Synopsis
Quien esté familiarizado con las novelas de Gaddis conoce el alcance de su inteligencia, de su lucidez; una sagacidad y una capacidad de penetración que el lector hallará también aquí en toda su magnificencia. Baste como ejemplo el texto que da título al libro, donde lanza sus dardos a la cultura del éxito de su país, a esa unión entre ética protestante y capitalismo que da lugar a la idea tan perversa como falsa de que quien es pobre lo es porque lo merece y que los más favorecidos son también los más virtuosos. El escritor, la literatura, también caerían del lado de los perdedores, de los relegados, de los rezagados en la implacable y ciega carrera del progreso hacia ninguna parte, pero desde esa posición marginal podrán señalar las fallas y miserias de un sistema abyecto e injusto.
La cultura de masas, la religión, el capitalismo… Las obsesiones que guiaron las celebradas novelas de uno de los mejores escritores estadounidenses del siglo xx, «hermano mayor» literario de Pynchon, DeLillo y «padre» de David Foster Wallace, aparecen aquí con otros ropajes pero tan incisivas como siempre.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
William Gaddis (1922-1998) was a master of the American novel who was frequently compared with Joyce, Nabokov, and Pynchon. Two of his novels, J R and A Frolic of His Own, won the National Book Award. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the recipient of a MacArthur Prize.
Joseph Tabbi was the first scholar to be given access to the Gaddis archives. He conducts research in American literature and new media writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Joseph Tabbi was the first scholar to be given access to the Gaddis archives. He conducts research in American literature and new media writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
From Booklist
Criticism is integral to William Gaddis' (1922-98) referential fiction, and he also wrote tonic critical essays spiked with a parodic wit, never-before-collected and invaluable works that Gaddis scholar Joseph Tabbi ably sets in literary and biographical context. Gaddis is particularly rousing in his skewering of the corporate world, a realm he infiltrated while writing for Eastman Kodak and IBM, and he takes on with equal mettle the Protestant work ethic and its shaping of the military-industrial complex, and the plight of art in a culture of pragmatism. Fascinated and appalled by the complexity, hypocrisy, and fever of American life, Gaddis concludes that we're all in this craziness together, "we are all in the same line of business: that of concocting, arranging, and peddling fictions to get us safely through the night." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
