John Berryman and Robert Giroux by Patrick Samway S.J

Author:Patrick Samway S.J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

With assurance and composure, Giroux wrote to Berryman toward the end of September that he thought the manuscript was “terrific” and would like to retain it all.60 He mentioned that he was getting legal advice, though his wish was that the firm would be able to publish all seventy-two Dream Songs. He was having a contract drawn up, along with a check for the advance, and both should arrive within a week. Once Giroux had gone through the material with greater care, he asked for more clarifications:

May I clear up a few confusions? They are all mechanical, let me hasten to add. The more I read the poems, the more they grow. I am deeply moved by “Prisoner of Shark Island” (very well, Paul Muni [Warner Baxter starred in the film]) in which I feel a special proprietary interest, and I am delighted with the dedication (and with the fact that fate lists it first in the acknowledgements). The book has unity and surprise and variety and shock and music and it’s so completely yours. Complimenti, mon vieux [“My compliments, old man”].

Now the “confusions.” Though by count I have 75 poems, I’m not sure which is to be the final one. “Henry’s Confession” is 74. You left out “The Taxi makes the vegetables fly” from earlier contents; it that 75? It’s awfully good (India), but “Confessions” seems better for the ending. Also one poem, “Henry’s Meditation in the Kremlin” (57) is not with the manuscript. Then the insertion of “The Lay of Ike” as 23 displaces “Henry, edged,” so where does that go? If it is a substitute for “Kremlin” the manuscript stays at 75 poems (and should it be transposed to Part III?); otherwise 76. . . . I enclose what I think is the table of contents. Do you need the whole manuscript back? We’re getting up some specimen type pages, and looking for that Merrill type for heads. I need the manuscript until that is settled, O.K.?

Contract before end of week.61

Although Berryman subsequently apologized for any confusion he had caused, he continued to communicate in a most enigmatic fashion, putting even more burden on Giroux to decode his slipshod, fragmented sentences. Berryman’s reference in the following letter to Giroux about living underwater for eight years (emphasis mine) eerily prefigures his own death:

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