into the American Embassy in Dublin ... and was given a list of colleges with French departments . The man I saw there told me the same as you – that it was pretty late to be applying but advised me to write to a large number...