Gaddis Annotations

As previously mentioned, I am making an attempt on the works of postmodern author William Gaddis of late, and—as forewarned in the previous post—next on my list was Gaddis' Carpenter's Gothic: his third novel, published in 1985, and thitherto his briefest. As others have noted, the book is a kind of condensation of the themes and obsessions that had appeared in his previous books (until, that is, these themes and obsessions were condensed over again in his posthumous Agapē Agape). 

I have not been tackling Gaddis's works in any kind of linear or chronological order—instead starting with his second novel J R, before moving on to his collected nonfiction, The Rush for Second Place, his short posthumous final novel, the aforementioned Agapē Agape, and coming round most recently to Carpenter's Gothic. 

In whatever order one approaches the man's oeuvre, though, one discovered that there are throughout this whole body of work—published over five decades and amounting to six titles in all (if we're counting the essays)—a handful of recurring phrases, references, characteristic utterances—Gaddisisms, if you will. Realizing this, I couldn't help but scrawl excited stars and notes to myself in the margins every time I spotted one of these bread crumbs, left by the author as clues to those pursuing him across his works. 

I am of course not the first either to notice this habit on the part of Gaddis, or to try to systematically hunt down every instance of it. The internet provides an excellent site, The Gaddis Annotations, that already attempts precisely this task. 

And does an excellent job of it, it must be said. In making my own marginal scribblings in Carpenter's Gothic, I started to dread looking up the same passage in the online annotations; so often I would discover I had been scooped: the other literary detectives had already spotted the same parallel structure or the same recycled phrase from another Gaddis work that I had. 

However, there were a few I found that are not yet included in the website's compendium. In an effort to make my own contribution to this pool of collective knowledge, therefore, I am listing out my own annotations to Carpenter's Gothic, at least in those instances in which I felt I had something to add to what had already been covered on the website. 

p. 118 "more stupidity than malice in the world": As the Gaddis Annotations site already observes, Gaddis has used this phrase elsewhere, attributing its origin to his mother. However, while the website cites the phrase's appearances in Gaddis' Paris Review interview, it does not yet note that he also deploys it in a short "tribute" essay, "Mothers," included in The Rush for Second Place (p. 136). 

p. 122 "Wise Potato Chips Hoppin' With Flavor!"—this bit of detritus on the floor of McCandless's disordered study also finds its way into the pages of J R, where it is amongst the various pieces of refuse that Edward Bast and Rhoda accumulate (or interact with) during their stay in the downtown apartment that Schramm, Gibbs, and other characters periodically use as a workplace and escape. 

p. 129 "fool more dangerous than the rogue..." As Gaddis Annotations notes, the original source for this phrase is unknown, but Gaddis always attributes it to Anatole France, following Ortega y Gasset's attribution of the phrase. The online Annotations do not yet note, however, that Gaddis would go on to echo this phrase in later writings, including in the "Mothers" essay mentioned above.

p. 158 Elizabeth Booth and McCandless are talking: "do you think that's why people write it? fiction I mean?" she asks. "From outrage..." his reply begins. The phrase is echoed and completed later on in Gaddis' Agapē Agape, where it appears as the unforgettable line: "Since all writing worth reading comes, like suicide, from outrage or revenge..." (p. 63).

p. 159 "failing at something that wasn't worth doing in the first place"—variations on this phrase appear in multiple Gaddis works, including J R, and in the title essay of The Rush for Second Place; it encapsulates one of his central themes about the American cult of "success" and mediocrity. Jack Gibbs, in J R, strives to "fail at something worth doing." In "The Rush for Second Place," Gaddis describes the United States as "a society [that] holds its most ignominious defeats in store for those—we call them 'losers'—who fail at something that was not worth doing in the first place." (p. 44).

p. 165 "they shoot zebras, don't they?"—a play on the title of a famous noir novel by Horace McCoy.

p. 171 "no malice there, just stupidity," see note to p. 118.

p. 228 "something wasn't worth doing," see note to p. 159. 

p. 236 "successful survivor"— a phrase Gaddis also uses to describe Nixon and Kissinger in his essay, "The Rush for Second Place" (p. 59). 

p. 249 It is revealed that McCandless has a son (Jack) who, unbeknownst to Billy, was actually the same McCandless who once helped him out of a scrape in school. This plot device—in which a relationship between two characters is revealed to the reader without ever being disclosed to the characters in the novel whom it concerns—appears as well in J R. There, Amy Joubert's brother turns out to be a one-time friend of Jack Gibbs' from boarding school. While the reader is made aware of this by the end of the novel, Jack Gibbs never learns it. 

p. 252 It is remarked of McCandless, "he didn't even really teach history no, no he wanted to change it[.]" A phrase that echoes the famous line from Marx: "the philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it."