(1966). In my personal life, I talk more about William H. Gass than any other writer. With undeniable sentence-making expertise and an intellect equal parts rigor and passion, his opinion on anything interests me endlessly (to a paraphrase from a book jacket). Every time I see a book of his I don’t have, I buy it on the dot. Even if someone else is holding it and I’m in his/her house. Yea, I go that deep.
So imagine my surprise when, today, I stopped reading Omensetter’s Luck. Truthfully, I’d left days in between readings many times, letting my focus linger elsewhere even in moments of profound deliquescence. 11/4 was the day I began; seventeen days later, I’m eighty pages in.
I like it. I’m telling myself I like it and nobody is lying. I’m looking back at the passages I wrote down. They’re great:
He was conscious, always, of the inadequacy of his details, the vagueness of his picture, the falsehood in all his implicit etcetera, because he knew nothing, had studied nothing, had traveled nowhere
(12). I loved this because, instantly, I saw myself. And isn’t that the best thing about a book? No, I’m joking. The structure–where and how Gass places his commas–is what gets to me. It makes you feel the emptiness of Israbestis Tott’s spiels slowly peeling out. Especially the “implicit etcetera” line. Here, Gass describes utterly, by giving up description in favor of the hazy pointing employed by Tott, building down into the hollow of his thoughts, exactly expressing the nothing that is there.
Such birds in such a dream, would speed with the speed of your spirit through its body where, in imitation of the air, flesh has turned itself to meadow.
(48). Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk….that’s gorgeous.
I’m dreadfully sick…stupidly sick. A scientific fact. Quiet giggles shook him. And I’ve scarcely been alive. Henry Winslow Pimber. Now dead of weak will and dishonest weather.
(70). Yes, we can all see these are very exciting sentences. They are exciting and I’m can’t say I’m not excited about the ones that may be coming up. And yet my will has withered.
I can say why. There’s been too much life these last few months. I moved across the country. Sad things, happy things, new experiences, fill in the blanks. I’m not a different person, in any meaningful sense. I still get hot blooded for “Big Billy” Gass. The opening paragraph remains applicable. Really, the will to read is there, too. The crux is that, having read as I have, I know there’s not the immersive thoroughness necessary to go on reading if I want to appreciate O’sL in a serious, practical fashion. All boats have been missed and I am alone, upon the shore, dreaming of your mouth.
Literature is a relationship, a conversation, and other things. Participation is essential. It’s not that I want to stop reading books for this bit, it’s that I haven’t given O’sL the correct dedication. For example, I remember the beginning parts as events, but I don’t feel them as emotional experiences. It’s just a mush of chronology. I understand what’s happening but I’ve forgotten why I wanted to bother.
This is not to say that I can’t overcome myself to appreciate Gass’s novel. For you see, yourself is many things. I endorse Butler’s notion of identity as a loose, external network. I can overcome my impenetrably personal contexts to connect to an art work–to create a new kind of context–but this time it fell apart. It happens. Try again.
onelibrariansopinion 