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Agapē Agape
William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts, Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.
144 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 2002
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About the author
William Gaddis
16books860followersWilliam Gaddis was the author of five novels. He was born in New York December 29, 1922. The circumstances why he left Harvard in his senior year are mysterious. He worked for The New Yorker for a spell in the 1950s, and absorbed experiences at the bohemian parties and happenings, to be later used as material in The Recognitions. Travel provided further resources of experience in Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Spain and Africa and, perhaps strangest to imagine of him, he was employed for a few years in public relations for a pharmaceutical corporation.
The number of printed interviews with Gaddis can be counted on one hand: he wondered why anyone should expect an author to be at all interesting, after having very likely projected the best of themselves in their work. He has been frequently compared with Joyce, Nabokov, and especially Pynchon.
Gaddis’s first novel, The Recognitions (1955) is a 956-page saga of forgery, pretension, and desires misguided and inexpressible. Critical response to the book ranged from cool to hostile, but in most cases (as Jack Green took pains to show in his book of rebuke, Fire the Bastards!). Reviewers were ill-prepared to deal with the challenge, and evidently many who began to read The Recognitions did not finish. The novel’s sometimes great leaps in time and location and the breadth and arcane pedigree of allusions are, it turns out, fairly mild complications for the reader when compared with what would become the writer’s trademark: the unrestrained confusion of detached and fragmentary dialogue.
Gaddis’s second book, JR (1975) won the National Book Award. It was only a 726 pages long driven by dialogue. The chaos of the unceasing deluge of talk of JR drove critics to declare the text “unreadable�. Reading Gaddis is by no means easy, but it is a more lacerating and artfully sustained attack on capitalism than JR, and The Recognitions.
Carpenter's Gothic (1985) offered a shorter and more accessible picture of Gaddis's sardonic worldview. The continual litigation that was a theme in that book becomes the central theme and plot device in A Frolic of His Own (1994)—which earned him his second National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. There are even two Japanese cars called the Isuyu and the Sosumi.
His final work was the novella Agapē Agape which was published in 2002. Gaddis died at home in East Hampton, New York, of prostate cancer on December 16th, 1998.
The number of printed interviews with Gaddis can be counted on one hand: he wondered why anyone should expect an author to be at all interesting, after having very likely projected the best of themselves in their work. He has been frequently compared with Joyce, Nabokov, and especially Pynchon.
Gaddis’s first novel, The Recognitions (1955) is a 956-page saga of forgery, pretension, and desires misguided and inexpressible. Critical response to the book ranged from cool to hostile, but in most cases (as Jack Green took pains to show in his book of rebuke, Fire the Bastards!). Reviewers were ill-prepared to deal with the challenge, and evidently many who began to read The Recognitions did not finish. The novel’s sometimes great leaps in time and location and the breadth and arcane pedigree of allusions are, it turns out, fairly mild complications for the reader when compared with what would become the writer’s trademark: the unrestrained confusion of detached and fragmentary dialogue.
Gaddis’s second book, JR (1975) won the National Book Award. It was only a 726 pages long driven by dialogue. The chaos of the unceasing deluge of talk of JR drove critics to declare the text “unreadable�. Reading Gaddis is by no means easy, but it is a more lacerating and artfully sustained attack on capitalism than JR, and The Recognitions.
Carpenter's Gothic (1985) offered a shorter and more accessible picture of Gaddis's sardonic worldview. The continual litigation that was a theme in that book becomes the central theme and plot device in A Frolic of His Own (1994)—which earned him his second National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. There are even two Japanese cars called the Isuyu and the Sosumi.
His final work was the novella Agapē Agape which was published in 2002. Gaddis died at home in East Hampton, New York, of prostate cancer on December 16th, 1998.
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April 15, 2024
Jack Gibbs es un personaje que bien podría haber salido de la pluma de Thomas Bernard(*), uno algo más desaforado de lo habitual, que angustiado por su deterioro físico, la proximidad de la muerte y la imposibilidad de sacar del caos(**) los innumerables recortes, anotaciones, libros y notas que había acumulado en pos de la que él considera que habría sido la obra de su vida(***), vomita en forma de flujo de conciencia y bajo los efectos de la prednisona(****) un discurso febril y atropellado, erudito e iracundo, denso y a ratos divertido (en el sentido que es divertido Bernhard), plagado de referencias y citas (entre muchos otros, Huizinga, Walter Benjamin, Thomas Bernard, Platón, Nietzsche, Melville, Freud, Tolstoi, Becket, Proust, Flaubert�) en contra de esa “chusma estupefacta que ahí fuera espera a que se le dé entretenimiento, convertir al artista creativo en un mono de feria�, en contra de elevar al artista por encima de su obra, en contra de la mercantilización del arte que destruye el mágico encuentro cómplice entre artista y público transformándolo en algo mecánico dirigido a un consumo masivo y bajo las leyes del mercado, en contra de la domesticación del artista y de su aversión al riesgo y a la rebeldía (“la pianola y sus descendientes, el ordenador las barricadas para guarecerse de ese miedo a lo azaroso a la probabilidad a la indeterminación� este estigma del fracaso que separa a la chusma de la élite�), en contra de que sea la cantidad de placer que proporciona, y no la calidad de este, la medida del arte y de todo, en contra de su democratización (“esta democracia en la que cualquier hombre es el artista que necesita ser para su propio consumo, que es donde estamos hoy, esta democracia de las personas al azar de Platón y de disponer del arte sin necesidad del artista porque éste es una amenaza�), en contra de todos aquellos que huyen del esfuerzo, tanto creadores como espectadores, en fin, en contra de la experiencia pasiva y de la falta de autenticidad (“� esa fusión natural de la vida creada en esta creación en amor que la trasciende, una celebración del amor creado que llamaban ágape, la fiesta del amor en los primeros tiempos de la iglesia. Eso se ha perdido, eso hay que pagarlo�) ().
“La música te transporta a otro estado del ser que no es el que te corresponde, sentir cosas que en realidad no sientes, entender cosas que en realidad no entiendes, ser capaz de hacer cosas que en realidad no eres capaz de hacer, sí, eso lo transforma eso te transfigura a ti en ti mismo en el yo que puede hacer más…de eso es de lo que puedo hablarte, de esa Juventud capaz de todo.�
(*) Gaddis intercala en su monólogo varias citas de «Hormigón» (una novela que, como esta, trata sobre un escritor que pospone una y otra vez el inicio de su obra) acusando al autor, al que tanto admira y cuyo descubrimiento fue crucial para la redacción de esta novela, de haberle plagiado, “solo que antes de escribirla yo� (en el otro sentido, siente haber plagiado a Walter Benjamín, aunque no le había leído con anterioridad).
(**) En «JR», Gibbs comenta que su libro versará sobre el orden y el desorden. No solo versa, ES puro caos en el que no siempre es fácil establecer algo de orden, en el que la propia idea de orden se esconde en la ambigüedad.
(***) Gaddis acaba de ser diagnosticado con un cáncer terminal lo que le lleva a descartar por incapacidad temporal la obra que pretendía realizar sobre la historia del piano mecánico (“fue la plaga que se extendió por Estados Unidos hace cien años, con el rollo de papel troquelado en el meollo de toda la cuestión, el frenesí de la invención y la mecanización y la democracia y cómo disfrutar del arte sin artista y además automoción, cibernética, ya se ve, bien se ve, más claro no puede estar�) como excusa para hablar del arte y su consumo en su actualidad y para la que lleva décadas investigando y recopilando información, que acaba por plasmarse en esta novela.
(****) En el postfacio a la novela , Joseph Tabbi comenta que “Este estilo despojado era consecuente con los efectos de la prednisona, la droga que tanto Gaddis como Bernhard habían tomado por prescripción facultativa�.
() Y todo en un solo párrafo ininterrumpido de 67 páginas. Una vez le preguntaron al autor que si sus obras eran tan difíciles de escribir como lo son de leer. Su respuesta fue: “� si el trabajo no me resultara difícil lo cierto es que me moriría de aburrimiento�.
May 4, 2019
"whole stupefied mob out there waiting to be entertained, turning the creative artist into a performer, into a celebrity like Byron..."
- William Gaddis, Agapē Agape
"PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE
PIANIST
HE IS DOING HIS BEST"
Agapē Agape, the Last of Gaddis' novels, the musings of a dying man, a looking back swan song, wondering how he's going to be remembered. Since before Gaddis has been fixated, playing with, tuning his ideas about technology and art; politics and art; money and art all centered on the player piano. Similar to J R, in rambling dialogue with quotes and facts and related errata thrown in, but different in that here at the edge of mortality, Gaddis has it thinned down to a monophonic monologue from the dying "man in the bed". Most of the spine of this novel was from research he had done on the Player Piano for 50 years. In the 60s he had written an essay, titled 'Agapē Agape: the Secret History of the Player Piano' some of which found its way into Agapē Agape. Gaddis has been Agapēing and Agaping through most of his novels.
At this point, Gaddis had written several fantastic novels:
1. X
2. X
3.
4.
and now:
5. X
I've now read 3/5 of his novels and this is my least favorite (and it still gets 4 stars, perhaps 3.75). It is interesting, strange, and electric all at once. I love how the whole novella (because, come on, even with the afterward, it is barely over 100 pages and without the afterward it is less than 100). I'm still trying to wrestle his abstraction into a form that can fit or be made sense of in a GR review. Probably impossible. More probable, no one really cares. Whoa is me. Who is me? You say Agapē and I say Agape.
- William Gaddis, Agapē Agape
"PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE
PIANIST
HE IS DOING HIS BEST"
Agapē Agape, the Last of Gaddis' novels, the musings of a dying man, a looking back swan song, wondering how he's going to be remembered. Since before Gaddis has been fixated, playing with, tuning his ideas about technology and art; politics and art; money and art all centered on the player piano. Similar to J R, in rambling dialogue with quotes and facts and related errata thrown in, but different in that here at the edge of mortality, Gaddis has it thinned down to a monophonic monologue from the dying "man in the bed". Most of the spine of this novel was from research he had done on the Player Piano for 50 years. In the 60s he had written an essay, titled 'Agapē Agape: the Secret History of the Player Piano' some of which found its way into Agapē Agape. Gaddis has been Agapēing and Agaping through most of his novels.
At this point, Gaddis had written several fantastic novels:
1. X
2. X
3.
4.
and now:
5. X
I've now read 3/5 of his novels and this is my least favorite (and it still gets 4 stars, perhaps 3.75). It is interesting, strange, and electric all at once. I love how the whole novella (because, come on, even with the afterward, it is barely over 100 pages and without the afterward it is less than 100). I'm still trying to wrestle his abstraction into a form that can fit or be made sense of in a GR review. Probably impossible. More probable, no one really cares. Whoa is me. Who is me? You say Agapē and I say Agape.
October 21, 2013
“w�.ɲ�
The Art that I love most is infused with an almost desperate desire to communicate something its creator feels is vital, is essential, authentically crucial. Often, as we post-Heideggerians (that means You, dear Reader) are well aware, language, or any system of signs or referents, fails at the moment of Truth. The metaphor of “the clearing� , un-enterable and un-consumable, is profound and, I believe, powerfully accurate. We can trace the outline of the clearing, of course, we can gesture our communal gaze toward it, but we cannot step inside.
It is, of course, many things, but The Clearing is also obviously Death. We know that our Death cannot be experienced, that it is not a part of Life, though it is a part of Us, as we know too that entropy, that the dissolution of our cells, our Energy flung outward into the World like an echo of that great star-burst that brought forth the Galaxy, that this is our life, though it is less than a blink of Universal Time, a flash of faint light in the distance.
Gaddis had spent his life trying to tell us something. The response to his works indicated to him he had, in all likelihood, failed. As he slipped towards death, he discovered in the style of Bernhard a way to “rant� out his thematic concerns in a great, condensed rush of words that would, at the very least, provide signposts for his Readers, directing them towards the Clearing. With this he, in my opinion, succeeded. I agree, too, with his fears, with his concern that the mechanised, in-Authentic “art� was drowning the potential for the Artist to vault over him/her-Self and truly Create. Things have only gotten worse since he first started writing, what, 60 years ago?
Anyway. I have reached the end of his fiction, and love his work deeply. This book demands to be the last of his you read, and he deserves your full attention. Start with , then read , then the Gothic and then the Frolic, and then stand agape at the last, frantic scribbles of his pen.
The Art that I love most is infused with an almost desperate desire to communicate something its creator feels is vital, is essential, authentically crucial. Often, as we post-Heideggerians (that means You, dear Reader) are well aware, language, or any system of signs or referents, fails at the moment of Truth. The metaphor of “the clearing� , un-enterable and un-consumable, is profound and, I believe, powerfully accurate. We can trace the outline of the clearing, of course, we can gesture our communal gaze toward it, but we cannot step inside.
It is, of course, many things, but The Clearing is also obviously Death. We know that our Death cannot be experienced, that it is not a part of Life, though it is a part of Us, as we know too that entropy, that the dissolution of our cells, our Energy flung outward into the World like an echo of that great star-burst that brought forth the Galaxy, that this is our life, though it is less than a blink of Universal Time, a flash of faint light in the distance.
Gaddis had spent his life trying to tell us something. The response to his works indicated to him he had, in all likelihood, failed. As he slipped towards death, he discovered in the style of Bernhard a way to “rant� out his thematic concerns in a great, condensed rush of words that would, at the very least, provide signposts for his Readers, directing them towards the Clearing. With this he, in my opinion, succeeded. I agree, too, with his fears, with his concern that the mechanised, in-Authentic “art� was drowning the potential for the Artist to vault over him/her-Self and truly Create. Things have only gotten worse since he first started writing, what, 60 years ago?
Anyway. I have reached the end of his fiction, and love his work deeply. This book demands to be the last of his you read, and he deserves your full attention. Start with , then read , then the Gothic and then the Frolic, and then stand agape at the last, frantic scribbles of his pen.
January 30, 2020
The screed of a dying man against the culture that spurned him. Successful as a concise piece of fiction, I feel that for it to have gone on much longer than it did would have tired the trope; but here, in compact form, Gaddis's anger, resentment and ultimate helplessness comes through in waves.
I'm sure that among this up-turned-nose clique in the larger digital armpit of ŷ, we're all basically in alignment with Gaddis's thesis in this novella. That we're right about our assessments that the art that is popular is dogshit, and the product of art cannot be mechanized, and if art becomes mechanized it's no longer actually art. I try to instill in my budding teenaged nephew one mantra: Just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good. He'll get it, I hope. But am I resigning him to a life of anger like the narrator in Agapē Agape?
Gaddis is such a master of disguise—having read his first two and this one, each is so unique, but so deeply biting and tough skinned. There's plenty of humor throughout it all, but underneath lurks a stinging bitterness that syncs up with my cynical core.
I'm sure that among this up-turned-nose clique in the larger digital armpit of ŷ, we're all basically in alignment with Gaddis's thesis in this novella. That we're right about our assessments that the art that is popular is dogshit, and the product of art cannot be mechanized, and if art becomes mechanized it's no longer actually art. I try to instill in my budding teenaged nephew one mantra: Just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good. He'll get it, I hope. But am I resigning him to a life of anger like the narrator in Agapē Agape?
Gaddis is such a master of disguise—having read his first two and this one, each is so unique, but so deeply biting and tough skinned. There's plenty of humor throughout it all, but underneath lurks a stinging bitterness that syncs up with my cynical core.
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May 21, 2017Here is the failed culmination of Gaddis' lifelong work on the player-piano. Further player-piano material is found in the compilation of Gaddis' non-fiction . Gaddis readers will understand 'failed.' Short as this book is it would not be suggested that one begin with Gaddis here. It is no introductory, 'accessible' novel; it is perhaps his most difficult and maddening book, his most curmudgeonly, just as we love him. The themes presented (scarcely developed) culminate Gaddis' life long anxiety about the effects technology will have on art and creation, themes familiar from The Recognitions and J R. Read in isolation from the Gaddis corpus it will only isolate.
An annotation of the opening sentence of Agapé Agape can be found , courtesy of Edwin Turner.
"No but you see I’ve got to explain all this because I don’t, we don’t know how much time there is left and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, why I’ve brought in this whole pile of books notes pages clippings and God knows what, get it all sorted and organized when I get this property divided up and the business and worries that go with it while they keep me here to be cut up and scraped and stapled and cut up again my damn leg look at it, layered with staples like that old suit of Japanese armour in the dining hall feel like I’m being dismantled piece by piece, houses, cottages, stables orchards and all the damn decisions and distractions I’ve got the papers land surveys deeds and all of it right in this heap somewhere, get it cleared up and settled before everything collapses and it’s all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else because that’s what it’s about, that’s what my work is about, the collapse of everything, of meaning, of values, of art, disorder and dislocation wherever you look, entropy drowning everything in sight, entertainment and technology and every four year old with a computer, everybody his own artist where the whole thing came from, the binary system and the computer where technology came from in the first place, you see?" --Agapé Agape.
An annotation of the opening sentence of Agapé Agape can be found , courtesy of Edwin Turner.
"No but you see I’ve got to explain all this because I don’t, we don’t know how much time there is left and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, why I’ve brought in this whole pile of books notes pages clippings and God knows what, get it all sorted and organized when I get this property divided up and the business and worries that go with it while they keep me here to be cut up and scraped and stapled and cut up again my damn leg look at it, layered with staples like that old suit of Japanese armour in the dining hall feel like I’m being dismantled piece by piece, houses, cottages, stables orchards and all the damn decisions and distractions I’ve got the papers land surveys deeds and all of it right in this heap somewhere, get it cleared up and settled before everything collapses and it’s all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else because that’s what it’s about, that’s what my work is about, the collapse of everything, of meaning, of values, of art, disorder and dislocation wherever you look, entropy drowning everything in sight, entertainment and technology and every four year old with a computer, everybody his own artist where the whole thing came from, the binary system and the computer where technology came from in the first place, you see?" --Agapé Agape.
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August 8, 2023What is a Rant?
This is Gaddis's fifth and last book. Even with a large font and judicious line spacing, it doesn't quite make 100 pages. A really excellent Afterword by Joseph Tabbi makes it 113 pages. Agape Agape is a monologue, in broken grammar and logic, by a dying man. He thinks of his unfinished book on the history of the player piano, and he fights the effects of his medication and his illness. The theme is the relentless mechanization of the imagination and art.
I read this because it's been noted that Gaddis read Bernhard late in his life, and this book is said to show Bernhard's influence. My initial interest was to see whether the rant -- by which I mean Benhard's endless, relentless, compulsive monologues -- could be the object of emulation. What can be emulated from an excess of formless bile?
I imagine Bernhard would have secretly admired the philosophic and historical complaints here, and would have nastily disparaged Gaddis's lingering worship of high culture and the erudition that makes it possible. I also picture him disparaging the formal tricks Gaddis uses to produce his stream of consciousness: he changes subject in the middle of a phrase, he breaks clauses with apostrophes, and in general tinkers with the form of writing instead of letting his anger and unhappiness ruin his grammar. The closing page of Agape Agape is moving, but not because of its echoes of Bernhard; it sounds like wisdom literature, well in control of the painful idea it wants to communicate.
A rant, I think, can't be emulated. Not because it proceeds from some unstoppable dissatisfaction, but because a rant, in Bernhard, is a kind of writing that happens when everything is torn down, so whatever's left needs to fight for air. The narrator in this book is not in control of his body or the sequence of his thoughts, but the author is.
This question about rants can be made more complex by including The Recognitions and JR, which may show what extended monologues were for Gaddis before his encounter with Bernhard. (I don't know when Gaddis read Bernhard.) There the looseness of the writing is decisive. I don't feel I need to define or elaborate this because it has been impeccably laid bare in Adam Mars-Jones's review, "There Isn’t Any Inside!," London Review of Books, 23 September 2021. The point I take from Mars-Jones is that Gaddis permitted his writing to be voluminous and often careless, imagining that volume produced mimetic advance for fiction. But the obliviousness about the connection between form and content makes the long passages, set-pieces, and monologues in those earlier books appear as the products of a lack of oversight rather than vitriol or despair. So that's another thing that can't be emulated in Bernhard.
*
Postscript
This book cannot be read without some homework. It's important, at the least, to know:
1. Agape (Christian love) agape (ruined) is Gaddis's formula for the loss of imaginative freedom, and it matters that the Christian agape is a love between brothers: for Gaddis, the author, if not for the narrator, real acts of imagination and art happen in friendship, in love. Joseph Tabbi has useful biographical information about this, regarding Gaddis's friendship with Martin Dworkin.
2. One of this book's, and Gaddis's, central texts is a verse by Michelangelo. In the original:
O Dio, o Dio, o Dio,
Chi m'a tolto a ma stesso
Ch'a me fusse piu presso
O piu di me potessi, che poss'io?
In Creighton Gilbert's translation:
O Heaven, Heaven, Heaven!
Who's robbed me of myself
Who's closer to myself
Or can do more with me than I ever can? [p. 113 n. 8]
In Gaddis's translation (extracted from the prose in which he places it, p. 94):
O Dio, o Dio, o Dio... Who nearer to me Or more mighty... than I tore me away from myself... what can I do?
It's crucial, as Tabbi points out, that "o Dio" remains in Italian, so it can rhyme with "odium" (this is in Gaddis's text, p. 95).
3. It's also useful to reread Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" to recall the ambivalent hold of music; even though music freely played (as opposed to mechanically reproduced on a player piano) is this book's theme, music itself is not an unambiguous synecdoche for all the arts, or even for good art.
This is Gaddis's fifth and last book. Even with a large font and judicious line spacing, it doesn't quite make 100 pages. A really excellent Afterword by Joseph Tabbi makes it 113 pages. Agape Agape is a monologue, in broken grammar and logic, by a dying man. He thinks of his unfinished book on the history of the player piano, and he fights the effects of his medication and his illness. The theme is the relentless mechanization of the imagination and art.
I read this because it's been noted that Gaddis read Bernhard late in his life, and this book is said to show Bernhard's influence. My initial interest was to see whether the rant -- by which I mean Benhard's endless, relentless, compulsive monologues -- could be the object of emulation. What can be emulated from an excess of formless bile?
I imagine Bernhard would have secretly admired the philosophic and historical complaints here, and would have nastily disparaged Gaddis's lingering worship of high culture and the erudition that makes it possible. I also picture him disparaging the formal tricks Gaddis uses to produce his stream of consciousness: he changes subject in the middle of a phrase, he breaks clauses with apostrophes, and in general tinkers with the form of writing instead of letting his anger and unhappiness ruin his grammar. The closing page of Agape Agape is moving, but not because of its echoes of Bernhard; it sounds like wisdom literature, well in control of the painful idea it wants to communicate.
A rant, I think, can't be emulated. Not because it proceeds from some unstoppable dissatisfaction, but because a rant, in Bernhard, is a kind of writing that happens when everything is torn down, so whatever's left needs to fight for air. The narrator in this book is not in control of his body or the sequence of his thoughts, but the author is.
This question about rants can be made more complex by including The Recognitions and JR, which may show what extended monologues were for Gaddis before his encounter with Bernhard. (I don't know when Gaddis read Bernhard.) There the looseness of the writing is decisive. I don't feel I need to define or elaborate this because it has been impeccably laid bare in Adam Mars-Jones's review, "There Isn’t Any Inside!," London Review of Books, 23 September 2021. The point I take from Mars-Jones is that Gaddis permitted his writing to be voluminous and often careless, imagining that volume produced mimetic advance for fiction. But the obliviousness about the connection between form and content makes the long passages, set-pieces, and monologues in those earlier books appear as the products of a lack of oversight rather than vitriol or despair. So that's another thing that can't be emulated in Bernhard.
*
Postscript
This book cannot be read without some homework. It's important, at the least, to know:
1. Agape (Christian love) agape (ruined) is Gaddis's formula for the loss of imaginative freedom, and it matters that the Christian agape is a love between brothers: for Gaddis, the author, if not for the narrator, real acts of imagination and art happen in friendship, in love. Joseph Tabbi has useful biographical information about this, regarding Gaddis's friendship with Martin Dworkin.
2. One of this book's, and Gaddis's, central texts is a verse by Michelangelo. In the original:
O Dio, o Dio, o Dio,
Chi m'a tolto a ma stesso
Ch'a me fusse piu presso
O piu di me potessi, che poss'io?
In Creighton Gilbert's translation:
O Heaven, Heaven, Heaven!
Who's robbed me of myself
Who's closer to myself
Or can do more with me than I ever can? [p. 113 n. 8]
In Gaddis's translation (extracted from the prose in which he places it, p. 94):
O Dio, o Dio, o Dio... Who nearer to me Or more mighty... than I tore me away from myself... what can I do?
It's crucial, as Tabbi points out, that "o Dio" remains in Italian, so it can rhyme with "odium" (this is in Gaddis's text, p. 95).
3. It's also useful to reread Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" to recall the ambivalent hold of music; even though music freely played (as opposed to mechanically reproduced on a player piano) is this book's theme, music itself is not an unambiguous synecdoche for all the arts, or even for good art.
March 29, 2022
'Where is it, this swamp of ambiguity, paradox, anarchy they’re calling aporia his book right here somewhere probably at the bottom of the pile it was a game they played, the Greeks, a game you couldn’t win, nobody could win, a parlour game proposing questions there was no clear answer to so winning wasn’t the point of it no, no that’s ours isn’t it, right on the money because that’s what the game is, the only game in town because that’s what America’s wait, little card there falling on the, there! You see? Whole stack of papers here organizing my research here it is, what I was looking for exactly what I’m talking about, 1927, getting the whole chronology in order 1876 to 1929 when the player piano world and everything else collapsed, the first public demonstration of television the image of the dollar sign was projected for sixty seconds by Philo T Farnsworth in 1927, see how I’ve got everything organized here put my finger right on it? Coming events cast their shadows and all the rest of it for Sigi’s stupefied trash out there gaping at television dollar sign’s all they see where we are today aren’t we? Waiting to be entertained because that’s where it started and that’s where it ends up, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure play the piano with your feet, play cards, play pool play pushpin here it is, here’s Huizinga talking about music and play he quotes Plato yes, here. “That which has neither utility nor truth nor likeness nor yet, in its effects, is harmful, can best be judged by the criterion of the charm that is in it, and by the pleasure it affords. Such pleasure, entailing as it does no appreciable good or ill, is play,� goes on about little children and animals can’t keep still, always moving making noise playing skipping leaping making a racket ends up where it started with toys, toys, toys, every four year old with a computer. Press buttons it lights up different colours he’s supposed to be learning what, how to spell? No, it corrects his spelling doesn’t need to know how to spell, how to multiply divide get the square root of God knows what don’t have to read music know a cleft from a G string just keep pumping because that’s where it came from like Wiener’s engineer, not the music but how it’s made, tubes bellows hammers the whole digital machine, whole binary system that all-or-none paper roll with the holes in it running over the tracker bar that’s where all of it came from, toys and entertainment where technology comes from going back, back, back to Vaucanson’s duck that ruffled its feathers and quacked waddled and shat, back a thousand, two thousand years with the penny-in-the-slot machines and water organs Hero of Alexandria made to entertain the locals and the living statues on the island of Rhodes Pindar talks about, the artificial trees and singing birds made for the Emperor of Byzantium a thousand years ago nothing but toys and games wherever you went, Charles V’s armed puppets playing trumpets and drums and a lifesize singing canary made for Marie Antoinette made it pretty clear who this frivolous entertainment was for, artificial birds singing real birdsongs to teach birds how to sing?'
May 13, 2020
It's amazing how easy some things seem with time. I first read this around 2005, and I remembered it as somehow 'taxing.' Now? Nothing but sheer pleasure. Joy.
It is easy to forget how goddamn amazing Gaddis is/was with all the books flying around. We could do worse than reminding ourselves from time to time. Not gonna live forever, you know...
It is easy to forget how goddamn amazing Gaddis is/was with all the books flying around. We could do worse than reminding ourselves from time to time. Not gonna live forever, you know...
September 4, 2008
I find it difficult to believe that this fragmentary rant is essentially an excerpt (or the only piece of text remaining) from a lifelong project on the social history of the player piano. The book was published posthumously in 2004, seemingly with the aid of the growing cult of Gaddis scholars.
Poor Mr. Gaddis. Surprisingly enough, he must have felt that he had never truly made his Benjaminian point about the mechanization of the arts. For such a short text it is completely full of allusions to artists and philosophers; from Tolstoy, to Huizingua, to Chopin, and Plato. Gaddis strains to make a point about how the role of the artist is dying out as our technocratic culture becomes more and more capable of recreating the art without the artist.
As much as I am all too eager to read anything that the man wrote on paper, at all, I sort of wish that this had not been published, or at least simply put on the Gaddis Annotations (a website dedicated to him). The ending of A Frolic of his Own was a far more appropriate finishing point for a man, who was at heart, one of the great black humorists of the twentieth century.
Poor Mr. Gaddis. Surprisingly enough, he must have felt that he had never truly made his Benjaminian point about the mechanization of the arts. For such a short text it is completely full of allusions to artists and philosophers; from Tolstoy, to Huizingua, to Chopin, and Plato. Gaddis strains to make a point about how the role of the artist is dying out as our technocratic culture becomes more and more capable of recreating the art without the artist.
As much as I am all too eager to read anything that the man wrote on paper, at all, I sort of wish that this had not been published, or at least simply put on the Gaddis Annotations (a website dedicated to him). The ending of A Frolic of his Own was a far more appropriate finishing point for a man, who was at heart, one of the great black humorists of the twentieth century.
January 10, 2019
I put off writing this review because I'm not sure what I could say about this excellent short novel that hasn't already been said--or that it doesn't already say for itself. Since it's the monologue of a single character he pretty much tells you directly what he wants to tell you, without resorting to any of the modernist or realist tricks of symbolism or allusion or any of the postmodern strategies of formal structures that one can unpack, explore, and note their significance to the work's meaning. That said, Agape Agape is beautiful, thoughtful, important (particularly to the post-digital age in which we artists find ourselves today--the novel is a meditation on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction and automation in general), a worthy final work from this literary genius, and, like each of the author's five novels, helps to solidify my humble opinion that William Gaddis is the greatest novelist that the United States of America has yet produced. (Tragic addendum: now I've read his complete works and despair of finding another such genius from my native country to discover and laud--suggestions?)
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March 28, 2021
"...eserim bunla ilgili, her şeyin çöküşü, anlamın, dilin, değerlerin, sanatın yıkılışı, nereye baksan düzensizlik ve altüst oluş, görünen her şeyi boğan entropi; eğlenceydi, teknolojiydi, dört yaşına gelen herkesin elinde bir bilgisayardı...."
(s.24)
Bir çığlıktı Agape'ye Ağıt; bir serzeniş. Ölüme yaklaşırken yapılan bir iç hesaplaşma. Yılların pişmanlıklarıydı Agape, yılların özlemi, içinde kalanlar söylemek için; içinde kalmayanlardı.
ü 'ı 'ini bitirince işyerine götürdüğüm Agapeye Ağıt'a başladım başlamasına ama daha ilk cümlelerinden itibaren altını çizmekten, sağına soluna notlar iliştirmekten bir türlü ilerleyemiyordum. Sonunda bitirdim ve notlarımı bir araya getirmek bugüne kaldı.
Gaddis, ülkemizde pek bilinmeyen bir yazar olsa da dünya edebiyatında son derece bilinen bir yazardır. 2014 yılında , Agapeye Ağıt'ı dilimize çevirmemiş olsa, bu yazarın dilimizde hiçbir eseri olmayacaktı ki; en büyük eseri, kimi kaynaklarda yüzyılın da en önemli 100 eserinden sayılan dilimize hala çevirilmiş değil. Haliyle insana, "daha dünyada okunacak, keşfedilecek ne kadar çok yazar var kitapçılarda görmediğimiz" diye düşündürmüyor değil. Yine de, dilimize ilk defa üç yıl önce çevrilen ve Agapeye Ağıt'ı bile okumak Gaddis külliyatına bir giriş açısından önemli bir adım olacaktır.
etkisi hissedilir olan, bilinçakışı tekniğini bilen okurların ise aşina olduğu bir tarzla; bütün metni tek bir paragraf halinde olarak yazılan monografik kitap gibi, bir son duygusunun kağıda dökülmüş hali. Yazarın 1998 yılında vefatından yaklaşık altı yıl sonra yayınlanan, yazarın ölmeden hemen önce tamamladığı son romanı.
Yazar kitabında özellikle entropi üzerine eğilmiş. Yukarıda, yorumunun en başında kitabın tamamını kendi sözleriyle özetleyebiliriz aslında ama biraz daha detay vermek gerekirse kitabında seri üretim çağında sanatın geldiği aşama başta olmak üzere çağın ruhuna yönelik pek çok eleştiri var. Kitap, roman olarak kabul edilse de aslında romandan daha çok bir otobiyografi tadında. Karamsar havası ise insanı boğmuyor, aksine sürekli olarak hak verme ihtiyacı duyuyorsunuz yazara. Söylediği her şeyin anlam dünyasında ayağı yere basıyor çünkü.
Gaddis, çağdaş toplumu bütün unsurlarıyla yargılamış ve asmıştır aslında. Televizyon, öfkesinin ilk ve en büyük hedefidir:
"1927'de Philo T. Fansworth tarafından televizyonun ilk kamusal yayını altmış saniye boyunca dolar işaretinin görüntüsü gösterilmişti [...] bugün de o noktadayız, öyle değil mi? Eğlendirilmeyi bekler vaziyette çünkü burada başladı ve burada son bulacak,..." (s.28)
Yazar, Beethoven'in bir bestesinin bugün elektronik bir yazılım tarafından çalınabilmesini, tekniğin sanatı öldürdüğü nokta olarak görüyor aslında. Sanat biçim değiştirmiştir artık. Bayağılaşmıştır.
"Sayın Benjamin, sanatın şimdi kamu malı olduğunu söyleyebiliriz, az eğitimli olanlar için Mona Lisa ve Son Yemek mutfakta lavabonun üzerine asılacak takvim sanatı halini aldı." (s.56)
Flaubert, Sand, Walter Benjamin, Tolstoy ve daha onca isimle kurduğu diyaloglarıyla yazarın belleğinde sürekli bir seyahat halindeyiz. Bu seyahatimizde entropinin nasıl sanatı; müziği, resmi, edebiyatıyla çürüttüğünü görüyoruz. Entropi nedeniyle nasıl doğanın olduğu gibi insan ruhunun da sürekli bir geriye gidiş halinde olduğunu görüyoruz.
Fakat mesele değişim değildi. Mesele, değişimin bu kadar hızlı olmasıı.
"...ama mesele değişim değil hayır mesele artık değişimin bu kadar hızlı olması, haftalar yıllar bile değil kaç farklı hayat yaşadığın... (s.79)
ı, da dilimize çevrilir bir gün ve bizler bu bilgelik pınarından daha çok yararlanabiliriz.
Ya da bilinmese mi acaba? Belki de bilinmemeli değerli Gaddis.
"...bir eserin popülerliği onun vasatlığının ölçüsüdür der Melville.... (s.77)
M.B.
28.11.2017
Mersin
Yorum şurada:
Bir çığlıktı Agape'ye Ağıt; bir serzeniş. Ölüme yaklaşırken yapılan bir iç hesaplaşma. Yılların pişmanlıklarıydı Agape, yılların özlemi, içinde kalanlar söylemek için; içinde kalmayanlardı.
ü 'ı 'ini bitirince işyerine götürdüğüm Agapeye Ağıt'a başladım başlamasına ama daha ilk cümlelerinden itibaren altını çizmekten, sağına soluna notlar iliştirmekten bir türlü ilerleyemiyordum. Sonunda bitirdim ve notlarımı bir araya getirmek bugüne kaldı.
Gaddis, ülkemizde pek bilinmeyen bir yazar olsa da dünya edebiyatında son derece bilinen bir yazardır. 2014 yılında , Agapeye Ağıt'ı dilimize çevirmemiş olsa, bu yazarın dilimizde hiçbir eseri olmayacaktı ki; en büyük eseri, kimi kaynaklarda yüzyılın da en önemli 100 eserinden sayılan dilimize hala çevirilmiş değil. Haliyle insana, "daha dünyada okunacak, keşfedilecek ne kadar çok yazar var kitapçılarda görmediğimiz" diye düşündürmüyor değil. Yine de, dilimize ilk defa üç yıl önce çevrilen ve Agapeye Ağıt'ı bile okumak Gaddis külliyatına bir giriş açısından önemli bir adım olacaktır.
etkisi hissedilir olan, bilinçakışı tekniğini bilen okurların ise aşina olduğu bir tarzla; bütün metni tek bir paragraf halinde olarak yazılan monografik kitap gibi, bir son duygusunun kağıda dökülmüş hali. Yazarın 1998 yılında vefatından yaklaşık altı yıl sonra yayınlanan, yazarın ölmeden hemen önce tamamladığı son romanı.
Yazar kitabında özellikle entropi üzerine eğilmiş. Yukarıda, yorumunun en başında kitabın tamamını kendi sözleriyle özetleyebiliriz aslında ama biraz daha detay vermek gerekirse kitabında seri üretim çağında sanatın geldiği aşama başta olmak üzere çağın ruhuna yönelik pek çok eleştiri var. Kitap, roman olarak kabul edilse de aslında romandan daha çok bir otobiyografi tadında. Karamsar havası ise insanı boğmuyor, aksine sürekli olarak hak verme ihtiyacı duyuyorsunuz yazara. Söylediği her şeyin anlam dünyasında ayağı yere basıyor çünkü.
Gaddis, çağdaş toplumu bütün unsurlarıyla yargılamış ve asmıştır aslında. Televizyon, öfkesinin ilk ve en büyük hedefidir:
"1927'de Philo T. Fansworth tarafından televizyonun ilk kamusal yayını altmış saniye boyunca dolar işaretinin görüntüsü gösterilmişti [...] bugün de o noktadayız, öyle değil mi? Eğlendirilmeyi bekler vaziyette çünkü burada başladı ve burada son bulacak,..." (s.28)
Yazar, Beethoven'in bir bestesinin bugün elektronik bir yazılım tarafından çalınabilmesini, tekniğin sanatı öldürdüğü nokta olarak görüyor aslında. Sanat biçim değiştirmiştir artık. Bayağılaşmıştır.
"Sayın Benjamin, sanatın şimdi kamu malı olduğunu söyleyebiliriz, az eğitimli olanlar için Mona Lisa ve Son Yemek mutfakta lavabonun üzerine asılacak takvim sanatı halini aldı." (s.56)
Flaubert, Sand, Walter Benjamin, Tolstoy ve daha onca isimle kurduğu diyaloglarıyla yazarın belleğinde sürekli bir seyahat halindeyiz. Bu seyahatimizde entropinin nasıl sanatı; müziği, resmi, edebiyatıyla çürüttüğünü görüyoruz. Entropi nedeniyle nasıl doğanın olduğu gibi insan ruhunun da sürekli bir geriye gidiş halinde olduğunu görüyoruz.
Fakat mesele değişim değildi. Mesele, değişimin bu kadar hızlı olmasıı.
"...ama mesele değişim değil hayır mesele artık değişimin bu kadar hızlı olması, haftalar yıllar bile değil kaç farklı hayat yaşadığın... (s.79)
ı, da dilimize çevrilir bir gün ve bizler bu bilgelik pınarından daha çok yararlanabiliriz.
Ya da bilinmese mi acaba? Belki de bilinmemeli değerli Gaddis.
"...bir eserin popülerliği onun vasatlığının ölçüsüdür der Melville.... (s.77)
M.B.
28.11.2017
Mersin
Yorum şurada:
August 16, 2017
Não me vai ser fácil escrever seja o que for sobre este livro mas, como diz William Gaddis: "se o trabalho não me fosse difícil a verdade é que morreria de tédio."
E é por me aborrecer com o fácil que me pus a ler ágape, agonia, embora com muito medo mas, na penúltima página do prefácio está um conselho que segui e que, por isso ou não, tornou a leitura um prazer:
"a melhor maneira de compreender e de apreciar Gaddis é lendo-o rapidamente e sem parar para pensar demasiado naquilo que ele não diz. Entendê-lo a partir da rítmica das suas palavras e do desenho das suas frases.
Como se fosse, sim, música."
Emocionei-me e ri-me algumas vezes; de um velhinho no seu leito de morte, rodeado dos seus escritos, de pilhas de livros, de montanhas de papelada da mais diversa natureza...e que pragueja, periodicamente, quando entorna líquidos, se molha todo, molha tudo, lhe cai tudo para o chão:
"o monte de lixo todo pelo chão se desço fico a fazer parte do monte de lixo nunca mais me levanto."
Um longo monólogo de um homem em desespero, cujo físico doente o limita e vê o tempo escapar-lhe sem poder concluir o romance no qual trabalha há anos. Um romance em que, baseado no estudo do piano mecânico, faz uma análise da Arte e da Tecnologia e de qual o futuro da criatividade humana.
A escrita é delirante sem qualquer preocupação com pontuação. O narrador, numa espécie de fluxo de consciência, salta em catadupa de um pensamento para outro, intervalando com o relato do que vai acontecendo em cima da cama onde tem todo o espalhafato.
E porque este é um livro "musical", há dois nomes várias vezes referidos:
1. O do escritor Leo Tolstói e o seu A Sonata de Kreutzer do qual o excerto abaixo pode ser ilustrativo da (minha) experiência de leitura deste livro...
"A música faz com que me esqueça de mim mesmo, do meu estado de espírito; eleva-me a um estado de espírito que não me pertence (...) é como se sentisse o que de facto não sinto, compreendesse o que de facto não compreendo, e me julgasse capaz de realizar o que de facto não consigo. A música transporta-me directa e imediatamente para o estado de espírito do homem que a compôs."
2. O do pianista Glenn Gould, e a sua paixão pela música bem visível no emocionante pequeno filme, aqui:
E, por fim, o "boneco" do piano mecânico...
com tanta coisa e não disse nada...mas é que este não é um livro nada fácil de ler quanto mais comentar...
E é por me aborrecer com o fácil que me pus a ler ágape, agonia, embora com muito medo mas, na penúltima página do prefácio está um conselho que segui e que, por isso ou não, tornou a leitura um prazer:
"a melhor maneira de compreender e de apreciar Gaddis é lendo-o rapidamente e sem parar para pensar demasiado naquilo que ele não diz. Entendê-lo a partir da rítmica das suas palavras e do desenho das suas frases.
Como se fosse, sim, música."
Emocionei-me e ri-me algumas vezes; de um velhinho no seu leito de morte, rodeado dos seus escritos, de pilhas de livros, de montanhas de papelada da mais diversa natureza...e que pragueja, periodicamente, quando entorna líquidos, se molha todo, molha tudo, lhe cai tudo para o chão:
"o monte de lixo todo pelo chão se desço fico a fazer parte do monte de lixo nunca mais me levanto."
Um longo monólogo de um homem em desespero, cujo físico doente o limita e vê o tempo escapar-lhe sem poder concluir o romance no qual trabalha há anos. Um romance em que, baseado no estudo do piano mecânico, faz uma análise da Arte e da Tecnologia e de qual o futuro da criatividade humana.
A escrita é delirante sem qualquer preocupação com pontuação. O narrador, numa espécie de fluxo de consciência, salta em catadupa de um pensamento para outro, intervalando com o relato do que vai acontecendo em cima da cama onde tem todo o espalhafato.
E porque este é um livro "musical", há dois nomes várias vezes referidos:
1. O do escritor Leo Tolstói e o seu A Sonata de Kreutzer do qual o excerto abaixo pode ser ilustrativo da (minha) experiência de leitura deste livro...
"A música faz com que me esqueça de mim mesmo, do meu estado de espírito; eleva-me a um estado de espírito que não me pertence (...) é como se sentisse o que de facto não sinto, compreendesse o que de facto não compreendo, e me julgasse capaz de realizar o que de facto não consigo. A música transporta-me directa e imediatamente para o estado de espírito do homem que a compôs."
2. O do pianista Glenn Gould, e a sua paixão pela música bem visível no emocionante pequeno filme, aqui:
E, por fim, o "boneco" do piano mecânico...
August 18, 2019
Coming from an author best known for what have been called “system novels�, this is a really heartbreaking reflection on the author’s own private system of assembling materials. The best agent of bricolage there ever was.
September 21, 2024
that i like this better than the recent labatut books on the horrors of technology because a) in labatut it's just the subjects that go mad and i think it's important for the narrator to go mad as well b) it's a bernhard shtick and i tend to like when people do a bernhard shtick
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August 5, 2023Essential to his oeuvre. Gaddis, not just a maximalist. Modeled on Bernhard’s Concrete (& the Loser?), but also he’s doing his Gaddis thing with capturing speech—except it’s mostly monologue rather than dialogue. Brings together, distills, most (all?) of his themes throughout his work. A fitting coda. I wonder what his player piano book would have been?
June 11, 2023
Utterly brilliant.
The last of Gaddis� novels, completed in 1998 but published posthumously in 2002. This is the first of his works I’ve read (even though it’s been said by many to read it last), and I’m glad I didn’t wait as I thought it was wonderful.
Gaddis evokes Thomas Bernhard here, in the style of a ‘rant� from the deathbed about the collapse and destruction of art through the mechanisation of technology (a theme I believe is prevalent throughout his other works). In fact, you could say he directly alludes to Bernhard’s ‘The Loser� with the inclusion of the pianists Glen Gould and Wertheimer (particularly with reference to Wertheimer’s suicide).
I particularly enjoyed the music references, which helped me to feel at home. He included some insightful stuff� how well do we all know the Modes?!
It is a marvellously structured chaotic stream of consciousness. It took me a few pages get into the loop, as it were, and having read a few of Bernhard’s works definitely helped me with the form. Once I got my head around what Gaddis was doing, I read the whole thing in one sitting (it is only 96pp after all).
The last of Gaddis� novels, completed in 1998 but published posthumously in 2002. This is the first of his works I’ve read (even though it’s been said by many to read it last), and I’m glad I didn’t wait as I thought it was wonderful.
Gaddis evokes Thomas Bernhard here, in the style of a ‘rant� from the deathbed about the collapse and destruction of art through the mechanisation of technology (a theme I believe is prevalent throughout his other works). In fact, you could say he directly alludes to Bernhard’s ‘The Loser� with the inclusion of the pianists Glen Gould and Wertheimer (particularly with reference to Wertheimer’s suicide).
I particularly enjoyed the music references, which helped me to feel at home. He included some insightful stuff� how well do we all know the Modes?!
It is a marvellously structured chaotic stream of consciousness. It took me a few pages get into the loop, as it were, and having read a few of Bernhard’s works definitely helped me with the form. Once I got my head around what Gaddis was doing, I read the whole thing in one sitting (it is only 96pp after all).
April 6, 2013
William Gaddis was one of the most groundbreaking of post-war American novelists-- a stylistic precursor to Pynchon and Delillo, a towering master behind such youngsters as Franzen. His first two massive novels (Recognitions and JR) grappled with huge themes of artistic authenticity and the culture of capitalism. He wrote two more relatively accessible novels, and then this, his fifth and last.
I read "Agape Agape" (96 pages) while taking a break from reading his first novel, "The Recognitions," (956 pages). The earlier work is intimidating in much more than scope. It maps a vast sky of erudite references that overlaps the constellations of my own learning only at the edges.
"Agape Agape" (two different words, actually-- the first from the Greek for spiritual love and the second the English one meaning open or in a state of gap) was written as Gaddis lay dying of cancer. It was published posthumously in 2002 and hailed immediately as one of a handful of works (like Delillo's "Underworld") that straddled the new millenium in its sensibility.
Actually, the book seems to project a modernist, if not romanticist, sensibility into the digital age. The dying protagonist (a version of Beckett's Krapp) fumbles at his lecture notes, accumulated over decades, trying to piece together his magnum opus as the Prednisone ravages his consciousness. The struggle is basically Benjaminian-- the speaker champions some kind of artistic authenticity against the mechanization of the arts. And he tells this central modernist story through a social history of the player piano-- a cipher for all machines that replace human artistic conduct. Along the way, Benjamin holds discourse with Huizinga while Plato looks on.
For Gaddis, the history of the player piano situates the arts at the center of the digital revolution. His protagonist laments the binary-based player piano roll as a triumph in the impulse to replace (admittedly elite) artistic experience with consumer entertainment and to make the human artist obsolete. The apotheosis of this development would be the replacement of new musicians by sophisticated computer-driven mashup programs or the replacement of fiction films and tv by cinematic video games.
This is one of a small number of books (Woolf's The Waves is another) that will remain on my A-list of novels worth reading more than once. It isn't that I hear my own voice in Gaddis. Or Woolf. Both authors are far too unique for me to empathize that directly. These works reach me not by identification with character or familiarity of voice, but by directly, poetically stirring an empty feeling in my gut, the ongoing aching failure to reconcile my desire to make a mark on this world with an acute sense that the crucial moment has already passed.
Joseph Tabbi, in a thoughtful Afterward, offers Gaddis' translation of a passage by Michelangelo: "Who nearer to me Or more mighty yes, more mighty than I Tore me away from myself. Tore me away!" It is the power of the machine to become "a detachable self" (as Gaddis puts it throughout the novel) that makes it a menace as terrible as God himself. Artaud, likewise going mad at the end of his life, proclaimed that there could be no artist, no real freedom until we have done with the judgment of God.
God, who inspirits the automaton and casts out Adam from the Garden.
I read "Agape Agape" (96 pages) while taking a break from reading his first novel, "The Recognitions," (956 pages). The earlier work is intimidating in much more than scope. It maps a vast sky of erudite references that overlaps the constellations of my own learning only at the edges.
"Agape Agape" (two different words, actually-- the first from the Greek for spiritual love and the second the English one meaning open or in a state of gap) was written as Gaddis lay dying of cancer. It was published posthumously in 2002 and hailed immediately as one of a handful of works (like Delillo's "Underworld") that straddled the new millenium in its sensibility.
Actually, the book seems to project a modernist, if not romanticist, sensibility into the digital age. The dying protagonist (a version of Beckett's Krapp) fumbles at his lecture notes, accumulated over decades, trying to piece together his magnum opus as the Prednisone ravages his consciousness. The struggle is basically Benjaminian-- the speaker champions some kind of artistic authenticity against the mechanization of the arts. And he tells this central modernist story through a social history of the player piano-- a cipher for all machines that replace human artistic conduct. Along the way, Benjamin holds discourse with Huizinga while Plato looks on.
For Gaddis, the history of the player piano situates the arts at the center of the digital revolution. His protagonist laments the binary-based player piano roll as a triumph in the impulse to replace (admittedly elite) artistic experience with consumer entertainment and to make the human artist obsolete. The apotheosis of this development would be the replacement of new musicians by sophisticated computer-driven mashup programs or the replacement of fiction films and tv by cinematic video games.
This is one of a small number of books (Woolf's The Waves is another) that will remain on my A-list of novels worth reading more than once. It isn't that I hear my own voice in Gaddis. Or Woolf. Both authors are far too unique for me to empathize that directly. These works reach me not by identification with character or familiarity of voice, but by directly, poetically stirring an empty feeling in my gut, the ongoing aching failure to reconcile my desire to make a mark on this world with an acute sense that the crucial moment has already passed.
Joseph Tabbi, in a thoughtful Afterward, offers Gaddis' translation of a passage by Michelangelo: "Who nearer to me Or more mighty yes, more mighty than I Tore me away from myself. Tore me away!" It is the power of the machine to become "a detachable self" (as Gaddis puts it throughout the novel) that makes it a menace as terrible as God himself. Artaud, likewise going mad at the end of his life, proclaimed that there could be no artist, no real freedom until we have done with the judgment of God.
God, who inspirits the automaton and casts out Adam from the Garden.
July 6, 2016
A fine closing to a tremendous career by a gifted and formidable writer. Doesn't reach the peaks of The Recognitions and J R but what could?
For a longer review, check out Centring the Margins: Essays and Reviews:
For a longer review, check out Centring the Margins: Essays and Reviews:
December 27, 2024
Una novela muy al estilo de Bernhard, autor que le encantaba a William Gaddis.
Como si en una narración del autor austríaco nos encontrasemos, en este texto asistimos a un monólogo caótico presentado en una narración bloque sin un solo punto y aparte, una extenuante frase encadenada y puntuada de modo esquizoide, que incluye un ensayo de fondo sobre la tecnología como sustitutivo o sucedáneo de la creación artística.
El texto contiene el atropellado pensamiento interior, sin el mínimo atisbo de respiro de Jack Gibbs (personaje de otra de las novelas de Gaddis) a base de idas y venidas sobre varios conceptos sumamente alucinados, como la pianola como paradigma del intento de automatización del arte, los yos extraíbles, evitar el stress, el deterioro físico propio de la edad avanzada..ect.
Es un libro costoso de leer a pesar de su corta extensión y semejante a la experiencia Pynchon en cuanto a la entropia se refiere. No son libros que se disfruten siempre pero algunos de ellos son obras maestras. No apto para todos los públicos.
Como si en una narración del autor austríaco nos encontrasemos, en este texto asistimos a un monólogo caótico presentado en una narración bloque sin un solo punto y aparte, una extenuante frase encadenada y puntuada de modo esquizoide, que incluye un ensayo de fondo sobre la tecnología como sustitutivo o sucedáneo de la creación artística.
El texto contiene el atropellado pensamiento interior, sin el mínimo atisbo de respiro de Jack Gibbs (personaje de otra de las novelas de Gaddis) a base de idas y venidas sobre varios conceptos sumamente alucinados, como la pianola como paradigma del intento de automatización del arte, los yos extraíbles, evitar el stress, el deterioro físico propio de la edad avanzada..ect.
Es un libro costoso de leer a pesar de su corta extensión y semejante a la experiencia Pynchon en cuanto a la entropia se refiere. No son libros que se disfruten siempre pero algunos de ellos son obras maestras. No apto para todos los públicos.
January 21, 2021
Фігура Вільяма Ґеддіса виявляється особливо важливою, адже він опинився в епіцентрі першої хвилі американського постмодернізму, коли текст став настільки відкритим для усіляких практик зі свідомістю, зокрема й читацькою, що мимоволі вбирав у себе все, наче чорна діра, утворюючи десь на протилежному боці нову галактику. Тому, з одного боку, поява повісті «Агапе агов» українською стає можливістю відкрити для себе суттєвий пласт того феномену, що серйозно змінив літературний ландшафт другої половини ХХ століття. З іншого ж, останній текст Ґеддіса, своєрідний спадок всіх наступних постмодерністів, злякає більшість читачів своєю стилістичною та композиційною складністю. До того ж, не зовсім зрозуміло, звідки прийшло рішення ознайомити аудиторію саме із цією фігурою (і саме з останнім текстом класика), адже у нас не перекладеними є чимало письменників постмодерного канону, зокрема Джон Барт, Ішмаель Рід, Джин Ріс і багато інших. Втім, вочевидь, перекласти невеличку повість набагато легше, ніж пропонувати дебютні величезні полотна, тому навіть з огля��у на таку прагматику поява книжки має свою логіку.
Якщо спробувати описати сюжет повісті, то вийде історія безіменного персонажа на смертному одрі, який намагається вхопити і передати різноманітні образи навколишнього світу завдяки потоку своєї свідомості: «не можу побачити скан кістки не можу побачити голку у вені крап-крап бозна-яка година за годиною нова процедура (�) Не бачу протилежного боку кімнати усе пляма це преднізон тож вони перевіряють очі, але читати я можу чи не так» (с. 17-18). Як бачимо, Ґеддіс відразу кидає читача у вир образів, непов’язани� між собою ані певними семантичними зв’язкам�, ані хоча б розділовими знаками. Якщо Джойс в «Уліссі» готував свого читача до фінального потоку свідомості, занурюючи його у глибини несвідомого поступово, то Ґеддіс часу на підготовку нам не дає: все відбувається тут-і-тепер. Втім, головний герой і сам розуміє це, демонструючи прекрасний приклад самоіронії, яка не є чужою, хоча й геть не визначальна для письменника: «я не можу навіть зробити вступ, бач оце те в що я маю вступити поки всю мою працю хибно не зрозуміють і не спотворять і, і обернуть на карикатуру бо вона і є карикатура» (с. 6).
Головний протагоніст не стільки оцінює своє життя, скільки намагається взагалі відрефлексувати: чи варто будь-кому жити у цьому світі, сповненому болю і страждань? Як наслідок � безмір прихованих цитат і алюзій на ключові подій модерну, зокрема його поразки і втрати. В результаті на такій невеличкій текстуальній площі цитат виявляється чи не більше, ніж власне «оригінального» тексту, тому читання нагадує прокладання непевної стежки крізь густі лісові хащі. Автор нанизує образи, як ті намистини, ускладнюючи процес сприйняття настільки, що свідомість просто не встигає перемикатись із одного враження на інше. Врешті, забутьте про естетичні відчуття і переживання, хоча й щемких моментів тут також вдосталь: повість радше нагадує дадаїстський колаж, зліплений з елементів найрізноманітніших культур � грецької, середньовічної, низової, американської. Не важко зрозуміти, що Ґеддіс не надто лояльно ставиться саме до своєї культури, особливо масової, пов’язуюч� її передусім із корпоративними схемами і корпоративним духом. Тому технічно ця повість, безумовно, є типовим постмодерністським текстом; щоправда, тут багато чого якраз від модернізму і його цінностей � подумати хоча б про елітарність та замкненість Ґеддісової повісті на себе.
Однак найважливіша лінія в «Агапе агов» � ностальгія за класикою, визначеністю, референтністю та порядком. Звісно, найкращим об’єкто�, що втілює все це, є антична Греція, де й знаходиться «агапе» � любов універсальна. У кінцевому підсумку, персонаж Ґеддіса ностальгує саме за справжньою любов’�, хоча й боїться собі � і нам також � у цьому зізнатись. Однак Ґеддіс, як і більшість передбачливих постмодерністів, залишає підказки на сторінках своєї повісті: вони-то і можуть вивести з лабіринту нескінченних асоціацій і безупинних натяків. Над цим клопітливо попрацював і перекладач, який також залишив коментарі наприкінці книги. У якомусь сенсі, для багатьох відважних читання цих коментарів складатиме значно цікавіший модус роботи з текстом, аніж безпосереднє ознайомлення з повістю Ґеддіса. Тому виходом із безкінечних тісних коридорів «Агапе агов» є, як не дивно, правильна послідовність інтерпретацій/підказок
Здається, що ось таким чином текст врешті набуває якогось цілісного характеру, але навіть на цьому мета-рівні Ґеддіс випереджає читача: насправді інтерпретації витворюють ще один, не менш химерний лабіринт. Чим далі � тим більше відсилань до космологічної філософії, античної трагедії, скульптури, архітектури, тобто усього «сфероподібного» космосу. Можливо, це навіть своєрідна ностальгія за тим світом, де питання мали відповіді, а лабіринт, тобто життя, завжди мав вихід, яким би тяжким не був шлях. Можливо, це навіть ностальгія за молодістю «яка могла будь-що» � тим епіцентром життя, до якого Ґеддіс буде повертатися стільки разів, скільки годин читач блукатиме у його повісті. А втім, для чого лукавити? Всі ж бо знаємо, що саме знаходиться по той бік лабіринту, однак із усіх сил нама.
Написано для
Якщо спробувати описати сюжет повісті, то вийде історія безіменного персонажа на смертному одрі, який намагається вхопити і передати різноманітні образи навколишнього світу завдяки потоку своєї свідомості: «не можу побачити скан кістки не можу побачити голку у вені крап-крап бозна-яка година за годиною нова процедура (�) Не бачу протилежного боку кімнати усе пляма це преднізон тож вони перевіряють очі, але читати я можу чи не так» (с. 17-18). Як бачимо, Ґеддіс відразу кидає читача у вир образів, непов’язани� між собою ані певними семантичними зв’язкам�, ані хоча б розділовими знаками. Якщо Джойс в «Уліссі» готував свого читача до фінального потоку свідомості, занурюючи його у глибини несвідомого поступово, то Ґеддіс часу на підготовку нам не дає: все відбувається тут-і-тепер. Втім, головний герой і сам розуміє це, демонструючи прекрасний приклад самоіронії, яка не є чужою, хоча й геть не визначальна для письменника: «я не можу навіть зробити вступ, бач оце те в що я маю вступити поки всю мою працю хибно не зрозуміють і не спотворять і, і обернуть на карикатуру бо вона і є карикатура» (с. 6).
Головний протагоніст не стільки оцінює своє життя, скільки намагається взагалі відрефлексувати: чи варто будь-кому жити у цьому світі, сповненому болю і страждань? Як наслідок � безмір прихованих цитат і алюзій на ключові подій модерну, зокрема його поразки і втрати. В результаті на такій невеличкій текстуальній площі цитат виявляється чи не більше, ніж власне «оригінального» тексту, тому читання нагадує прокладання непевної стежки крізь густі лісові хащі. Автор нанизує образи, як ті намистини, ускладнюючи процес сприйняття настільки, що свідомість просто не встигає перемикатись із одного враження на інше. Врешті, забутьте про естетичні відчуття і переживання, хоча й щемких моментів тут також вдосталь: повість радше нагадує дадаїстський колаж, зліплений з елементів найрізноманітніших культур � грецької, середньовічної, низової, американської. Не важко зрозуміти, що Ґеддіс не надто лояльно ставиться саме до своєї культури, особливо масової, пов’язуюч� її передусім із корпоративними схемами і корпоративним духом. Тому технічно ця повість, безумовно, є типовим постмодерністським текстом; щоправда, тут багато чого якраз від модернізму і його цінностей � подумати хоча б про елітарність та замкненість Ґеддісової повісті на себе.
Однак найважливіша лінія в «Агапе агов» � ностальгія за класикою, визначеністю, референтністю та порядком. Звісно, найкращим об’єкто�, що втілює все це, є антична Греція, де й знаходиться «агапе» � любов універсальна. У кінцевому підсумку, персонаж Ґеддіса ностальгує саме за справжньою любов’�, хоча й боїться собі � і нам також � у цьому зізнатись. Однак Ґеддіс, як і більшість передбачливих постмодерністів, залишає підказки на сторінках своєї повісті: вони-то і можуть вивести з лабіринту нескінченних асоціацій і безупинних натяків. Над цим клопітливо попрацював і перекладач, який також залишив коментарі наприкінці книги. У якомусь сенсі, для багатьох відважних читання цих коментарів складатиме значно цікавіший модус роботи з текстом, аніж безпосереднє ознайомлення з повістю Ґеддіса. Тому виходом із безкінечних тісних коридорів «Агапе агов» є, як не дивно, правильна послідовність інтерпретацій/підказок
Здається, що ось таким чином текст врешті набуває якогось цілісного характеру, але навіть на цьому мета-рівні Ґеддіс випереджає читача: насправді інтерпретації витворюють ще один, не менш химерний лабіринт. Чим далі � тим більше відсилань до космологічної філософії, античної трагедії, скульптури, архітектури, тобто усього «сфероподібного» космосу. Можливо, це навіть своєрідна ностальгія за тим світом, де питання мали відповіді, а лабіринт, тобто життя, завжди мав вихід, яким би тяжким не був шлях. Можливо, це навіть ностальгія за молодістю «яка могла будь-що» � тим епіцентром життя, до якого Ґеддіс буде повертатися стільки разів, скільки годин читач блукатиме у його повісті. А втім, для чого лукавити? Всі ж бо знаємо, що саме знаходиться по той бік лабіринту, однак із усіх сил нама.
Написано для
January 30, 2025
Empiezo los años con libros potentes para conjurar al Dios de las buenas lecturas y garantizarme buen nivel en las historias que escojo.
Gaddis es perfecto para este cometido, aunque sea una novela corta, aunque trate de los efectos de la creación de la pianola en Estados Unidos, tiene el poder de analizar, evocar y llevarnos a través de los ojos de un hombre que ordena sus documentos ante su muerte inminente.
Gaddis es perfecto para este cometido, aunque sea una novela corta, aunque trate de los efectos de la creación de la pianola en Estados Unidos, tiene el poder de analizar, evocar y llevarnos a través de los ojos de un hombre que ordena sus documentos ante su muerte inminente.
October 15, 2017
I wanted to read more Gaddis after the Recognitions but wasn’t up for another massive time-investment into his work at least yet (I’ll try out Frolic or JR soon), so I picked up this short little volume (about the length of a chapter from The Recognitions), and while there were some excellent parts (his excoriation of the Pulitzer Prize), there were also certain sections where the curmudgeonly pessimism of the narrator felt a bit cliché.
I mean this rant about Hollywood is just dire.
You’ve heard the likes of that a hundred times and it just makes you roll your eyes. On the flipside, there were some excellent passages near the end about the narrator reflecting on his first novel.
The narrator wrestles with Tolstoy’s idea that art must appeal to the common man, talk about the tyranny of the majority and essentially spends the entire 96 pages attacking the mechanization of art, especially player pianos.
I mean, man, this guy hates player pianos.
I mean this rant about Hollywood is just dire.
the herd numbed and silenced agape at blood sex and guns blowing each other to pieces only participation you get’s maybe kids who see it come to school next morning and mow down their classmates.
You’ve heard the likes of that a hundred times and it just makes you roll your eyes. On the flipside, there were some excellent passages near the end about the narrator reflecting on his first novel.
…my first book, it’s become my enemy, o Dio, odium, the rage and energy and boundless excitement the only reality where the work that’s become my enemy got done and the only refuge from the hallucination�
The narrator wrestles with Tolstoy’s idea that art must appeal to the common man, talk about the tyranny of the majority and essentially spends the entire 96 pages attacking the mechanization of art, especially player pianos.
I mean, man, this guy hates player pianos.
February 18, 2015
Гениальная повесть � «завещание» Гэддиса. Разлагающийся человек в разлагающемся мире, разговаривает на равных с «мертвыми белыми мужчинами», как Херцог Сола Беллоу, залипает мозгом на причудливых мелочах и деталях, как у Николсона Бейкера, говорит толпе все, что о ней думает, не стесняясь в выражениях, как� как нам нравится, в общем. Ну и да, оттенки Томаса Бернхардта, конечно. Перед смертью уже терять нечего, весь мир � твоя песочница. И сам ты рассыпаешься, как песок в ней, и культура, и цивилизация вокруг. А в своем крайнем состоянии ворчливости ты можешь только неистовствовать на приход энтропии, сколько хватит сил. Очень симпатичное состояние, такое, наверное, может нравиться только с возрастом.
А (среди прочего) умирает не просто «высокое искусство» (как бы ни опошлили эту фразу детский писатель Чуковский) � в механизации средств его воспроизводства и самим принципом его воспроизводимости � отмирает человеческое, уникальное. Мы жалеем о невоспроизводимости всякого уникального акта творения прекрасного, огорчаемся, что лично не можем свидетельствовать каждому такому акту, но отдаем себе отчет, что это физически невозможно � и в этом, наверное, частичка нашей смерти, в смирении перед этим. А вот Гэддис не смирился, его персонаж на смертном одре � как прекрасный Дон Кихот.
А (среди прочего) умирает не просто «высокое искусство» (как бы ни опошлили эту фразу детский писатель Чуковский) � в механизации средств его воспроизводства и самим принципом его воспроизводимости � отмирает человеческое, уникальное. Мы жалеем о невоспроизводимости всякого уникального акта творения прекрасного, огорчаемся, что лично не можем свидетельствовать каждому такому акту, но отдаем себе отчет, что это физически невозможно � и в этом, наверное, частичка нашей смерти, в смирении перед этим. А вот Гэддис не смирился, его персонаж на смертном одре � как прекрасный Дон Кихот.
June 22, 2022
É a música da entropia. Quando, este ano, li o livro póstumo do Luís de Miranda Rocha, "Caos e Catástrofe", pensei que LMR deve ter topado Gaddis.
Este "Ágape, Agonia" é um daqueles que não se quer partilhar, nem o que se pensa dele, nem como ele nos afecta. Fico por aqui.
Este "Ágape, Agonia" é um daqueles que não se quer partilhar, nem o que se pensa dele, nem como ele nos afecta. Fico por aqui.
January 14, 2018
William Gaddis' final work, about a writer in his final hospital room, addled by his chemical treatment, desperately trying to pour through his notes to complete his final opus before he dies. Searing, excoriating, an investigation into art as elitist versus art for all; art as sacred versus that rendered profane through technology & mechanisation - he focuses on the symbol of the player-piano, the automated piano that plays by punch card paper pattern selecting the order of the keys to be depressed. The music without player, like structuralism took the author out of the text. The writer here is unhappy at art for the masses, because it degrades it to mere entertainment. Many sources are cited, but Plato and Aristotle are the starting points. Plato's ideal forms and (phe-)nomenalism saw him rail against art; when life is already a poor imitation of the unattainable ideal, why further degrade it with the conscious artifice of art? All that can do is unnecessarily rouse unrealistic and disproportionate passions, which is where Aristotle takes over - his recipe for living a virtuous life is moderation in everything and art's raising of the passions is a threat.
But what underpins all these thoughts and ideals is a man in pain on his deathbed. Under the regimen of the drugs, his skin is "like parchment", while he has had staples in his flesh to keep his legs together. In short, the man who has devoted his whole life to writing, has ended up as a book himself, made of papers and bound by staples. This final work from him is a desperate race against time to realise his final vision, to arrange his copious notes into order and get his thoughts down on paper. But his body is fallible, his mind deracinated by drugs, the tragedy is even though this book was completed, the writer himself never made it; not only by dying, but the sense of despair and lingering doubt of failure of his writing endeavours. Poignant in the extreme.
But what underpins all these thoughts and ideals is a man in pain on his deathbed. Under the regimen of the drugs, his skin is "like parchment", while he has had staples in his flesh to keep his legs together. In short, the man who has devoted his whole life to writing, has ended up as a book himself, made of papers and bound by staples. This final work from him is a desperate race against time to realise his final vision, to arrange his copious notes into order and get his thoughts down on paper. But his body is fallible, his mind deracinated by drugs, the tragedy is even though this book was completed, the writer himself never made it; not only by dying, but the sense of despair and lingering doubt of failure of his writing endeavours. Poignant in the extreme.
October 17, 2016
На свій сором (хоча і на щастя, бо скільки всього прекрасного попереду!), лише відкриваю для себе американських постмодерністів. Почала я якось з кінця (буквально), адже "Агапе агов", це остання книжка Ґеддіса, його прощання. Отже, тут людина прощається з усім - хоче зрозуміти, що ж вона таки зрозуміла за своє життя, до яких висновків прийшла, і, як підказує назва (і як скромно зрозуміла я), людина намагається відплвісти на головне запитання - чи полюбила вона людство? Чи це людство можна любити? Для Ґеддіса, думаю, відповідь ствердна, адже те що ти намагаєшся зрозуміти, осягнути розумом і свідомістю, ти обов'язуово любиш, отже агапе в усьому, без неї не можна, вона і є ключем до пізнання.
Я дуже раджу починати читати з коментарів у кінці, а потім вже читати текст, бо коли часто стрибати від одного до іншого, то втрачаєш нитку думок (а вони дуже гарні!) А краще почніть читати з післямови перекладача!
Взагалі читання цієї книжки - це чиста насолода для мізків, так що готуйтеся! Це буде цілий незабутній досвід! Я буду перечитувати, впевнена.
Переклад Максима Нестелєєва прекрасний, так що не бійтеся купувати і читати у перекладі на рідну!
Я дуже раджу починати читати з коментарів у кінці, а потім вже читати текст, бо коли часто стрибати від одного до іншого, то втрачаєш нитку думок (а вони дуже гарні!) А краще почніть читати з післямови перекладача!
Взагалі читання цієї книжки - це чиста насолода для мізків, так що готуйтеся! Це буде цілий незабутній досвід! Я буду перечитувати, впевнена.
Переклад Максима Нестелєєва прекрасний, так що не бійтеся купувати і читати у перекладі на рідну!
July 18, 2015
When I described this book to my wife ("a dying man rants about player pianos in a single 96-page long paragraph"), she rolled her eyes and said that I was the only person alive who would want to read such a thing. Not that far from the truth.
This is the locus classicus of unhinged educated whinges. Every author should have at least one Thomas Bernhard impression in their corpus.
But ultimately, the reason Agapē Agape is a good book is that it is a such an intense description of dying.
This is the locus classicus of unhinged educated whinges. Every author should have at least one Thomas Bernhard impression in their corpus.
But ultimately, the reason Agapē Agape is a good book is that it is a such an intense description of dying.
November 12, 2013
100 pages of Gaddis rambling about things in Bernhards style is very cool
December 21, 2015
Devastated.
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