TRTR is Wm Gaddis a writer no one reads?

[Mark Kohut]

Re Chapter 7...p.247...

"A novel without a hero would be distracting in the extreme"....

the first time I read the phrase "a novel without a hero" was way back when I 
learned that the
full published title of Vanity Fair was Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero, 
that satire of 19th Century British society
by that wicked social climber Becky Sharp...which it would be interesting to 
know
WHY that subline was chosen but I would guess it is for some of the reasons 
Gaddis outlines here.....
 
most particularly so that readers would anticipate NOT identifying with Becky or 

any character......since
readers do want to still....do you encounter as I do the many readers who will 
say....."I did not like any of the
characters" as a way to say they did not like a book?........
 
This page also has to be about The Recognitions, yes? and also involves some of 
the cutural myths about heroes
such as Lord Raglan explores in his book, The Hero, which I have not read but 
learned of around the same time
as I did The Goden Bough and Eliot and his sources such as jessica Weston, et 
al......................