December 14th, 2009 / 3:32 am
Snippets
Snippets
Blake Butler—
Nick Ripatrazone brings an in-depth and very excellent close reading and analysis of William Gass’s “The Pedersen Kid” at Quarterly Conversation: “The word snow—and its variations—appears 181 times within the 79 pages of “The Pedersen Kid.” The repetition transfers snow from word to thing: snow is overwhelming and smothering, equal parts plot, character, and theme. The word appears in the second sentence, and it completes the initial thought of the story. It is a Faulknerian convention, a trope in the tradition of adventure novels. Snow is omniscient but transient, gone come spring.”
i liked this reading, thanks, and would only add that this happened numerous times throughout their literary lives, to my mind – where one seemed to practice the theory of the other. Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck, while deeply immersed in language and game and all of Gass’s other formal ambitions, has an almost strangely and eerie moralistic end. though this of course could be because his manuscript was snatched up and away and whatever end he had had to be re-ended. but still, the movement of that novel, it’s almost as though there’s no other way for it to go. and i’d also say the same for Gardner (though who can really read him, right? his sentences are so sad), in that he often seems to be practicing a little Gass – Grendel, for instance, is almost all interiority of one main character. and all of this is to me only evidence that theory is only and ever theory, and the work, the art, the thing itself, it’ll be what it’ll be.
good morning read, thanks for it. for more of this, Watson Holloway’s book on Gass is pretty decent.
i liked this reading, thanks, and would only add that this happened numerous times throughout their literary lives, to my mind – where one seemed to practice the theory of the other. Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck, while deeply immersed in language and game and all of Gass’s other formal ambitions, has an almost strangely and eerie moralistic end. though this of course could be because his manuscript was snatched up and away and whatever end he had had to be re-ended. but still, the movement of that novel, it’s almost as though there’s no other way for it to go. and i’d also say the same for Gardner (though who can really read him, right? his sentences are so sad), in that he often seems to be practicing a little Gass – Grendel, for instance, is almost all interiority of one main character. and all of this is to me only evidence that theory is only and ever theory, and the work, the art, the thing itself, it’ll be what it’ll be.
good morning read, thanks for it. for more of this, Watson Holloway’s book on Gass is pretty decent.