/lit/ - Literature

Conversation with Gaddis:-
by Paul Ingendaay
18th-19th December 1995 in East Hampton, Long Island, NY

>[Int]: You’re known as one of the most important American novelists of this century; at the same time you’re one of the least read. How do you feel about such a contradictory situation?
[Gaddis]: Well, that’s something that personally I’ve never been able to understand. The literary agent that I have been working with all these years once told me: you’ve had the most remarkable literary career that anyone could imagine

>[Int]: Highly regarded but little read: does it get you down?
[Gaddis]: Earlier it did. Nowadays I personally find my position as a thoroughly fascinating paradox. But I don’t worry about it any longer.

>[Int]: Because of their complexity, intellectual demands and literary allusiveness, your novels look towards a cultured readership. Is America too stupid for such novels?
[Gaddis]: Well, I just don’t know why people in America really buy books and how some become best sellers and some don’t. So I think stupidity is generally the rule. To what extent that affects people who read books, I don’t know exactly, but most people don’t read books anyway simply because they are stupid. With the exception of advice books: how to escape responsibility, how to make a million dollars, how to do this and that. But a very small audience only reads what we call literature. People want to be entertained and this country is obsessed with entertainment. A film production runs to one hundred and twenty million dollars. And that can also go for television: support will always turn into stupidity. Or people read someone like Danielle Steele. I once looked at one of her books. Absolutely unbearable. She makes no demands whatsoever in writing literature. And I have nothing against that. All I’m saying is that basically we don’t read literature any longer, but we do want to be entertained. And that’s exactly what we do in America. Politics is entertainment, everything is entertainment.

>[Int]: So you do not look upon your own novels as entertainment?
[Gaddis]: Oh yes, but what percentage of the population are we talking about? I think my books are entertaining of course, and over the past couple of years the have also said so openly, especially with regard to A Frolic of His Own

>Int: For which you again won the National Book Award
Gaddis: yes, there were lots of reviews of it stating that it was entertaining and funny. The book is about justice and lawyers, and I received lots of letters from lawyers, of which one wrote: A wonderful book, the wittiest I’ve read in years, and so on … It is interesting because many of the reviews insisted that I had torn the legal profession to shreds. The lawyers, however, see it completely different. They said: it’s exactly so and the whole thing is really wildly funny.

>Back in Top 100
>Currently slamming the shit out of Wolfe and other shitters in tie-breaker
>Ahead of all of Faulkner
We back. Next year we must also have Gaddis beat his knockoff: Tomas Chinchong.

Only one post modernist maximalist redeems American literature and it isn’t funny banana song man

william gaddis’s the recognitions was published in 1955 its a great novel,
as much the novel of our generation as ulysses was of its it only sold a few
thousand copies because the critics did a lousy job -

2 critics boasted they didnt finish the book
one critic made 7 boners others got wrong the number of pages, year,
price, publisher, author, & title
& other incredible boners like mistaking a diabetic for a narcotics addict
one critic stole part of his review from the blurb, part from another review
one critic called the book “disgusting” “evil” “foul-mouthed,” needs “to
have its mouth washed out with lye soap” others were contemptuous or
condescending
-2 of 55 reviews were adequate the others were amateurish &
incompetent
failing to recognize the greatness of the book
failing to convey to the reader what the book is like, what its essential
qualities are
counterfeiting this with stereotyped preconceptions-the standard cliches about a book that is
”ambitious,” “erudite,” “long,” “negative,” etc
-constructive suggestion: fire the bastards!

Does this get any more readable? About 120 pages in and it has been a slog so far.

Where did the anti-Gaddis fag from yesteryear go? And where went the Gaddis fag who was on his cock yesteryear?

When does it get good?

I'm 200 pages in. While I've enjoyed certain scenes, the intro chapter, and the dialogue, this overall feels like second-rate Joyce or Pynchon. Feels like a claustrophobically bookish, stilted version of Pynchon.

Can we turn this into another Recognitions thread?

Why do you guys think Don Bildow let Anselm babysit his daughter? I wouldn't let a daughter near him if she was five. I wouldn't even if she was one, I wouldn't even trust him as a baby-sitter, you know? I'm not kidding, I wouldn't.

I am 1/3 of the way through this.
It seems like there is quite a bit of symbolism or at least subtext here.
For example, the two major female characters so far—Esme and Esther, are both whores being passed around like doobies at a party.
What does it mean?

>finish this book
>can't stop saying "CUH-RAAAAAAAAAAAAST"

>The real protagonists of a story are the themes and not the characters
mhmmm deep

What makes this book so infamously difficult? I've heard people saying that it was the most difficult book they've ever read, but I've never heard them say why it was so hard.

Okay, can someone seriously explain what's the deal with Anselm? Why does he act like a schizo in every single scene that he's in? Also, what did he drop in Stanley's coffee?

>Otto calling the police on Esme once she rejects him
lmao. based as fuck

>had had

Wtf is going on when Rectall Brown puts on the armor and falls down the stairs and dies.

after finishing this book earlier today, it became apparent that despite how often it is discussed, almost no one on this board has actually read it, fewer still have understood it on a basic level, and even fewer (perhaps none) have comprehended it at all in any meaningful sense. are you all lazy pseuds?

What the fuck was Wyatt's problem?

yoooooo I had no idea that this book was so fucking crazy, I was hooked from that scene where Wyatt's dad kills the monkey in the first chapter lmao, what a mad lad. also Otto is hilarious, Wyatt is kind of funny too just based off of how autistic he is

i'm only like 200 pages in but i hope the book keeps up like this, might be one of my favorite books ever if it's consistent

Will I like this if I really liked J R? How similar are the two books?

>>16701766
what about the re-
cogni-
tions?

>>16674731
Gaddis reportedly preferred "purely typographical" covers so it's fine.

Source: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/84602-nyrb-revisits-two-big-books-by-william-gaddis.html
>Nicholas During, NYRB's marketing manager, notes that the new covers "are also something of a tribute to the original cover of The Recognitions," adding that Gaddis's children indicated to the press that Gaddis preferred "purely typographical" covers.

Pure kino. Hipsters are all still this retarded.

Hey /lit/, can you sell this book to me?
i already plan to read it in the next two weeks but i'd like to know your take on it.