Genius, a Bore, or Both

Great piece on the Paris Review blog by Jenny Hendrix—who is she?—on "jack green" 's "fire the bastards!," his defense of William Gaddis's The Recognitions.

I've never read "ftb," but when I worked at the PTSNBN, I found the full-page ad from 1962 that Hendrix mentions, and made a nice clean photocopy. And I would take a picture of it and post it here...but I'm not sure where it is.

(Also discussed is the Pynchon/Wanda Tinasky affair, which I remember reading about in the pages of the New York Press...)

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By sheer coincidence, Linden at Night RPM has a Gaddis-related post up today...

I thought this caption was funny

Dr Tarzi demonstrates the repose of a sleeping Buddha statue

Friday cogitatin'

Levi quotes Phillip Lopate on Sontag:

Sontag felt the big game was fiction. And that’s where you win the Nobel Prize. You don’t win it for writing essays. That’s understandable and that would’ve been great had she been a great fiction writer. Some people can do both, but she lacked a deep sympathy for other people—which is okay if you’re a critic because you don’t have to be that empathetic if you’re a critic, you just have to know what you think about something. And she lacked, for the most part, a sense of humor. It’s hard to be a great novelist without those two things.

...and it gets him thinking about Powell, friendship, humor, life, novels...and I agree!

xoxo,
WLB

(World's Laziest Blogger)

PS Here are some other recent Levi posts on Powell.

Looking like a friend of Truman Capote

"This Harry Potter was a physician in Bergen County, NJ."

Thursday chucklin'

Via Malty

Nicely done

"She runs out of breath, and then settles, mysteriously, like an old Bible that italicizes ordinary words, on a single syllable." —David Denby on Julie & Julia

Tracy Kidder’s books are often published under blandly soothing titles (“House,” “Old Friends,” “Mountains Beyond Mountains”) that sound more like middle-period Crosby, Stills and Nash albums than like serious works of nonfiction. The title of his new one, “Strength in What Remains,” fits the cloying pattern. —Dwight Garner (in an otherwise glowing review of Kidder's latest)

"Somewhere a dialysis machine moved through its cleaning cycle, emitting a series of soft grunts and rumbles, like a discreet indigestion." —J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes

IdeaShare™ 2009

Dan Brown novel parody idea: The Lost Cymbal.

(K)night moves

Write joke here about reworking lyrics so it's about chess.

@dennislim sending me this.

World's laziest blogger

I liked this piece but I'm too tired to say anything about it.