William Gaddis

[Anonymous No.21598879]

Reading The Recognitions currently before I move onto JR. What do you all think of Gaddis? Franzen calls The Recognitions one of the “hardest” books to read, or something, but I’m not so sure I feel this way. Any thoughts on the subject of “challenging” books?

[Anonymous No.21598886]

>>21598879
Franzen is a retarded pleb. Don't listen to anything he says. David Foster Wallace on Jonathan Franzen:
https://voca.ro/1mHDTX5NL3j6
https://voca.ro/1hB8tfOjo5DZ
https://voca.ro/1noVfvSMsifj

[Anonymous No.21598887]

>>21598879
I’ve only read The Recognitions so I can only speak about that. I would have loved it if it was massively edited down. There are many parts I still remember fondly but I don’t see myself ever picking it up again. Too much of it was a slog

[Anonymous No.21598910]

>>21598879
A complete work of literature and maybe the first encyclopedic novel?
Loved it. Not a single character or plotline is wasted.
What page are you on? Don't want to spoil the novel or influence your reading.

[Anonymous No.21598928]

>>21598886
Having never read one of Franzen's books, I'm inclined to agree (goes to show that you can write big books and still be an uninformed cretin if nothing else). His popular commentary about Gaddis being "hard to read" does a great disservice to the book(s).

[Anonymous No.21598944]

>>21598910
What do you mean by the first encyclopedic novel? I can think of earlier novels that might fit in that category, but I agree that it's entirely unique in its execution, and it definitely influenced the more pyrotechnically-minded writers to come. I agree with your second point; for the number of characters woven throughout the novel, none of it feels like wasted ink. I'm about halfway through the book, page 450 or so (just finished the chapter in which Wyatt returns home, speaks to his father about the priesthood, etc.). I'm excited to continue reading. The book really holds the reader's attention.

[Anonymous No.21598952]

>>21598928
>Having never read one of Franzen's books
>i'm inclined to agree

[Anonymous No.21598955]

>>21598887
I can see why a reader might feel that way. I'm sure the story could've been told in a brute 300 pages or so, but I appreciate all the religious/literary allusions throughout, not to mention the long party sequences. Makes for quite the aesthetic adventure.

[Anonymous No.21598958]

>>21598887
Are we allowed to admit its a bit of a curates egg? Those long party scenes don't work for me. Perhaps if you knew the people he's ribbing, or if you had hung out in 50s NYC, it gets better? I just found them boring, never actually as funny as he seems to think they are.
The black butler sections are pretty cringe too, as bad as Wardine be Cri.
But the main art forgery, mithras stuff is kino

[Anonymous No.21598964]

>>21598952
Yes.

[Anonymous No.21598969]

>>21598964
based

[Anonymous No.21598981]

>>21598879
The talent is discernible, but I've only got love for A Frolic of His Own or whatever it's called. The Lawyer one. That said I'll sooner be returning to JR for a reread than Joyce (or Franzen, ever)

[Anonymous No.21598985]

>>21598944
I mean encyclopedic in the contemporary sense, of course. It's a fully fleshed out world on the concepts of forgery and redemption in a peculiarly religious way.
Every bit of information adds up to the main theme starting with its own mythological perspective and the let's say legends the characters to each other and the roles they play in the story. The whore, the muse, the jester, the naive man, the faustian figure etc. Not sure if i'm making myself clear here.

[Anonymous No.21598988]

>>21598958
I'll have to finish the novel before I have a final opinion, but the party scenes work for me in part because the dialogue is fun and character-driven, and also because the characters themselves feel like unique contemporary archetypes. Of course, the book isn't very old, but I'm impressed with how the vapid artsy types come across as topical nonetheless. Art forgery and Mithras stuff is undeniably kino.

[Anonymous No.21598989]

>JR
>The Recognitions
what's the one that mostly consists of dialogue? I want to avoid that one.

[Anonymous No.21598996]

>>21598981
I don't understand the disdain for Franzen. It's true that he's no genius and that his books sell well but his essay is not what's keeping people from reading Gaddis. The guy himself was pretty unlikable even by the standards of other writers.
Won't say that he's the Steinbeck of our generation but he's pretty far from untalented.

[Anonymous No.21599001]

>>21598996
>our generation
He's like 1-2 generations behind. DFW was the best writer of Franzen's gen. His essay confirms he's proud of being a pleb which is anti-intellectual.

[Anonymous No.21599005]

>>21598985
Thanks for clarifying. As far as I've read, I think you describe the appeal of the novel really well, especially in that Gaddis doesn't take any shortcuts in establishing that unique mythological perspective. He's not jerking the reader around, which is a feat in itself when the thing is nigh 1000 pages. The book abides by its own singular logic and works the reader through that process. I don't expect Gaddis to arrive at the standard notion of "epiphany" that came before him, but I'm excited to see where he takes me by the end of the book.

[Anonymous No.21599007]

>>21598989
JR. I've heard it's good, though. Gaddis's dialogue is fun and engaging.

[Anonymous No.21599010]

I mean it’s definitely a difficult book for the average person, but someone who’s profession revolves around literature shouldn’t really have this view. IMO Gaddis actually uses relatively readable prose most of the time and he makes a mostly straightforward narrative. He’s no Joyce or Faulkner, but no Hemingway either.

[Anonymous No.21599014]

>>21599010
Where does Gaddis' JR stand when compared to the worls of Joyce and Faulkner in your opinion?

[Anonymous No.21599016]

>>21598996
Good point, and I wouldn't say that Franzen is preventing people from discovering Gaddis by any means. In fact, his merely talking about Gaddis, as a successful writer, has probably led some people to pick up the books. It just seems like surface-level commentary (I'm hesitant to call it criticism, and I'm not sure if he talked more about it later, or anything) and it might speak to his priorities as a reader and a writer.

[Anonymous No.21599020]

>>21598996
Also, what makes Gaddis an unlikeable figure as you say? I don't know very much about his personal life.

[Anonymous No.21599021]

>>21599001
>>21598996
Franzen is irritating because he's shoved in your face as le great american novelist and is generally a pompous ass, while his books are competent imitations of the Roth/Updike/Bellow thing.

[Anonymous No.21599022]

>>21599010
Agreed. This is basically where I disagree with Franzen.

[Anonymous No.21599023]

>>21598879
>on the subject of “challenging” books?
Infinite Jest was a cynical practical joke if and when Wallace was honest with himself, and the paradoxical position he put himself in did him no favors in the end. Reading is a pleasure, an amusement -- literature and 'the novel' won't return to health unless and until picaresques are back in style to stay. This self-serious sentimentality spearheaded by Boomers in the West cannot propagate without the shade of Cold War thermonuclear umbrellas threatening the world with becoming a ball of glass. Barth was on the right path for a moment there in Sotweed factor and Giles, Goatboy. If we're talking strictly about impact, the authors driving the mythic renewal wheel are operating on the profane level of YA fiction at the moment (since Y2K really). A Pynchon has kept that picaresque sense of play, of devilishness. The world doesn't want tomes if they can't entertain, it desires and needs poetry to colour the passage of time moving in and with Eternity. 'Challenging novels' of the future will look more like prose poems, novellas. The door stop brick of a novel's a godless evasion.

>>21598928
>existential naval gazing
Franzen perfects an image of mid began by John Updike's Rabbit books to a T, and it counts against the taste and sensibilities of the critic class and readers/education level of the American public that either made careers from writing the dross. Imagine Baby Boomer travelogues of their cruise ship passages, except its literary fudds revisiting and laundering their memories. It is that insipid, venal, and Freudly fraud.

[Anonymous No.21599025]

>>21598996
>The guy himself was pretty unlikable even by the standards of other writers.
Really? He seems like a pretty easy-going goofball.

[Anonymous No.21599039]

>>21599014

I think you’d have to elaborate.

Do you mean in terms of difficulty?
Because I would say that JR is more difficult than Faulkner’s most approachable books (As I Lay Dying, Light in August), but easier than Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and The Fury. I would also say JR is easier than Ulysses and definitely much easier than Finnegans Wake, but probably on par with Dubliners and Portrait.

If you mean in terms of greatness, I would rank JR lower than Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, The Sound and The Fury, and Light in August, but slightly higher than everything else by Faulkner and Joyce.

I don’t know if that’s a controversial opinion or not.

[Anonymous No.21599045]

>>21599023
I like how you frame this issue. I have to agree that literature should not ignore its capacity for entertainment (I use this term, not in the cynical contemporary context i.e., vapid "content" being produced rapid-fire, but in your way: a pleasure, an amusement, a delight for the reader). Barth returning to that picaresque sense of play in his novels definitely seems to work in that direction as well. Your prediction, too, is vindicated by the current state of publishing. Of course, most of the dreck that sells abides by this, but even the works of authors such as Cesar Aira (off the top of my head) seem to be following this trend. Length /=/ Accessibility /=/ Quality. Thanks for your perspective on Franzen as well.

[Anonymous No.21599047]

>>21599025
This.

[Anonymous No.21599051]

>>21598879
I think Franzen has actually helped people pick up Gaddis if anything. Let’s be honest, his appeal is as a writer of the proto-postmodern doorstopper. People who read him are generally into more difficult books and find their way to Gaddis eventually. Franzen’s quote probably piqued people’s interest. Otherwise his kinda caught in limbo between modernism and postmodernism, the latter who he influenced

[Anonymous No.21599069]

>>21599051
This is true, and it's notable that Franzen is curious about the question of "difficulty" in the novel rather than just writing it off as elitist or whatever.

[Anonymous No.21599074]

>>21599010
Most Gaddis is harder than Faulkner.

[Anonymous No.21599081]

>>21598879
>>21598928
Gaddis isn't hard, just tedious.
>>21599023
Martin Amis has said something similar: that the "difficult" novel is mainly a decadent 20th century anomaly, and fiction is slowly but surely correcting itself back to its roots.

[Anonymous No.21599084]

>>21599074
I mean I would say Absalom is more difficult than JR, but maybe that’s just me.

[Anonymous No.21599095]

>>21599074
>>21599084
I've never read The Sound and the Fury (although I own a copy) but there's even a special edition that has color coded text in terms of chronological order. Even in a single page there are different things going on. Considering normal editions just have normal black print, I can't imagine anything more confusing than that, other than Finnegans Wake.

[Anonymous No.21599101]

>>21599069
When I first got into literature, like “literary” books, I was into more difficult books. I got my foot in the door with the postmodern crowd and more often than not I was reading a door stopper. As I’ve gotten older, difficult novels appeal to me less and less, and I am more hesitant when a novel is above ~700 pages. I’ve thought about this development in my reading habit some and I can’t quite make sense of it. I don’t know if I was a pseud in the beginning, or I realized there is a lot out there that I want to read and I value my time more than I used to. Maybe it’s something else though. I have no issue with monstrous autobiographies and journals, and some easier longer works like Dickens. I also think what I look for in a book has greatly changed. In the beginning I wanted to be challenged and see the limits of technical writing stretched to the limit. Now, what I look for in a book is it’s “spirit”, message, what I take in subconsciously, or entertainment. Sorry for the blog post but I’m always curious about readers’ progressions.

[Anonymous No.21599102]

>>21598879
Franzen was trying to attack Gaddis to get himself attention and recognition, don't worry about it. He's a retarded hack.

[Anonymous No.21599113]

>>21599084
I’ll always consider Absalom, Absalom one of the hardest books I’ve read, if not the hardest. I’ve read novels like Ulysses, TSATF, The Recognitions, The Confidence Man, late Henry “spit it the fuck out” James, ISOLT, IJ, Shakespeare, Pynchon, etc. For some reason I struggled with it. I always get flashes where I want to revisit it, as I love Faulkner, but that book gave me slight PTSD

[Anonymous No.21599119]

>>21599023
>>21599051
I'm in complete disagreement with these takes. Just a bunch of cliches thrown around with no effect.
The first post seems to confuse DFW the essayist with DFW the novelist, who was pretty aware of the contradictions found in his work.
The irony here is that it neglects the social function of the novel as Wallace understood it in preference for another social function, the function to entertain.
The second reflects on the mentioned historical place TR has in american letters. I would argue that if anything,the lesson these posmodernists got from him was the evolution both in form and content that he shows and masters in each posterior work and not so much from TR itself.
Why does the size of the book matters in the first place? I don't think it doesn't. Where does the term doorstoper come from and why has it stayed?
What explains the anymosity towards these large texts no one, not even colleges forces its students to read?

[Anonymous No.21599124]

>>21599113
> TSATF
> ISOLT
Am I a dummy for not knowing what these acronyms stand for?

[Anonymous No.21599127]

>>21599124
The Sound and the Fury
In Search of Lost Time

[Anonymous No.21599134]

>>21599127
Oh hey, I've read Proust. Thanks

[Anonymous No.21599152]

>>21599119
I haven’t read Gaddis beyond TR so I can’t say much there. As far as the animosity towards the doorstopper, it is because they are seen as masturbatory works, at least when they are difficult. Most readers aren’t interested in a long, difficult, experimental book. Keep in mind I always associate the “doorstopper” label with the postmoderns, rightly or wrongly. For example, even though they are long, Les Miserables and The Pickwick Papers are two massive books, but they are easy and fun to read. Maybe I use the doorstopper label in a different connotation than most

[Anonymous No.21599424]

>>21599095
Don't be ridiculous. If you are unable to follow a few threads then that's a you problem. Ulysses is harder as is The Recognitions.

[Anonymous No.21599965]

>>21598879
JR is the best audiobook ever written. Since the characters have different voices, you don't have to use context clues to figure out all of the transitions. Reading it would be pretty annoying the first time, but listening to it as an audiobook is outstanding.

[Anonymous No.21601353]

>>21598989
JR. I've only read that one and it's one of my favorite novels ever. Great humor and the fact that it's most dialogue happen for a reason, few novels can recreate the sheer multifaceted and hollow chaos of the market the way JR does.