NP - Gaddis

Sat Jul 22 20:27:54 CDT 2017

In flipping through just a tiny bit of *A Frolic of His Own*, which I've
owned forever and always wanted to read and for some reason haven't, the
debt to Kafka seems obvious, specifically Kafka's fascination with the
law/law-like institutions, also some of the fundamental dynamics of Kafka's
cosmic vision.

The opening sentence: "Justice? --You get justice in the next world, in
this world you have the law."

I'm copying and pasting below an unvetted translation of a parable that I
believe Kafka wrote separately from the rest of *The Trial *but which found
a home inside of it, "Before the Law," which if you've read you almost
certainly remember.

Also the epigraph, attributed to Thoreau (writing to Emerson): "What you
seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the
family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it you
become its prey."

In response to this epigraph, I'm also copying and pasting Kafka's "A
Little Fable," which is also (I add) finely and succinctly remarked upon in
a short DFW essay I like, called "Laughing with Kafka." I include a link to
this also.

Curious to see how these things end up playing out in the Gaddis book.

BEFORE THE LAW

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the
country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that
he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then
asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the
gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open,
as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in
order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices
that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my
prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly
gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful
than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from
the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be
accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the
gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin,
black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he
gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows
him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days
and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper
out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly,
questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are
indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always
tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has
equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no
matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all
but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think
you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the
gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this
one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the
unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later,
as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and,
since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the
fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the
gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether
things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely
deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which
breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has
much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his
experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet
put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his
stiffening body.
The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has
changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to
know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives
after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one
except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already
dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at
him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned
only to you. I’m going now to close it.

A LITTLE FABLE

"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing smaller every day. At the
beginning it was so big that I was afraid,I kept running and running, and I
was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these
long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already,
and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only
need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

DFW Essay:
https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-07-0059612.pdf

On Sun, Jul 16, 2017 at 4:58 AM, Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:

> It was John Calvin Batchelor who dug pretty deep into the idea that
> Pynchon was Salinger (*https://tinyurl.com/yae5tc6
> <https://tinyurl.com/yae5tc6>). *TRP wrote him a letter, telling him to
> "keep trying".
>
> BTW, Batchelor's novels are lots of fun themselves. Goofy but literate.
>
> On Sun, Jul 16, 2017 at 10:01 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Flipping through my copy of The Recognitions...
>>
>> It has an intro by William Gass. Who mentions the apparently prevalent
>> rumor that Gaddis was Pynchon.
>>
>> On Jul 16, 2017, at 3:54 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >> A--and, Pynchon was so appreciated sub rosa, what with his powerful
>> so-smart agent; his story publishing reputation--including as we know, an
>> early V. bit--his writing teacher's reputation and praise, etc. that that
>> wide net cultural reader/presence that was George Plimpton--paris Review
>> and all--who 'liked' most of what he wrote about (if he didn't it seems he
>> did not write about it?) was, yes, lucky for Pynchon but also more and less
>> than luck.
>> >
>> > So, Pynchon basically was discovered by the CIA?
>> >
>> > http://www.salon.com/2012/05/27/exclusive_the_paris_review_t
>> he_cold_war_and_the_cia/
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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