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

[jbor]

>>>> Yes, Franzen's target is _J R_ rather than Steve Moore, towards whom he
> is
> quite respectful. As I noted, Franzen doesn't "ridicule" Moore<<<
> 
> "Even Steven Moore, a Gaddis scholar whose criticism is a model of clarity
> and intelligent advocacy, lets his enthusiasm get the better of him."

Yes, I've read it. It's quite respectful towards Moore. What's your point?

>>>> and nor was Moore "positive" about Franzen's article.<<<
> 
> "As I told Victoria, Franzen's profile is the most interesting thing I've
> read on Gaddis in years, despite his
> misreadings. There are some great insights into "The Recognitions"
> (especially the passage on pp. 104-5, from "There' something medieval
> Christian..." through "Gaddis's implication in his own satire"). And I like
> the "story" Franzen tells himself in the profile's last two paragraphs,
> which has some truth in it."

I must have missed that post altogether, though I do agree with Moore's
judgement of the Franzen essay on Gaddis as "interesting" and "insightful".
In a subsequent post Steve said he hoped that "the reception of the novella
won't be as bad as Franzen's piece suggested".

However, checking in the gaddis-l archive, I note that Moore's not really
that "positive" at all regarding the Franzen essay in the post snipped from
above, more ambivalent than anything in fact, and he makes sure to get in a
couple of backhanders of his own. This is the entire post, to provide its
proper "context":

From:  "Steven Moore" <smoore3 at w...>
Date:  Sun Sep 29, 2002  6:42 pm
Subject:  Franzen/Gaddis/Bloom

By a fascinating coincidence, Franzen's piece on Gaddis is preceded in the
NYer
by one on Harold Bloom, in which Larissa MacFarquhar summarizes Bloom's
"anxiety of influence" thesis: "the poet's quest for originality takes the
form
of struggling against his poetic influences: struggling, that is, to
appropriate and warp, or 'misread,' his precursor's work in such a way that,
to
a later reader, it would appear that the precursor had failed" (p. 92).
I wonder if Franzen's misreadings of Gaddis owe something to this notion,
given
Franzen's admiration for The Recognitions, for "the human quest for
imaginative
autonomy takes the form of a son struggling to deny his origins--to be, in a
sense, his own father." The casual reader would lump Franzen & Gaddis
together--they both wrote fat, high-brow novels--so to establish his
autonomy
it's not surprising that Franzen might feel a need to denigrate Gaddis.
On the other hand, his profile is an honest account of a reader wanting to
like
an author and just not being able to manage it. (I feel the same way about
Robert Coover, several of whose novels I've given up on halfway through,
including the new "Adventures of Lucky Pierre.") As I told Victoria,
Franzen's
profile is the most interesting thing I've read on Gaddis in years, despite
his
misreadings. There are some great insights into "The Recognitions"
(especially
the passage on pp. 104-5, from "There' something medieval Christian..."
through
"Gaddis's implication in his own satire"). And I like the "story" Franzen
tells
himself in the profile's last two paragraphs, which has some truth in it.
The worst misreading, worse than dismissing all the later novels as
failures,
is Franzen's assumption that Gaddis didn't want to be entertaining. Gaddis
was
more Contract than Status, to use Franzen's terms, and couldn't figure out
why
people complained of the difficulty in his work and didn't appreciate its
humor, its brisk pace, its screwball-comedy complications--its entertainment
value, in a word. When he began "A Frolic," for example, it was to consist
solely of legal opinions & decisions, but then he realized that would be too
much work for the average reader & so made it into an enjoyable novel. Same
with "Carpenter's Gothic": I had the great honor of visiting him for a few
days
in August 1984 just when he finished the book, and he gave me the ms. to
read;
I spent all day Sunday reading it, and over dinner that night, Gaddis
grilled
me on whether the novel succeeded as a novel: were the characters
believable,
their motivations consistent, etc. He didn't ask me whether the structural
metaphors were apparent or whether his theory of epistemology was
sufficiently
complicated; he just wanted to know if it was a satisfying read. Only with
"Agape Agape" does Gaddis seem to have given up on the idea of making the
book
entertaining; this is the only book in his oeuvre where he decided not to
make
any concessions to the average reader. "You think I'm difficult?" he seems
to
have said; "I'll show you difficult!" But it can be read in an hour, so even
that makes it approachable.
Speaking of which: MacFarquhar says Bloom claims "in his youth he could read
a
thousand pages an hour"--meaning he could have read "The Recognitions" in
about
58 minutes. What a mensch!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gaddis-l/message/2148

best