slaggin' Moore, Gaddis, Franzen and DeLillo pre-Nobel

[s~Z]

>>>And he wasn't exactly ridiculed either; Franzen referred to Steve as "a
Gaddis scholar whose criticism is a model of clarity and intelligent
advocacy". <<<

For those of you who have not read the essay, here's the above snip in full
context:

"If you're having a good time with a novel, you're a dupe of the
postindustrial System; if you still identify with characters, you need
to retake Postmodernism 101. William Gass, in his introduction to "The
Recognitions," names the childish thing that it's time to put behind us:
"Too often we bring to literature the bias for 'realism' we were
normally brought up with." Gass's defense of difficulty complements
Tabbi's, but with greater sophistry and alliteration. "If the author
works at his work," Gass writes, "the reader may also have to, whereas
when a writer whiles away both time and words, the reader may relax and
gently peruse." Gaddis's fiction could have used fewer friends like this
and better enemies. Even Steven Moore, a Gaddis scholar whose criticism
is a model of clarity and intelligent advocacy, lets his enthusiasm get
the better of him. "J R," for Moore, is a "lean and economical" book,
because its inferential, all-dialogue form forces readers to supply
missing descriptions and information; the purpose of a novel being, I
suppose, to capture and efficiently store data."