NP: RIP William Gass

[Smoke Teff]

https://bigother.com/2012/07/30/the-gass-sentences-a-top-50-by-stephen-schenkenberg/

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 9:07 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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