Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-Read Books (2002)

20•ofalkaed•2mo ago

Comments

ofalkaed•2mo ago

Rereading this for the first time in 20 odd years, I think what we lost with the death of David Foster Wallace is the loss of the friendship between David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. It is easy to see the effect this loss has had on Franzen, but it is impossible to see the effect it had on Wallace, we can only assume. Society did not lose a great author, it lost a great friendship.

I keep trying to get through this but I can't do it, it makes the loss too difficult to overcome.

logicprog•2mo ago

This was an incredibly well written essay, well worth the read. Thank you for sharing

rurban•2mo ago

Looks like Franzen didn't understand JR at all. JR is a novel without an author. There is no subjectivity given by any author. No descriptions, no voice over explanations, no thoughts. Only objective observations, only dialog ie what people say, not what they didnt say, just think. It's like a modern film without a Scorsese like voice over a narrative, which explains everything, instead of letting the observer come to his own conclusions. For literature it was a revolution.

And if you are in it it's very easy to read. You just to keep going on, because when you forgot who said what you get lost. There is no he said, she said. There's only subjects speaking, no author explaining. No double quotes.

My favorite book

miltonlost•2mo ago

There's portions where the voices overlapping is intentional, like calling into a party line on accident, and others where you can tell immediately from the Voice who is speaking. Few other authors have characters you can (or must) identify from idiolects alone.

mna_•2mo ago

There are glimmers of JR in Gaddis' earlier work The Recognitions, specifically during the party scenes where voices overlap. But of course because the rest of the book is written in a "usual manner", you can recognise who's saying what quite easily.

pessimizer•2mo ago

> And if you are in it it's very easy to read. You just to keep going on, because when you forgot who said what you get lost.

That book was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. I didn't know anything about it, just started flipping through it at the library (probably shelved near something I was interested in), and ended up reading the entire thing in one sitting. So I'm definitely with you.

I think my mind was still racing from that book a year later, and I was hoping that it was Gaddis's style (I didn't know anything about him) and I'd be able to find other books by him (or anyone else) written with that velocity. I did not:(

edit: Would appreciate recommendations, though.

mitchbob•2mo ago

This might be easier on the eyes:

https://archive.ph/uyBJD

rudimentary_phy•2mo ago

The Contract version. Thanks!

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