NP: RIP William Gass

[Smoke Teff]

Gerke: Any thoughts on Sebald?

Gass: Didn’t read him. I read about 10 pages. That wasn’t just to him. But
I could see the rush of this wave of popularity that is almost a death now.
So I’m going to have to go back sometime when it’s calmed down and see,
because sometimes they’re actually very good. And I’m very arrogant about
my judgment. I don’t make mistakes.

Gerke: Is that the case with David Foster Wallace too?

Gass: He had great abilities. And I think he needed to tame them. I think
he was so good that he should’ve wanted to be better. And he wrote some
things that are going to stay around. And I wish he had stayed around and
done that. He had lots of smarts too. He was unlike a lot of writers who
are sort of dumb, theoretically speaking. Stanley was street-smart but
intellectually? Awful. But he didn’t need to be. Pynchon’s a case. I have
tried to read Pynchon with no success so far, but then I can’t read
Whitman—I try. So we just have blank spots. We can’t like everything, and I
don’t see any rule for it. Why should you love every woman that walks by?
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