TRTR is Wm Gaddis a writer no one reads?

[Paul Mackin]

On 6/24/2011 10:23 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> 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......................
>
>
I thought the subtitle might have been reference to the fact the 
protagonist was a woman and therefore a heroine, not a hero.  Or rather 
an anti-heroine.  I don't know however if in Thackeray's day hero had 
yet become a substitute for protagonist.



Valentine seems to to pretty much be talking nonsense.  Just feeling 
aggressive against Brown.

As for identifying with the hero,  Doing so may help a reader enjoy a 
novel.  But a good substitute for identifying with the hero is merely 
having the recognition of some conflict the hero is experiencing that 
the reader has also experienced or can imagine as real.

P