Gaddis

[Steelhead]

grip sez (unbelievably):

>After reading several references to Gaddis, I thought I'd give him a try.
>So I picked up a copy of his latest(?) "A Frolic of His Own" and JR.
>Doesn't he have a keyboard with a quotation mark key? Is this supposed to
>be cute or is there some arcane reason for having pages and pages of
>dialogue mixed together with descriptive passages. I am unable to get
>anything out of this without an excrutiating effort which frankly after a
>hundred pages or doesn't seem worth it. Does one ever get used to not
>knowing if a character is talking or if the author is narrating without
>stopping and going back and rereading from the last -?

>Sorry about intruding with WG on TRP's bailiwick, but this is wherte I
>learned of the existence of WG, so...

>Are all his books like this? Should I bother to order Recognitions?

Dear Grip:

If you don't like JR.  Well,...don't bother with the Recognitions, though
it is, in many respects, an easier book.  And that's a pity.  Quotation
marks are just a convention of typography. Read Joyce or Beckett or
Robbe-Grillet. Why Pynchon uses them I don't know.  Write him. All Gaddis's
characters speak in their own voice or chorus or cacophony of voices.
There's lots to say on this.  But saying it takes most of the challenge and
fun out of reading Gaddis...who is by far the funniest writer America's
produced since Faulkner wrote the Hamlet.

Steelhead