Recog ch 2 last word is "alchemy" in that chapter
rich
richard.romeo at gmail.com
Wed Apr 20 13:46:46 CDT 2011
always thought if someone attempted to film something based on gaddis'
work or its spirit it would be the movie Network (1975), same year as
JR's release
now who we got? Jonathan Frazen and Paul Thomas Anderson. ughh...
rich
On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 10:49 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> A fine Introduction in the Penguin 20th Century Classic edition of JR
> by Frederick R. Karl is worth a re-read here. Although he gushes silly
> when calling Gaddis a "prophet" and a "hero of literature" (Carlyle's
> phrase), and ties himself in knots as he describes JR ans TR as " a
> guide to the 'real America' " and a paradox, an novel attempt to
> unravel the cartoon version of who and what we Americans are, he
> provides an excellent analysis of the use of what he calls the twin
> metaphors operating in JR; these are, of course, counterfeiting and
> invisibility; both, as Karl notes, as reminiscent of these themes and
> metaphors in TR. Karl describes, as Tony Tanner, who ignores Gaddis
> (NB one very significant note on Gaddis and Hawthorne p16), does in
> his beautifully composed and brilliantly woven little study, _The
> American Mystery_ (discussed here several times), language as metaphor
> for America. Karl alludes to Mallarme's poem "A Throw of the Dice will
> Never Abolish Chance" when describing the language of JR as the
> presence of an absence, by now a worn out if not trite critical tool,
> but in the tool box Karl, with great skill,handles Modernist concerns,
> like Incompletion, Uncertainty, and centers lacking or not holding.
>
> Good stuff to read. There is in Gaddis, certainly, this sense that
> communication is nerves in patterns on a screen impossible to mean;
> the women do not so much come and go, but the words do, words that
> refuse to say what the mean or what one needs to here to make meaning.
>
> Karl ends his too brief and brilliant essay with an allusion to
> Hawthorne: "As in Hawthorne's fiction, some shadow of evil lurks
> everywhere, and America is a quite imperfect Eden. For that, even art,
> even sacred visions, offer few solutions."
>
> But but but but, what of the rosebush that springs from Heter's prison
> door? The Scarlet Letter A Also stands for ART. And Ambiguity. And
> America.
>
>
>>Sheesh. . I believe this went the way of phrenology another pseudoscience.
>> You have to hand it to Gaddis for bringing it up.
>> These are just more ways in my view to exert some control over events. . .
>> to eliminate chance. . .in the context of one of the themes. . .
>
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