Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the flow.
GADDIS
Well, this interior monologue you speak of is just too easy, obvious, boring, lazy, and I would agree right up to the last; I always cringe at the word behaviorism. But again it is very much this notion of what the reader is obliged to supply. We go back to McLuhan and his talk about hot and cool media. Television is the hot medium, to which one contributes nothing except a blank state, and the next day you say, What was that show we saw last night on television? It disappears because you put nothing into it. So nothing remains, as Gibbs remarks in JR. In this case it was my hope—for many readers it worked, for others it did not—that having made some effort they would not read too agonizedly slowly and carefully, trying to figure out who is talking and so forth. It was the flow that I wanted, for the readers to read and be swept along—to participate. And enjoy it. And occasionally chuckle, laugh along the way.
INTERVIEWER
But if they read along like that, they may miss a lot.
GADDIS
This is a risk I take, but isn’t that what life is, after all? Missing something that’s right there before you?
— “William Gaddis, the Art of Fiction no. 101”
—posted 4917 days ago
