Why is William Gaddis still on the fringe?

Gaddis is difficult to teach in the classroom. His novels are dense, long, and, especially if you're teaching a survey course of the post-45 period, not very representative of how the field is viewed today. It has nothing to do with Ulysses; it has more to do with the fact that the BIG IMPORTANT NOVEL discourse died in the academy long before Gaddis' moment came around. Some people do work on Gaddis (he's relevant for me, for instance!), but his interests may not link in to the interests of the field at large.
looks at other responses, sighs A few factual corrections--The modernist period was nothing if not a torrent of "fun experimental writing" in poetry, fiction, and drama. Joyce wasn't an isolated genius, or whatever, who wet parched tongues dried by realism. Secondly, we've had four decades of scholarship at this point on "post-modern" writing. People are not ignoring Gaddis because the field is new; he just isn't speaking to many scholarly interests at the present moment. Moreover, insofar as people want to expand the canon, adding another white male writer of "difficult fiction" is not exactly a pressing concern.
None of this is to say that Gaddis wrote bad novels that arn't deserving of study, but there's only so much time in the world, and people have other interests. Perhaps one day we will see a Gaddis revival--this can only be helped by his recent reprint by New Directions.

>>8850286
Because Ulysses was written in a time when people still read books.

Even Thomas Pynchon is basically non-existent to the public

>>8850287
>looks at other responses, sighs
Is this trying to fake a pasta?

>>8850287
Gaddis is already a part of the canon, what are you talking about?

Because you touch yourself at night.

I'm not stupid, but even the first page of the Recognitions is difficult enough for me read twice just to make sense of it.

>>8850411
it really wasn't.

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123KB, 494x411px

>>8850446
>>8850446
For (you)

>>8850464
post the page and let's see how dumb you really are.

I've heard JR is actually pretty fun once you get into it. Is this accurate?

>>8850554
J R is one of the most fun novels I have ever read. It's actually the funniest.

>>8850286
His books are bland and unimportant.

>>8850559
yes. i agree. the funniest

>>8850571
TRIGGERED

>>8850482
Fine, I'm dumb. Happy?

Point is, he writing is hard to follow because he's too bouncy with what he's trying to say. I'm not rereading the same thing so much as going back and forth to connect the pieces.

But that's just at first. After a while you get used to his odd style, whose comprehension eventually gains some momentum.

>>8850592
He's not wrong, though. Gaddis won't be remembered.

>>8850559
Funnier than Lolita, though?

>>8850664
He's influenced a lot of postmodern writers like Pynchon, Franzen and DFW.

You can't really tell what the future holds. Writers revered today may be replaced with writers that weren't really that famous during their careers or after

>>8850670
funnier than everything I've ever read by a lot. I would say a legit laugh every other page at least.

>>8850286
I like to think it's because he's too good. He didn't pull any punches and his works are some of the most genuinely bitter about modern American life. The Recognitions satirized literary critics and academia before he even got panned by them. Other artists are more amenable to one's sensibilities, but Gaddis is too real. It's like he was too much of an intelligent and bitter asshole to have many real friends.

Ulysses was met with huge backlash upon publication

It was seen as a revolutionary and rebellious novel

>>8850286
900 plus pages of Flemish painters, weird catholic saints, medieval alchemists and Greenwich Village artistes having vapid conversations at parties.

Fuck him fuck him fuck him

>>8851293
it was like 2 artists tbhf
and like 2 parties as well
and like 1/4 of the characters were hipsters
I could go on.

>>8850287
Wait what is going on between Gaddis and New Directions? Do you mean Dalkey?

>>8850295
.>>8850286
People still read books tho. Most people just don't want to read myriad pages filled with intellectual navel-gazing. I love it tbqh, but I understand most people don't like to read it. It's aimed at a certain public, a rather silent public at that. But lots of young and old people still read pynch and gaddis, I'd bet more people living today have read a novel of them in total, than having read Ulysses completely. It's just a book necessary to have on the shelf to look like a real reader. Yes people are vain.

>>8851309
please do