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Anonymous Wed Jul 4 02:12:40 2018 No.11410677 [Reply] [Original]

Who was America's foremost prose stylist?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 02:13:55 2018 No.11410679 >>11410677 What era?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 02:14:16 2018 No.11410681 William H. Gass, author of The Tunnel.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 03:25:57 2018 No.11410821 >>11410681 Damn right'o senpai. Bam bam bamabam bam.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 03:40:55 2018 No.11410843 Your mom desu

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 03:43:31 2018 No.11410849 Best non-Tunnel-dwelling prose stylist: Saul Bellow

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 07:48:12 2018 No.11411408 File: 11 KB, 500x333, gass15.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Is there no-one else?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 08:03:59 2018 No.11411448 I've read some of Gass' essays and want to like him but Tunnel is too dark. Was this prose style ever on display in non-depressing work? >>11410849 Bellow doesn't belong anywhere near this discussion, rabbi.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 08:46:56 2018 No.11411575 He Gassed his last :(

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 13:55:47 2018 No.11412627 >>11411448 He got Style, it's just not sleek like a seal

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 14:09:59 2018 No.11412691 >>11411408 Read Gertrud Stein. She's his main influence (maybe split with Rilke) and has some nice prose, my guy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 14:13:39 2018 No.11412709 Cormac McCarthy

Anonymous Wed Jul 4 15:50:01 2018 No.11413122

>>11410677
Lmao look at his face, his mouth literally looks like it belongs on a puppet. Fuck this boomer and his languorous academic career. Fuck universities and fuck professors. We've gone full circle boomers! You are not cool and your prose is shit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 15:55:00 2018 No.11413135 nabokov

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 16:20:39 2018 No.11413224 >>11410681 Post excerpts

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 19:41:28 2018 No.11414001 File: 27 KB, 300x300, gass.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>11413122

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 21:10:51 2018 No.11414294 >>11410677 Gass was a little too keen on assonance and alliteration to be considered America's foremost prose stylist. His insistence that writing be musical was laudable but, alas, he had a poor ear.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jul 4 21:19:46 2018 No.11414326 File: 269 KB, 2000x1125, vroom.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>11413224

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 04:41:17 2018 No.11415434 >>11414294 This is such a pointless non-statement. Either critique an extract of his work or take your pseud quips and fuck off.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 10:48:24 2018 No.11416313 Bump

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 10:55:38 2018 No.11416342 File: 4 KB, 269x188, updike.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] John Updike

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 11:03:16 2018 No.11416362 >>11410677 Oy guys, what about that book History of English prose rhythm something? Did anyone actually read that? Recommend?

Anonymous Thu Jul 5 11:20:33 2018 No.11416416

>>11415434
I'm sorry if you were offended but if you've read anything at all by Gass you'd know what I said was not a "pointless non-statement."

These are his own words: "I see alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, etc., as devices for relating meanings, again independent of syntactical requirements. Word order is purely musical—the note, the tone, arrives, and it is immediately assimilated to everything that has gone before, and to everything that is yet to come. Prose that does not sing is not alive."

But I'm not going to look through his books just to provide excerpts that prove my point, which should be apparent to anyone familiar with his writing.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 16:01:21 2018 No.11417490 >>11410677 >ctrl f >no melville into the trash it goes

Anonymous Thu Jul 5 16:39:30 2018 No.11417652

>>11410677
Though it's a tough battle between Gass, Gaddis, and Nabokov, for my money, I'd say he who cannot be passed: all three are incredibly, incredibly talented, with unique styles with unique strengths, but his mastery of metaphors and language's musicality, I feel, make him the most successful at overcoming some of the problems inherent to his medium.
>>11416416
Not him, but I think he's right. No disrespect, though.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 16:53:27 2018 No.11417693 >>11417652 >Gass, Gaddis, and Nabokov Gass is the worst novelist (and artist) out of the three, though. Also, re another post : What’s Gertrude Stein’s best work ?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 17:02:07 2018 No.11417737 I would say Faulkner. He’s at least a magnitude beyond everyone else posted in this thread sans Melville

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 17:52:54 2018 No.11417905 File: 261 KB, 950x758, gass5.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>11417693 >Gass is the worst novelist (and artist) out of the three, though. That is incorrect.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 20:47:16 2018 No.11418618 >>11417693 Eh, as far as writing a full-blown novel goes, Gaddis is, by far, better than either, but I definitely wouldn't call Gass the worst artist out of the three.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 20:58:46 2018 No.11418652 >>11417693 tender buttons is probably the best but you can pick up an anthology of all of gertrude stein’s works and leaf through it. reading some of her poems and stuff can give you a good idea of what she’s about before diving into a novel.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 22:32:35 2018 No.11419001 >>11415434 you are an idiot and the other person is correct

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 22:35:25 2018 No.11419009 i pity anyone who truly thinks Gass is an answer to this question

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:02:43 2018 No.11419118 >>11418652 Thanks, i’ll look into it. What about Making of Americans ? Heard great things about this one but it seems a little long (english not being my first language and all…).

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:06:49 2018 No.11419132 He looks like a fat cat who's about to lose its seventh life.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:07:54 2018 No.11419135 >>11412709 cttl+f thought no one would be right

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:14:28 2018 No.11419156 >>11410677 Oh, you're back. Please kill yourself already.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:21:39 2018 No.11419180 HERMAN MELVILLE

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:23:30 2018 No.11419191 >>11412691 What about Joyce and Beckett my guy

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 5 23:24:15 2018 No.11419195 David Foster Wallace

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 00:19:28 2018 No.11419391 >>11410677 Herman Melville.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 00:44:44 2018 No.11419471 >>11416416 Doesn't he say somewhere in The Tunnel that alliteration is a hack tactic on his end? I vaguely remember something like that.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 00:48:24 2018 No.11419482 >>11416342 This. His books are basically diaries about all the times he cheated on his wife, but, that prose, just damn. It makes reading his shit not only worth it but feel absolutely essential. And The Rabbit quartet is about as American as it gets

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 01:57:11 2018 No.11419698 >>11410681 based

Anonymous Fri Jul 6 03:46:04 2018 No.11419948

>>11416416
By ‘non-statement’ I meant this part of your reply:
>alas, he had a poor ear
This is just a quip to disregard an entire lifetime’s worth of writing, yet its based really on nothing. I have no doubt Gass enjoyed alliteration, that wasn’t what I was disagreeing with.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 03:51:40 2018 No.11419958 File: 96 KB, 1024x1024, 1508192568327.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>11410677 >ctrl-f >no pynchon

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 04:27:15 2018 No.11420018 >>11419482 I'm pretty familiar with Updike, but where is his best prose considered to be found specifically?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 04:36:11 2018 No.11420040 >>11419191 America's foremost prose stylists, everybody!

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 04:37:43 2018 No.11420044 >>11417693 Gaddis>Gass>>>>>Nabokov

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 06:36:16 2018 No.11420255 >>11420044 I’m not american, my dude : I can’t get down with this bs. Gass is second-rate as hell.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 06:45:48 2018 No.11420280 File: 7 KB, 195x259, 1527160007511.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 06:46:45 2018 No.11420283 >>11420255 shut it plonker

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 06:46:53 2018 No.11420284 >>11417737 >Faulkner bwah what a brainlet Faulkner was worse than fucking Steinbeck and Salinger and you think he's deserving of the same pedestal as Melville?

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 06:46:57 2018 No.11420285 >>11420044 Nabokov is fucking Russian you Herp, how can he be American? He lived there, but he ISN'T AMERICAN

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 06:50:45 2018 No.11420289 David Foster Wallace.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:14:28 2018 No.11420341 >>11420283 You’re a poor aesthete, what can I say ? Gass’ work is barely tolerable, even when working full at his best. There’s something deeply repulsive about such hollow books.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:22:40 2018 No.11420360 >>11420341 >You're a fucking aesthete >OP: who was America's foremost prose stylist? even as a "novelist" Gass outwrecks Babakov by a long shot

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:27:42 2018 No.11420376 Mary McCarthy was a better stylist simply due to not abusing alliteration at every opportunity, but most of you virgins have not even read her.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:31:48 2018 No.11420389 >>11420360 Again, nobody would actually believe that outside your country. Downright ridiculous, especially when taking a historical perspective. "Novelist"… Learned all I need to know about you from your use of quotation marks.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:40:35 2018 No.11420415 >>11420389 >your use of quotation marks I was quoting this faggot >>11417693 from which the derail began but ok >Downright ridiculous You'll understand I'm right when you'll grow up

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:45:17 2018 No.11420428 >>11420415 >You'll understand I'm right when you'll grow up Except Gass is for college students. One only grows out of such onanism, which is nothing but stylistic posturing anyway. But Proust will clean you, don’t worry.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:48:54 2018 No.11420435 >>11410677 L Frank Baum.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 6 07:56:43 2018 No.11420448 File: 32 KB, 512x512, 31df9af6a92a72791cbd9e04aceb0d22ec9043a739bc96da32be84e3be8c6cd2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>11420428 >which is nothing but everything found your problem, pleb

Anonymous Fri Jul 6 08:18:49 2018 No.11420508

>>11420448
If you think Gaddis, for instance, is nothing but posturing (despite him also being a superior stylist than Gass ofc), you’ve got a problem. Gass is a dead-end at best. Nabokov, while preceding him, also had the decency to be facetious about it, which isn’t something Gass could afford, or even manage. A great stylist wouldn’t need to pose anyway (see Beckett).

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