Gaddis a Yalie?!

[Steelhead]

Orlo (or is that "ortho") Bob takes me to task for my defense of Gaddis,
implying that I put him at Yale during the interregnum there between Pappy
Bush and President McMuffin, but..

Bob:

Read it again.  I never said Gaddis went to Yale.  I said that's where the
CIA does its recruiting.  I don't care where Gaddis went to school. I've
heard he went to quite a few. But I think its quite beside the point and an
abyssmal way to describe or dismiss my favorite writer--sorry Ruggles, your
slippin daily in my book.  But its a very typical obsession for the lit
crit types who've never left the comfortable halls of academe themselves
and who seem quite intent on keeping contemporary American fiction confined
there as well.

As for that string of emotions poured out in the Irish Times interview,
well, Gaddis does have a self-deprecating sense of humor...I think the
Nobel Prize bit is a little jab at Mailer, myself. Who knows.  Maybe he's a
terrible egoist.  Doesn't have a damn thing to do with the vicious comedy
of JR though, does it?


Steelhead