Die-A-Log

[Steelhead]

The exchange between Don Larsson and Andrew Dinn, as usual, hits the target
again:

Dinn: >If you really want to appreciate Gaddis technique at his best then
>read the opening section of JR (about 3-4 pages) and reread until you
>can identify the voices, characters behind them and their family
>history in miniature (it's all there - Gaddis, like Pynchon and
>despite appearances to the contrary, puts all the info you need right
>on the page). Then go back and be boggled by the skill with which so
>little text and no overt *interference* from a narrator has rendered
>so much understandable."


Larsson: >Gaddis isn't the only one.  Manuel Puig's KISS OF THE SPIDER
WOMAN consists only
>of dialogue (and a few written "documents"), as well as some
>stream-of-conscious-
>ness narration.  This has given my students pause when I have taught the novel
>but eventually they come to terms with it.  (Apparently it gave pause to
>several
>American reviewers when it was first published in English.)

To which, I would only add, that narration, too, is a kind of autocratic
dialogue, a nattering voice, often impersonating other voices, characters,
camera angles, or random points of view, so it's only natural to find
Gaddis's narrator slipping seamlessly into the dialogue of his characters,
a part of the strange cacophony.

Steelhead