Gaddis' opinion on some writers

[Anonymous No.23086376]

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.

[Anonymous No.23086380]

>>23086376
>Int: The Recognitions in some respect can be compared with Melville’s Moby-Dick. Melville achieved in literature an American modernism, and The Recognitions is seen as the worthy beginnings of so-called Postmodernism. The critics’ reaction to The Recognitions to some respect matches that of Moby-Dick: witless and incompetent. Did this lack of appreciation for your work shock you?
Gaddis: Yes, very much so. I worked on the book for seven years, and of course I was to some extent given to the vanity of a young man. I had taken a good look around me and everything that interested me seemed to be based on lies and cheating especially art counterfeiting which is the theme of the book. And if you then, as I did, become obsessed about the counterfeiting theme, you see it everywhere. Everywhere I looked I came across falsification. And I thought I’d made a great discovery. All our values were false values and no one else had thought about this. And so as a young man I was greatly shocked and very much disillusioned to see the book appear only to disappear again in a few months.

>Int: After The Recognitions, you were silent for twenty years. Was that because of your being rejection by the critics?
Gaddis: It was that, but if I were able to I wouldn’t have stayed silent for twenty years. I basically needed these twenty years to earn a living. But besides, I’d been making notes and writing a play about the Civil War which I finally worked into my previous novel. But I was an entirely typical American citizen with a family that had to be supported. So I was doing a job in pharmaceutics and later on in the Sixties I wrote a film or the Army, speeches for Eastman Kodak, things that quite simply helped to pay the bills.

>Int: Your subsequent novels sometimes got a friendlier reception from the critics, sometimes downright enthusiastic.
Gaddis: Yes, but there’s a negative aspect too. There are actually only a few real critics of literature in the United States. Indeed, there are academic critics who concentrate solely on works by dead authors, let’s say Melville. But it’s quite different with reviewers. Many of them wrongly think they are critics. When I won the National Book Award for J R, there were some people who really said: Gaddis won the prize for J R because of the bad conscience about not giving it him for his first novel. Things are in such a way that one can only shake one’s head …

[Anonymous No.23086383]

>>23086376
He really likes the smell of his own farts.

[Anonymous No.23086386]

>>23086380
>Int: In the late Forties, you hung around the bohemian scene in Greenwich Village that gets a very portrayal in The Recognitions. Didn’t you get fed up at any time with this scene?
Gaddis: Yes, I suppose so. I lived in the Village after the war in the late Forties, but by 1948 I was traveling in Spain and living there by myself. I was always taken by Spain, especially its aestheticism that was a real lesson for me. The New York scene depressed me. I’d had a bellyful of it. Then I was in France for a year, and North Africa for a short while, and returned to New York in 1951 and began finishing the book. And I was having delusions in my head of the you’d-better-do-it-now sort.

>Int: Are great public attention and serious art irreconcilable opposites?
Gaddis: You know, earlier I often used to think about that, but nowadays it doesn’t interest me any longer. I only write what I want. I’m fascinated by justice and language of course and that all gets in my recent book and that is also much more successful that the earlier ones. Although I don’t harbor any illusions, I also don’t have any particular aversion to popular culture.

[Anonymous No.23086395]

>>23086376
This is pretty much fluff and the interviewer is terrible not even able to use what Gaddis gives him for the follow up. Fluff and Gaddis is humoring him because it is part of the game of being a writer which he reluctantly played. His distaste for the interviewer and his questions is clear, he keeps throwing bones but the interviewer keep dropping them.
>>23086383
The irony is that you are sniffing your own farts.

[Anonymous No.23086399]

>>23086386
Now come the Writers:

>Int: What do you think of acclaimed writers like Cormac McCarthy, John Updike or Don DeLillo who don’t produce rubbish but do become best sellers?
Gaddis: I’ve never really understood why McCarthy is now so successful. He’s fantastic, standing far beyond the rest. Maybe his success goes with his theme of the American Western. Similarly with Larry McMurtry whose books so to speak are still opening up the frontier.

>Int: And Updike?
Gaddis: That’s a different kettle of fish. He’s very clever. When I say I’m interested in America, of course it goes for him too. But his and my America are entirely different. He writes about John Cheever’s America, of which I know enough myself. I’ve lived in Westchester, commuted to and from New York, liked a drink when I was younger and never missed out on a party. But Updike for example admires Nabokov. And I do not at all. I cannot excuse Nabokov for doing Dostoyevsky down. Of course, Nabokov is clever too, very much so, and sometimes he only wants to show that he’s much more clever than you and I, that he’s the most clever of us all.

>Int: Have you ever read Umberto Eco?
Gaddis: No, but his success fascinates me. My work on the one hand is judged to be difficult, inaccessible - there’s that terrible word. It’s always vexed me on the other hand because I find my books rather amusing. Entertainment is an important part of a novel, and I try to make mine entertaining.

>Int: You are supposedly very much influenced by Joyce, but you’ve always contended this claim. There are, however, stronger influences from C. G. Jung, definitely T. S. Eliot and of course Dostoyevsky above all.
Gaddis: I’ve never read Ulysses. That I must painfully admit. I did flick through Finnegans Wake at some time, and a couple of its lyrical passages are really wonderful.

>Int: But they had nothing to do with The Recognitions?
Gaddis: Nothing at all. It’s really all in the clouds. My book appeared, and like Ulysses it was long, complicated, similar in its allusiveness and then there were those who maintained: He’s trying to write like Joyce. And that is ridiculous. But Eliot! Keats once said a poem should be the highest expression of our highest thoughts or something similar. And when at college I came across Eliot’s Four Quartets I felt: My God, he’s exactly expressed the way I perceive the world around me. Lines like "a world of a thousand lost golf balls" or "men and bits of paper blown by a cold wind" is as I see New York. I immediately devoured Eliot. And Dostoyevsky, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been reading him all my life. That man could do everything. Complicated characters, madness …

[Anonymous No.23086404]

>>23086395
>His distaste for the interviewer and his questions is clear, he keeps throwing bones but the interviewer keep dropping them.
This original interview was published in some German magazine, then retranslated to English for the transcript that I have. I don't know if it fucked up the tones. It sounds like Gaddis is being genuine.

[Anonymous No.23086412]

>>23086399
> I’ve never really understood why McCarthy is now so successful
What did he mean by this?
> I cannot excuse Nabokov for doing Dostoyevsky down.
Holy based. I’m ordering Gaddis’s books now.

[Anonymous No.23086415]

>>23086399
>Int: He’s also very funny …
Gaddis: Very very funny, yes. And passionate! The epitome of passion that someone like Nabokov could never understand; he knows nothing about passion. And Jung, definitely. I discovered him at college, the idea of a manifold myth that’s also in The Recognitions like the idea of the virgin birth in successive cultures.

>Int: I also feel that Evelyn Waugh influences you as in the way his novels develop through dialogue.
Gaddis: Waugh is very witty, very quick. He must be one of my favorite authors.

>Int: The Recognitions is rooted deeply in metaphysical, mythological and religious traditions. It is not just about the search for purity in art, but it is also some sort of search for God, like Dostoyevsky's novels. Your later work lacks this metaphysical quality almost completely. Why is this?
Gaddis: These questions as I see and represent them have been ignored and withdrawn from. When I was young I was struck by the idea of the absolute. Unattainable absolute truths that nevertheless were present. As in Dostoyevsky, who couldn’t bear it, having to live in a senseless universe. That was what he struggled against: There must be some sense! Either one finds sense or is killed pursuing it. But as I grew older going through life’s stages and with every book I thought that this metaphysical need had gone astray; I was turning into a thorough relativist. I find that the idea arising from a senseless universe is thoroughly acceptable. And this grew with me as I became interested during the Fifties and Sixties in existentialism. The Recognitions still has this almost sentimental quest for higher truths, the flirtation with the Catholic Church. One day out of the blue this Polish girl turned up on the doorstep, carrying a massive rucksack and a bottle of Polish vodka in her hand, in the other a bouquet of flowers. She wanted to talk with me about The Recognitions. She was also a fanatical catholic and I said: just accept that I don’t really belong to the true faith. But she went on insisting that I did and didn’t really know what I was writing about, God, truth and so shouldn’t be willing to argue about it with her any further.

>Int: Since we are talking about a German author, are there other German authors that were or are important for you?
Gaddis: Earlier at college, I was under the influence of the Romantics, especially Novalis. For The Recognitions, Goethe’s Faust had been very important, and Wagner’s Rheingold for J R - almost too much to tell the truth. A dwarf that grabs money and then says such a stupid thing as I renounce love for money and so on. And that he is a dwarf is even better. That I just couldn’t resist. For a while now I’ve been very enthusiastic about Thomas Bernhard. As crazy as he sometimes is. But his madness is always aimed at himself, and that concept fascinates me. And besides he is funny. Excruciatingly funny.

[Anonymous No.23086421]

>>23086412
I think he always considered Cormac a part of his brethren. Until 1992, Cormac much like Gaddis was a writer's writer, and arguably even more obscure than Gaddis was in the mainstream. But the enormous jump in his popularity between BM and Atph was astounding. This interview was in 1995, McCarthy had recently published The Crossing, which many people saw as an apology for writing the best selling, crowd-pleasing All the Pretty horses.

[Anonymous No.23086428]

>>23086415
>Int: Unlike The Recognitions, your later novels are almost exclusively set in confined spaces, in houses, rooms, telephone kiosks, lifts etc. Is that a Kafka influence perhaps?
Gaddis: If that does have any connection with Kafka, I don’t really know. I last read him in the Fifties. We intellectuals in Greenwich Village were all Kafka fans. But I any of that got into the novels, I don’t know.

>Int: And why in your novels is nature always seen as something ‘outside’? Seen through windows and above all by women?
Gaddis: The woman in Carpenter’s Gothic sits in the house as if it were a prison, and nature is configured to some extent as freedom. In the last book however, nature is more of a threat, which is how I personally see it. It was different in The Recognitions, because the book has a narrator. But now I write dialogue, and if the speakers are allowed to come and go, they are doing something for some reason or other rather like going as if they were on automatic. Nature is only a backdrop, or as in Carpenter’s Gothic, it has obviously something to do with freedom except that this freedom is actually death.

>Int: Apropos Kafka in Greenwich Village: I’ve recently been reading a book by Anatole Broyard, When Kafka Was the Rage, set in Greenwich Village around the Forties or Fifties. The blurb describes the story, and also states that William Gaddis is in it, but there is not one sign of you.
Gaddis: That is very interesting, because … Well, Anatole was very attractive as a young man, and the ladies just melted away there was one girl he wrote about who was the model for Esme in The Recognitions. I was madly in love with that girl. I was Anatole’s rival and so we weren’t close friends. I believe that I became what Anatole would like to have been. He wanted to write novels, but for years became the critic for The New York Times. And I was writing novels. May be he had the feeling that he wanted and should have done that. Oh well … The character Max in the novel who always knows better than everyone else is rather a smooth type: he was based on Anatole.

[Anonymous No.23086434]

>>23086404
He is being genuine but the questions are largely fluff and Gaddis had no interest in them beyond possibly reaching the dozen or so people who would see this and read his books. Gaddis keeps trying giving the interviewer plenty to go off of for more indepth questions or just just exploring the previous question in more depth but the interviewer just keep on with his canned questions.
>>23086421
Gaddis probably was not much of a fan of McCarthy, probably had some respect for BM but largely considered him a pandering art fag. Still more worth than someone like King but his general thrust being rather thin.

That being said, I like McCarthy.

[Anonymous No.23086435]

Read Carpenter's Gothic and it was pretty bad, probably not gonna read his other stuff, especially the 1000 page book. Thank you for reading my blog

[Anonymous No.23086442]

>>23086434
>Gaddis probably was not much of a fan of McCarthy, probably had some respect for BM but largely considered him a pandering art fag. Still more worth than someone like King but his general thrust being rather thin
Are you his PA or something? He clearly liked McCarthy as a writer. Your delusions don’t line up with Gaddis' opinion. Keep your butthurt to yourself.

[Anonymous No.23086448]

>>23086442
Take it easy. You sound like a seething fanboy.

[Anonymous No.23086456]

>>23086442
>clearly
You have something to back that up? Everything Gaddis said and wrote suggests his view of McCarthy would be that McCarthy missed the point of art and existence.

But as I said, I like McCarthy, I just don't think Gaddis did (who I also like).

[Anonymous No.23086468]

>>23086456
>>23086456
>He’s fantastic, standing far beyond the rest.

[Anonymous No.23086473]

>>23086468
The rest of the faggots the interviewer mentioned (Updike and Delillo).

[Anonymous No.23086476]

>>23086468
Are you trying to suggest I think Gaddis is better than anything? I don't think that and ultimately I think Gaddis and McCarthy fell into the same trap, their own myopic curmudgeon views.

[Anonymous No.23086478]

Will The Recognitions filter me? What can I expect? Is it all dialogue?

[Anonymous No.23086484]

>>23086448
>>23086456
You are the one seething, butthurt fagboy.
>Everything Gaddis said and wrote suggests his view of McCarthy would be that McCarthy missed the point of art and existence.
Lmao. You have something to back it up? Seems like you are just projecting your butthurt over McCarthy onto Gaddis for some reason.

We literally have Gaddis' opinion right in front of us. And you are delusional enough to twist it into something it not even implies.
>"he is fantastic, standing far beyond the rest"
He pretty much called him better than his contemporaries right there. You keep up your mental gymnastics though.
> I like McCarthy, I just don't think Gaddis did (who I also like).
Lol sure. We should believe you over the guy who literally said that he thinks McCarthy is fantastic. God you guys are retarded.

[Anonymous No.23086489]

>>23086473
>this reading comprehension
Lmao. Gaddis rated Delillo quite highly in any case.

[Anonymous No.23086491]

>>23086473
>He’s fantastic

[Anonymous No.23086501]

>>23086489
>>23086491
There is no contradiction

[Anonymous No.23086502]

>>23086484
>far beyond the rest
What does Gaddis thing about the rest? Can't really say what being above the rest means unless you define the rest first. Read/listen/watch Gaddis' interviews, McCarthy's direction really was not Gaddis' thing and sort of antithetical to who Gaddis was as an author. All writers play politician and limit their shitting on other writers to the safe bets, like McCarthy always did.

[Anonymous No.23086510]

>>23086501
Yep, he thought McCarthy was fantastic. Only contradiction is from redditors who claim without any evidence that Gaddis didn’t think McCarthy was a fantastic writer.

[Anonymous No.23086512]

>>23086501
You are just stupid and butthurt. You get the same way whenever people bring up Gaddis being insecure about Joyce.
>>23086502
>waah believe my invented fantasy about my favorite writer's opinions... over my favorite writer's actual opinions
Kek, this is so retarded. Why does this board start dilating furiously at the mere mention of Cormac? As if Gaddis couldn't appreciate any art that was different from him. The worst thing being that this opinion is usually peddled by philistines who won't ever write anything of value, ever.

[Anonymous No.23086513]

>>23086502
>what does Gaddis think about the rest
The whole thread is literally his opinion on writers, you stupid idiot. Many of them his contemporaries.

[Anonymous No.23086517]

>>23086512
> You are just stupid and butthurt
I never said anything that contradicted Gaddis.
> You get the same way whenever people bring up Gaddis being insecure about Joyce
This is why you should take your meds, folks. This faggot right here is inventing an imaginary being with an imaginary history.

[Anonymous No.23086521]

Hey guys, wait for me to finish before you start fighting among yourselves. Fuck Amazon btw. They delivered the wrong book TWICE

>Int: American authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo or Robert Coover are obviously greatly influenced by you. Do you for your part follow their work?
Gaddis: When J R appeared it was rumored that Pynchon wrote it. I think that he and I have our parallels especially with regard to the entropy motive. But I’ve only read a little of him. And Coover, he now deals with things like Hypertexts or whatever they’re called. I mean, he is very intelligent and unique, but he goes in quite a different direction to me. DeLillo has said some very warm things such as I’ve been an influence on him, but it doesn’t mean that it’s reciprocal. I came across his book about the Kennedy-assassination, very good!

>Int: The Recognitions is a parody of Goethe’s Faust ...
Gaddis: Yes, that’s how it was originally planned.

>Int: Is the conflict between the law and justice central to A Frolic of His Own?
Gaddis: The idea arose from my first wife’s divorce lawyer by the way. Whenever I was once furious with her, I said to him: Listen, just skin her alive and get the kids, which is simply not just. And he would say: In the next life you will perhaps fight for justice, in this life you have the law. And that’s how I then began that novel.

>Int: Have you any favorite composers?
Gaddis: The list changes. At the moment, I like listening to Bruckner. It’s interesting that Bruckner is Austrian as is this madman, Bernhard, and both are repetitions and variations on the same theme, doing small adaptations and both indeed seem very, very Austrian.

>Int: You talk here about repetition: are you interested in Minimal Music like Philip Glasses?
Gaddis: No. I’d rather always listen to what I have been for the last fifty years. Bach or Mozart.

>Int: And Wagner?
Gaddis: He’s too theatrical for me.

>Int: Have you read Thomas Mann?
Gaddis: these fifty years, I’ve read a lot about him, but never The Magic Mountain.

>Int: And Doctor Faustus, which like The Recognitions, works round the Faust myth.
Gaddis: I think it’s on account of that that I never have read it, because I didn’t want his version being mixed up with mine. I’ve also never read Proust, because needing two years to read him I would then write some very bad Proust. You see, when I was twenty two, twenty three, I was reading Kafka and then writing bad Kafka. The world he created is a kind that cries to be imitated and I was writing about paranoid Kafkaesque things, frightful imitations and I realized that I can only do this kind of thing once in order to get rid of these other voices over the years out of my system. There’s only Dostoyevsky who can’t be imitated in any way that I could continually read again year in year out like The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, because Dostoyevsky is inimitable. I simply devour him passionately.

[Anonymous No.23086525]

>>23086512
You really missed my point. So you have written stuff of value? lol.
>>23086513
Its mostly about him and his writing, he keeps trying to steer things away from the interviewers soft balls but the interviewer always fails to pick up on it. Did you even read it?

[Anonymous No.23086526]

> I’ve never really understood why McCarthy is now so successful
Neither did I.

[Anonymous No.23086527]

>>23086517
>This is why you should take your meds, folks. This faggot right here is inventing an imaginary being with an imaginary history.
No hiding from me, dude. You standout because of your constant spergouts in Gaddis threads. You always behave as if you were his personal assistant and have knowledge of some very private opinions that nobody else does. The sophistry on your part ITT is absolutely astounding.

[Anonymous No.23086531]

>>23086517
>never said anything that contradicted Gaddis.
You did. You are trying to force your delusion on Gaddis' opinion, despite the opinion being clear cut and straightforward to any normal person.

[Anonymous No.23086532]

>>23086527
What on Earth are you even talking about? Read the poster count, schizo. Holy shit.

[Anonymous No.23086536]

>>23086531
See >>23086532

[Anonymous No.23086537]

>>23086527
lol. schizo.

[Anonymous No.23086539]

>>23086521
>Int: Your novels present the difficulties that artists experience in a society that destroys them because it has no interest in art. Do you see art having a function in such a society?
Gaddis: I’m not sure. So many artists are self-destructive and if you say that they would destroy a society that is so inimical to art then that is not at all the right thing to do. The artist works in the midst of destruction. In J R, Edward Bast, the young composer, has an immense vision of what he wants to do, but in the course of the novel he does all kind of jobs that come his way but he always says to himself, as soon as this is out the way, I’ll finish my own work. But he always allows himself to be more and more distracted, until right at the end when everything is falling apart, he begins all over again. Even Wyatt in The Recognitions works in the hands of destructive powers. And Jack Gibbs in J R is utterly destroyed by them. He’s always looking to excuse himself, and Norman says of him that once he has done a thing, he will not do it again. I once wrote a novel and sitting down to write is tiresome and that I have done more than once. That is self-destructive. This is the reason for there being so many faulty interpretations by reviewers, who maintain that my work not only puts the artist and society at odds with one another but that society would destroy the artist. It is very much more complicated. One important point, however, is that the reason for this conflict between art and society that can be seen in America today is that there are strong movements in Congress that would like to remove every support from the arts, from writers, dancers, painters, everyone. And the reason is that the artist is an agent of change. That is the artist’s function. But this society, especially those aligned with the republican conservatives, does not want change at any price. The artist is therefore a threat, is seen as a threat, and indeed is a threat.

[Anonymous No.23086545]

>>23086539
>Int: Your novels are always about doing something that is worth doing. But when all values have become decrepit, what is there that can be done? Is the beauty of art the final consolation? Or is everything finally just a huge joke?
Gaddis: I wouldn’t say that everything is just a huge joke. I believe that under the surface my humor was always desperate. At the end of The Forsythe Saga, after all the sorrow, betrayals and lies, Soames says: What is the reason for all this? This question has always followed me. What is the reason for all this? In my old age however, I’m convinced that we must not have an answer to this question. It’s best to act as if conventional ethics were true. They are only hypotheses, fictions and we live in hypotheses and fictions. I think Hans Vaihinger is relevant. He was a German philosopher, who wrote that pure morality must always be based on a fiction. We must do so too, as if our duties were imposed upon us by God, as if otherwise we would be punished for our misdemeanors. But as soon as the as-if is turned into a because, ethics evaporate and our behavior is ruled by base instinct.

>Int: I would like to ask you a couple of questions about your working technique. You have such an extraordinary beautiful handwriting. Did you study calligraphy?
Gaddis: When I was fourteen, I had a serious tropical disease and was in hospital for a year and a half. I had all that time to spend so I tried writing. But the ballpoint pen ruined all that later. I don’t think my handwriting is so nice any more.

>Int: Do you write your manuscripts by hand?
Gaddis: No, I couldn’t live without a typewriter. All my notes, sketches, even of course the text are typed. Then I go over it with a pencil and type it out again.

>Int: And what are you writing on at the moment?
Gaddis: a project about mechanical pianos. I’ve been interested in them since 1947. I have been preparing this theme for about fifty years. Art, the artist as a disruptive and so on. At the moment it’s still not worked out in my head. I’ll just let it turn itself over and wait to see what sort of form it will take on.

Fin

Bombs away, guys.

[Anonymous No.23086548]

>>23086532
>>23086536
>>23086537
>schizo calling others schizos
Kek. So funny. If anyone has ever been to a Gaddis thread before, they'll know you.

Recognitions was Joyce fanfiction btw.

[Anonymous No.23086553]

>>23086376
>oh look, possibly a good thread
>let’s open it and see
>…..

[Anonymous No.23086559]

>>23086548
>Recognitions was Joyce fanfiction btw.
Might as well call McCarthy Faulkner fanfiction which you can make a far stronger case for.
>>23086553
I felt the same way at first but it is not a good interview and offers little of worth, Gaddis humoring the interviewer. But if you want to talk Gaddis I am game.

[Anonymous No.23086561]

>>23086525
>So you have written stuff of value?
Way to miss my point, retard. Atleast I am not trying to subsume someone else's opinion (a published, acclaimed Writer's no less) into mine own, delusional one.

[Anonymous No.23086563]

>>23086548
I have never been in any Gaddis thread talking about Joyce lmao you replied to different people btw

Take your meds.

[Anonymous No.23086568]

>>23086512
So we should believe Gaddis when he expresses admiration for McCarthy but doubt him whenever he confesses to never having read Ulysses? You are not making sense.

[Anonymous No.23086572]

>>23086559
Kek, I knew it would grind your gears. You are that same guy lol.
>make a far stronger case for
No. Gaddis is literally copying all his techniques from Joyce. He is just not as experimental.

[Anonymous No.23086576]

>>23086568
That's your way isn't it? That's what you are trying to force onto others ITT. Stay consistent. If you can completely (and horribly) twist the clear context of Gaddis' opinion on McCarthy, then you shouldn't believe Gaddis' claim either. The influence of Ulysses in the book is visible, so there is some ground to believe it.

[Anonymous No.23086577]

>>23086572
Gaddis was never trying to be experimental and always consider himself modernist, what are you talking about? There is little in common between the techniques of Gaddis and Joyce unless you want to go extreme reductionist. But make your case, how is Gaddis using the same techniques in a way that could be called Joycean and not just generic?

Also, I am not that anon (either of them) probably should have said nta but I didn't, move on.

[Anonymous No.23086582]

>>23086577
I can attest you’re a different guy because I was looking at the poster count. The local schizo doesn’t know how this website works. Thinks every user is the same person.

[Anonymous No.23086585]

>>23086553
You could be reading Gaddis right now...oh wait.

[Anonymous No.23086589]

>>23086576
There really isn't. They share a blood line by T. S. Eliot side though

[Anonymous No.23086594]

Objective ranking
1. Joyce
2. Faulkner
3. McCarthy
4. Gaddis

Every other opinion is wrong. Have a good day/night.

[Anonymous No.23086600]

>>23086582
I could be the one McCarthy fag who is not above psyops and thinks occasionally using words he normally would not use is enough to throw people off the track.
>>23086594
>I give up and concede but I am still right.

[Anonymous No.23086603]

>>23086600
>8 anons ITT
>schizo tard thinks it’s 1v1
You’re insufferable.

[Anonymous No.23086613]

>>23086603
? Are you that McCarthy fag? I didn't think you were or that he was in this thread, was just making a joke. Weird that would trigger you.

[Anonymous No.23086620]

>>23086613
What McCarthy fag? I don’t know your schizo friends/enemies involved in psyops or whatever.

[Anonymous No.23086624]

>>23086620
>its him
lol. Sort of comforting but also depressing.

[Anonymous No.23086625]

>>23086582
Samefag.
>poster count
Newfags don't know how easy it is to circumvent this.

[Anonymous No.23086627]

>>23086600
Shut up gaddisfag. Everyone knows ypu because bringing up Joyce always makes you lose your mind.

[Anonymous No.23086629]

>>23086624
Lol. Do what you preach, dumbass. I was the one humiliating the Gaddisfag for being dumb.

[Anonymous No.23086631]

>>23086624
I genuinely have no clue who I’m supposed to be in your mind. I feel like I’m talking to a freak in a mental asylum who thinks I’m santa claus for some reason. Actually I’m the ghost of Cormac McCarthy. Tomorrow I’ll be the ghost of Ezra Pound. And so on. Contact your local schizo for more information.

[Anonymous No.23086638]

>>23086631
These guys are fucking retarded kek.

I can say with some certainty that the Gaddisfag is doing this from a few different devices, to keep up the ruse.

[Anonymous No.23086642]

Note to self: Never visit Gaddis threads ever again (full of mentally ill weirdoes).

[Anonymous No.23086646]

>>23086625
I actually can not samefag in that way for another ~hours, I am out of highspeed data and can not post if I reset my IP because I get my internet through my phone's hotspot and when it falls back to low speed it is too slow to verify with cloudfare, always will time out.
>>23086627
I prefer Joyce.
>>23086629
I thought I was Gaddisfag? This is getting confusing.
>>23086631
What did I preach?

[Anonymous No.23086658]

>>23086594
McCarthy and Gaddis are way better than Faulkner, otherwise agree.

[Anonymous No.23086666]

>>23086658
I think McCarthy is more or less on the same level as Faulkner, with Faulkner taking the upper hand slightly because he has more great books. Gaddis is definitely below them.

[Anonymous No.23087951]

>>23086376
>People want to be entertained and this country is obsessed with entertainment. A film production runs to $120M. And that can also go for TV: support will always turn into stupidity. ...All I’m saying is..we do want to be entertained. And that’s exactly what we do in America. Politics is entertainment, everything is entertainment

Entertainment is a powerful element of Infinite Jest’s America. In the world of the novel, entertainment is an often dangerous force to which people are compulsively drawn. It takes entertainment to its logical, horrifying conclusion—watching it is an experience so engrossing that viewers neglect their basic needs and eventually die. Yet while the novel suggests that entertainment can have a seriously negative effect, it does not imply that entertainment should be shunned altogether. Rather, it encourages readers to take a more critical attitude toward entertainment in order to decrease the control it has over society

The novel suggests that entertainment is damaging because, like intoxicants, it has a soporific effect, meaning that it makes people passive and vulnerable to manipulation. This may indicate that the most dangerous forms of entertainment are those that are popular, addictive, and easy to consume.

Forms of entertainment are everywhere in the novel. At the Tennis Academy, for example, there is a whole Entertainment Dept. Classes taught in the department include Intro to Entertainment Studies and History of Entertainment I & II. Yet the fact that the film’s actual title is Infinite Jest of course links it to the novel itself, a form of entertainment, though they have very different effects. Readers must work hard to keep track of the novel’s numerous intersecting plots and dozens of characters in 1,000 pages. The novel’s complex use of language and its many endnotes are even more ways in which the reader is forced to critically and actively work at reading it rather than passively consume it

"I couldn't even stand to be in the same room, see him like that. Begging for just even a few seconds - a trailer, a snatch of soundtrack, anything. His eyes wobbling around like some drug-addicted newborn."

The phrase “drug-addicted newborn” points to the important relationship between entertainment and drugs in the novel. Both entertainment and drugs create a pleasurable distraction that can function as a suspension from reality. Both entertainment and drugs can make people passive and vulnerable to manipulation and control. In order to resist this phenomenon, it is essential to maintain a critical distance from entertainment. Unlike drugs, it is not necessary (or possible) to eschew entertainment altogether; however, it is important not to let entertainment distract from reality. In this sense, having a critical relationship to entertainment is linked to sobriety because both involve confronting the fullness of reality.

[Anonymous No.23088133]

>>23087951
You haven't read the book.

[Anonymous No.23088263]

>>23086376
i think the part in JR where they touched up the class photo and made the guy's kid a nigger was pretty funny

[Anonymous No.23088461]

>thread about Gaddis
>McCarthy is cited
>all hell breaks loose

[Anonymous No.23089919]

>>23087951
TL;DR

[Anonymous No.23090042]

>>23086376
>it’s exactly so and the whole thing is really wildly funny.

It is that funny. Go read it.

[Anonymous No.23090054]

Well OP, you have convinced me to read this nigga.

[Anonymous No.23090234]

>>23086478
picrel is an ape. Yes, there is a lot of dialogue.

[Anonymous No.23090954]

>>23086666
McCarthy completely mogged Faulkner with Suttree just by itself.

[Anonymous No.23091245]

>>23086478
did we really want to see Stephen Dedalus and Bloom succeed? Maybe Bloom, but Dedalus was a whining prick.

[Anonymous No.23091413]

>>23087951
thank you chatgpt

[Anonymous No.23091477]

>>23086415
>Polish Catholic qt shows up at Gaddis' doorstep with vodka and flowers to discuss his book, trying to convince him he is a Catholic
Damn. Wish that were me.

[Anonymous No.23092795]

>>23086376
bump