Some years ago in reviewing a book by J.
P. Donleavy for the Chicago Tribune I remarked that while prolific he like
Vladimir Nabokov, equally prolific, would be remembered for one book: The Ginger Man, Lolita.
That is why I reject the phrase: de mortuis nil nisi bonum
Finally a death certificate and obituary
have been issued for one of the typing dead: William Gass… of course in the
near future it is likely we will be seeing such announcements for others of the
typing dead: Don DeLillo, Joyce Oates and Robert Coover while some of the
pre-maturely typing dead: Jonathan Franzen, Ali Smith, Jonathan Safron
Foer—will serve as typical of the younger typing dead.
Gass is part of a long tradition of the
typing dead… at one time in second hard bookstores you could always find
examples from previous times: John Sanford,
Waldo Frank, John Hawkes, Philip
Wylie are typical examples--- the
mystery of whatever did people find in these writers that is now no longer
apparent…
William Gass, if he had fallen silent
after publishing the long story In the
Heart of the Heart of the Country, would have assured his writing of a real place
in the literary world, much as Tillie Olson did with her very short collection
of stories Tell Me a Riddle or Hannah
Green did with her one short novel The
Dead of the House… but in the case of Gass with each book of fiction or
non-fiction after In the Heart of the Heart of the Country the hole he dug for himself
became bigger and deeper… in particular
the books of criticism which were finally exercises in style lacking any
content thus leaving a reader hard-pressed to say what the essay had been about
other than to murmur, it sounded pretty
good but what was he trying to say ?...
while the blobs of “fiction” were just that and you can see for yourself
by using the method suggested by Ezra
Pound: choose at random say page 51 in Gass’s Middle C or in The Tunnel
and compare them to the same page in say Celine’s Rigadoon or in Thomas Bernhard’s Correction. My case is thus
rested and to think both the Celine and the Bernhard are translations…
Altogether a sad fate for a one time
professor of philosophy who was promoted or demoted into a professor of humanities while being proclaimed a genius by his current publisher
upon his death…
PS
IN THE COMING WEEKS THERE WILL BE A BATHETIC CHORUS OF CELEBRATORY LAMENTS AT THE DEATH OF GASS AND THE LOSS TO LITERATURE... BUT THANKFULLY THE AMERICAN MEMORY IS ... AND ON WE GO
