I: 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?G: 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.I: And Updike?G: 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.I: Have you ever read Umberto Eco?G: 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.
>>25037264I: 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?G: 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!I: 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.G: 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 passagesare really wonderful.I: But they had nothing to do with The Recognitions?G: 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 …He’s also very funny, 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.I: I also feel that Evelyn Waugh influences you as in the way his novels develop through dialogue.G: Waugh is very witty, very quick. He must be one of my favorite authors.
>>25037264you really do need somebody smarter than you to tell you what should you think
>>25037266I: are there other German authors that were or are important for you?G: 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.
I would've thought he'd have more interesting views. Seems like a midwit, desu.
>>25037266> G: I’ve never read Ulysses.I heard someone say they know he’s lying. I read some of Recognitions one day and I came to agree with that conclusion
>>25037333What are the similarities, trips?Do it without mentioning the dashes for dialogue tags or the general erudition
>>25037349It’s just how the prose felt. This was a while ago so I’m not going to go back and read it. Iirc the way he used multitudinous which seemed straight out of ulysses.
>>25037412
>>25037349>tripartite division, with short first and third part and large middle>character named Stephen>someone dries a handkerchief on a mirror
>>25037264He was such a fucking alpha chad. Love his Nabokov comment.
>>25037412>>25037612Retards.
>>25038719>I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which The Recognitions’ debt to Ulysses was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read Ulysses.>(March 1972 letter to Jean [?] Howes)>I’ve about reached the end of the line on questions about what I did or didn’t read of Joyce’s 30 years ago. All I read of Ulysses was Molly Bloom at the end which was being circulated for salacious rather than literary merits; No I did not read Finnegans Wake though I think a phrase about “psychoanaloosing” one’s self from it is in The Recognitions; Yes I read some of Dubliners but don’t recall how many & remember only a story called “Counterparts”; Yes I read a play called Exiles which at the time I found highly unsuccessful; Yes I believe I read Portrait of an Artist but also think I may not have finished it; No I did not read commentary on Joyce’s work & absorb details without reading the original. I also read, & believe with a good deal more absorbtion [sic], Eliot, Dostoevski, Forster, Rolfe, Waugh, why bother to go on, anyone seeking Joyce finds Joyce even if both Joyce & the victim found the item in Shakespear, read right past whole lines lifted bodily from Eliot &c, all of which will probably go on so long as Joyce remains an academic cottage industry.>(June 1975 letter to Grace Eckley)Sounds like he read Ulysses and was lying to himself
Of course it happens all the time that authors to come up with the same thing
>>25038985But you can't support it in the slightest? Go ahead, offer something substantive and worth discussing.
>>25038985If there is one place that writers lie even more than they do in their interviews, it's in their letters.
>>25037264What's Updike?
>>25039042Rabbit Angstrom, Witches of Eastwick
>>25039042The joke that killed butters
>>25039021I'm not going to pretend I know anything about Gaddis, but I do know that he read Ulysses
>>25039421The only things they have in common are fairly generic and superficial.
>>25039429>tripartite division, with short first and third part and large middle>character named Stephen>someone dries a handkerchief on a mirror
>>25039429There’s very few real readers on this board who have studied literature in a serious manner and can analyze prose, narrative voice, theme, etc. The answers you’ve been given would be laughed at in my classes. Then again I go to an elite program so maybe it’s different elsewhere.
>>25039437>tripartite division, with short first and third part and large middleGeneric and superficial, it is literally a three paragraph essay, intro, exposition, conclusion. This is very very common in literature and we see this even in works which don't literally break it up into three parts, we are probably talking about 99% of literature here. >character named Stephenlol. You are thinking of Stanley unless I am forgetting a minor character, there are lots of minor characters and Stephen is a common name. >someone dries a handkerchief on a mirrorThat used to be a very common thing. Up until recently mirrors generally were attached to furniture and not mounted on the wall. My grandma did this with the things she hand washed, dropped them over her vanity mirror. >>25039452That is the first answer I have gotten, I just got here. I am well aware of the state of /lit/.
>>25039456Oh, Wyatt takes on the name Stephen at the end, forgot about that, it was the name on his fake passport or something and he takes it? Still superficial, you need something more than a rather common name.
>>25039452Gaddis isn't literature, he's highbrow reddit fiction. Literature is Byron, Leopardi, Aeschylus, Joyce, and not much after Joyce.
>>25039452Gaddis is one of those authors who seems easy at first glance, so redditors will try to dismiss him as if he's not "real" literature, but there's much more depth to him than redditors can actually get at so the responses here will reflect that.
>>25039566>Gaddis>easy at first glanceThe man who labeled the original Mr. Difficult?
>>25039566>>25039619I'm sorry but if Franzen loves a writer, its reddit by definition.
>>25039566I mean yeah, redditors do hate him. But I think you’re completely wrong on why because they also love Pynchon and Joyce.
>>25038985>Rolfevery based
>>25039643>I mean yeah, redditors do hate him>>25039482
>>25039643Why do redditors hate him then?
>>25039643Pynchon is the quintessential reddit writer. Gaddis isn't.
>>25039456Nta, let me add to this:1. The tripartite division is also referencing triptyches, a very common art medium in the flemish golden age - the beginning is calm and introductory, the large middle part is the idea showcase of the book and the end is a sudden shift into chaos. Take a look at The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch and see what I mean.2. Yes, I believe they've even asked him that (my information is from williamgaddis.org) and he said it wasn't (take that as you will). Similarities in symbolism can be found though, (SPOILERS HERE)in the way both characters go on a self imposed exile and end their development (for Steven in tpaym) after their respective artistic epiphanies.3. Gaddis answers this in a video interview on youtube, it's really good, he overall talks about why he decided on a similarly reclusive life as Pynchon later did, stating that it should be a reader-book connection, not reader-author. He says that readers very often impose a symbolic meaning unto something that the author never meant to be hidden there in the first place. So when he heard from friends that the drying on the mirror part is oh so similar to veiling the mirrors in your home when a family member has died, he said that he didn't even know that was a thing people did.
>>25040043Technically TR is 4 parts, it has an epilogue, but yeah, this is really common and generally the exposition is the largest part with the intro and conclusion providing the context. The exposition pretty much has to be the bulk, if the intro is long the book will feel as if it goes no where, if the conclusion is long it will feel as though it drags on without getting to the point but often the lines between them are blurred, there is no hard cut.Self imposed exile is pretty much the standard, all that changes is what the exile is from. Even if the exile is imposed by something/someone else the character generally makes the choice which causes it to be imposed and is often aware of the consequences. In the case of an artist character, there are two options, do what needs to be done to live their art or give up the art, we need a resolution. Does Wyatt actually self impose the exile? I remember it more that he just lets it happen, which is sort of how he lives life, visiting his father is pretty much the only time he takes action. I have not read it since the NYRB edition came out so don't quite remember many of the details, probably time for a reread. Gaddis was not a recluse, he just avoided the limelight but absolutely was a part of the world. Probably the same for Pynchon but we don't have much to go off of with him, he probably has a life.
>>25040397Yeah, by reclusive I meant from the media. He was known to be quite awkward. I think a lot of his masterwork comes from being able to sit silently and listen to what others say, those bar and party scenes wrote themselves I suspect.
>>25040561>those bar and party scenes wrote themselves I suspect.I think they show a great deal of struggle, especially in how he uses the narrator in those scenes, which is fairly blunt and heavy handed compared to the surrounding dialogue. I tried to find sense in this but any explanation I could come up with only covers two or three of the scenes. I found Gaddis eloquent in the one interview I watched, only thing close to awkward would be his biting his toungue when it comes to retarded and uninteresting questions, questions like the Ulysses question which is more about the cult of celebrity than literature, what the fuck does it matter?
