TRTR Wreckingnitions Crew comes back

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut wrote:
> Like---Facebook wld say.
>

you're too kind...but if you like it, I want to just tie it up a little neater:

a) w/r/t the "art in the age of mechanical reproduction" theme:
although we don't really see his characters overcoming the decline
from status to contract, Gaddis himself, by producing handmade
articles of uniqueness within a mass production environment, refuted
the idea in his practice.

b) w/r/t Pynchon-influenced minds absorbing Gaddis and the effect of that:
while Pynchon certainly does more than hint at complexity and
interrelationships,
doesn't Gaddis seem to be wrapped even tighter: cases where throwaway
references aren't really throwaways (to sort of harken back to
Ulysses...) and seem to be resurfacing as thematic, and while this is
really part of any good writer's job, it seems to me he does it more
intensely than most -
so that while I tend to prefer a certain cheerfulness that (viewed in
a certain way) shines through Pynchon's work, there's a certain
persistence of vision in Gaddis that makes it savory in its own way.
And that a reader can be open to this is something I feel to be
heightened by the parallel existence of the different universe of the
Pynchon books!