William Gaddis and Tony Tanner

[Nathan Walters]

On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, mn wrote:

>  While cleaning my mailbox I happened to see the names of William Gaddis
> and a man called Tanner. Who are they? They're dead, right? Never heard of
> them...

I've only been on this list a month, so by way of introduction I will
apologize if this has already been covered; Gaddis's death seems a likely
time, but I haven't even been around that long. To answer the above:

William Gaddis wrote _The Recognitions_ (1955), _J R_ (1975), _Carpenter's
Gothic_ (1985) and _A Frolic of His Own_ (1994).  He won the U.S. National
Book Award for _J R_ and _Frolic_ (William H. Gass, iirc, sat on both
those committees), and he won the MacArthur "Genius" Prize. Gaddis passed
away on December 16 and would have been 76 on December 29. He reportedly
left a completed book behind titled _Agape, Agape_, supposedly a mediation
on the player piano and the mechanization of the arts. While his first
four works are novels, there is some speculation as to whether the
remaining book is fiction or nonfiction (a publisher's press release calls
it the latter, though reports on the first chapter, soon to be broadcast
over German radio, has it as fiction).

_The Recognitions_ carries with it a certain amount of infamy for the
critical reception it received on its publication, as most reviews were
ill informed, asinine, insulting, and written by critics who had not even
read the 956 page book (the reviews and their errors are scathingly
documented in jack green's _Fire The Bastards_ [Dalkey, I heard, is
currently rerunning this]). Tony Tanner was one of the first critics to
pay Gaddis significant and serious attention that was not necessarily
negative, first in _City of Words: American Fiction 1950-1970_ (1971) and
in the New York Times Review of Books in 1974. (I have no idea about
Tanner's current status.) Though the book (and author) still remains
little known and less read, it's gone from its hostile reception to
acceptance in places as "validating" as the Bloom County Canon.

I hesitate to dwell more on Gaddis; there's much to say about him, but
this isn't the proper forum in which to it (that's the Gaddis-list, to
which a number of people who subscribe to this list also belong and I'm
boring them -- and others). But, sacrilegious as it may sound to most
p-listers, at the time of his death there are those who considered Gaddis
to be the United States' preeminent living author (TRP vs WG would have
made for a good MTV Celebrity Death Match). Though the two are very
different writers, anyone who enjoys Pynchon owes it to himself to give
Gaddis a try.

For more information on Gaddis, visit Ron Dulin's excellent web site
<www.mrsite.com/gaddis> on which I understand he's trying to collect most
of the obituaries. The site also contains info on the Gaddis-list.  

Best,

Nathan Walters