April 9, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter.  You ask: _    Does everybody who builds a house face such problems?  _    or only on Nantucket? I think the island is punishing _    you for daring to do your own work. And I guess you _    think so too.  With manufactured housing, the "overhead" is less because it is spread over a large number of "one size fits all" units.  With custom built housing, the general contractor generally levies a 33% fee of his costs for material, labor and subcontractors.  Simply by assuming the adnministrative responsibilities, one can save 25% of the building costs. If one installs the well, (as distinct from drilling it), installs the wiring and plumbing oneself, one can, on Nantucket, save another fifty to eighty thousand dollars. As of today, I've spent $82.04 per square foot on this 2496 sq.ft. house, including well, septic system and power company transformer.  If my health - and Margaret's - permit me to do the insulation, flooring, tiling and finish carpentry myself, I should be able to complete the house for $100 per square foot, spent almost entirely for materials and off-island contractors. On Nantucket the builders' quotes range from $400 to $800/sq ft. It doesn't take a Marxist to understand why they're envious and giving me trouble.

Don't worry about my getting tired. Admittedly, after eight or ten hours of slow, persistent effort, I feel exhausted; but to be very tired periodically is good for my physical and mental well-being.  I'm not concerned about possibly not being able to finish the projects I've started. I try to be as efficient and neat as possible, so it won't be too annoying or too expensive for Klemens to clean up after I'm gone. My mother often told me to slow down, - "endlich zur Ruhe zu kommen," finally to come to rest, but I won't do that until I'm dead.

At the hearing, a week from next Thursday, I'm going to tell the judge that Mr. Ciarmataro and I implicitly agree that my plumbing is code compliant.  Mr. Ciarmataro hasn't made a report of the inspection because he doesn't want to admit that he can't find anything wrong. If he refuses to approve the installations for reasons that are patently absurd or frivolous, he's providing me with fodder for a damage suit. Nantucket's lawyer, Mr. Pucci, understands the risks, and I suspect has put the brakes on Mr. Ciarmataro's inventiveness.  We'll find out at the latest on April 21.

Last evening, I had a lengthy, congenial friendly telephone conversation with Rex Rowley, my electrician. I reviewed with him the work I did on Nantucket two weeks ago, and learned to my astonishment that Mr.  Larrabee, the wiring inspector, requires additional ritual cosmetics that I hadn't imagined, several more hours of work which I may not do until after we return from Konnarock. With respect to the wiring, I feel like an Irish Catholic cook who has to serve up a banquet under the auspicies of an orthodox rabbi.

As for the content of our correspondence on which you comment, I've been trying to restrict what I inflict to matters of interest to you, somewhat inhibited because so much of my work is in German. In addition to my novel, I've been reading in the writings of Georg Buechner (1813-1837).  an author who was brought up to admire the French Revolution, and in 1833, while in his third year of medical studies at the University in Giessen, engaged in clandestine agitation for violent revolution in Germany. One of his co-conspiritors betrayed him, but he escaped first to Strassburg, then to Zuerich where he obtained a professorship in biology, only to contract typhus and die at the youthful age of 24, but not before having written three plays, Dantons Tod, Leonce und Lena, and Woyzeck. Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) is a play about the French Revolution. It's of particular interest to me because in composing it, Buechner sublimated his despair at the failure of his own revolutionary efforts, and his understanding of revolutions in general. It's an obvious symptom of my megalomania that Buechner's text reminds me of my own efforts in the composition of my novel to come to terms with the irrationality, to put it mildly, of Massachusetts officialdom.  Embarrassed by how little I remember about the French Revolution, I've been reading snatches of Crane Brinton's "A Decade of Revolution" in William Langer's "The Rise of Modern Europe" series, as well as chapters in "Buechner - Politik, Dichtung, Wissenschaft" a book by my college teacher and patron Karl Vietor which I found in one of my bookcases.  It takes only a few pages to revive vivid memories of the irresistable elegance and persuasiveness of his lectures with which he introduced me to literature.

I hope that you an Ned are - and stay well. Please give my best to him.

Jochen

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