Nobody grew but the business
Subtitle: on the life and work of William Gaddis
By: Joseph Tabbi
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
ISBN-13: 9780810131422
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation; American Authors; Biography; Capitalism in literature
Description: During his lifetime, William Gaddis (1922-1998) evaded biographical questions, never read from his work publicly, and didn't allow his photograph to appear on his book. Before his novel J R (1975) won Gaddis the National Book Award and some measure of renown, he had given up the bohemian world of 1950s Greenwich Village for a series of corporate jobs that both paid the bills and provided an inside view of the encroachment of market values into every corner of American culture. By illustrating the interconnectedness of Gaddis's life and work, Joseph Tabbi, among his foremost interpreters, demystifies the "difficult author" and shows a writer who was as attuned as any to the way Americans talk, and who sensitively chronicled the gradual commodification of artistic endeavor. Illuminating, heartbreaking, and masterful, Tabbi's book gives us the most subtly drawn portrait to date of one of the twentieth century's seminal novelists. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-248) and index.
Table of contents: title: Williams family orchestra --; title: Merricourt --; title: All tomorrow's parties : the route to The Recognitions --; title: Anticipations of failure in The Recognitions --; title: Gwion's riddle and Toynbee's solution --; title: The self who could do more --; title: IBM, Ford, Pfizer, and the ghost in the machine --; title: American fiction without recognition : J R --; title: The imagination of the state --; title: Portrait of the artist as writing professor : Carpenter's Gothic --; title: Friendships, and frolics --; title: His master's voice : Agape agape.