Cross Currents; Lecture by William Gaddis Titled The Theme of Failure in Contemporary Literature

Crosscurrents is made possible by a grant from the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues. This is crosscurrents a series of programs exploring issues of public concern in Vermont. Today novelist William Gaddis discusses American attitudes toward success and failure. His talk is intitled the theme of failure in contemporary literature. William Gaddis received the National Book Award for fiction in 1976 for his novel j r. He has also written the recognitions a novel published in 1055. In the course of his career the 57 year old Harvard graduate has been the recipient of grants from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts. On the evening of November 5th 1979 Gaddis spoke at St. Michael's call Aegean wineskin for months. The theme of failure in contemporary literature by William got us.

I've been asked to give readings before and generally I avoid them because I don't really see much point to it. To reading out of one's published work. Maybe if it is a work in progress I mean it hasn't been published before. There would be some news there but generally I think that a book is very much between. The writer and the reader it's a very intimate connection between what the writer is trying to communicate. One at a time to one reader off the printed page. And though we're told Dickens when Dickens appeared here and read from his work when he read the death of Little Nell he wept and the audience wept with him. Oscar Wilde of course said anyone who can read. The death of Little Nell. The scene of the

death of Little Nell without breaking into laughter must have a heart of stone. I think I think the heart of it though is I feel that once a book is written and once and always written it is very much on its own. Out in the world there is no way that the writer can run after it and say this is what I meant. It's either got to do it or it doesn't. I wrote in this first book in the recognitions which is a long novel about a. A forger a man who forges paintings among other things. This His wife wants to go to some thing Meet the latest I meet a poet or a novelist or something and then he says this passion for wanting to meet the latest poet to shake hands with the latest novelist get hold of the latest painter. What is it. What is it they want from the man they didn't get from his

work. What do they expect. What is there left of the what is there left of him when he's done his work. What's any artist but the dregs of his work. The human shambles that follows it around what's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology and I still pretty much feel that way when this book won a National Book Award. I had to put together a little. Acceptance kind of a number you know. And I was assured by that after it that the New York New York Times that I was not eloquent. I think Publishers Weekly said that I did not have a platform presence in my own son and said Don't worry about it. Most people for most people the NBA means the National Basketball Association. So it's not going to make any difference at all. So on the strength of that I thought since I don't think anyone heard what I said that evening I'll inflict it on you know I said I feel like a

like part of a vanishing breed that thinks a writer should be read and not heard let alone seen. I think this is because there seems so often today to be a tendency to put the person in place of His Word to turn the creative artist into performing with to find what a writer says about writing somehow more valid more real than the writing itself. In this regard I was struck by something I read recently in a preface to a novel of Gorky's before 18:00 the editor noted. The main problem about being a writer was to keep writing well by the end of the century the main problem was to write well enough to establish or to maintain the position of being a writer. I still think on that. However this whole idea of trying to maintain a kind of isolated position in a kind of an anonymity in a kind of staying out of it often isn't consonant with paying the rent and getting getting through.

And it also brings other other perils I when my work has sometimes been compared with. Without Thomas Pynchon. And when Gravity's Rainbow came out about two years or three before JR One reviewer wrote in a New York Post that his pension is totally inaccessible and I've been fairly so that this might well be my second novel because they'd been heard that I was working on a long second novel and that maybe the same person. There was also someone told me down in the village down the bars that I used to frequent. Someone carrying my first novel around and telling people what hard work it had been to write it and I thought we got to get out of this business of trying to stay out of the out of the scene. Maybe it's not that good an idea. Then I got a letter saying Dear Mr Gattis for the past several years

a man calling himself William God has resided with my wifes aunt Mrs. So-and-so who died early this year. We are interested in getting in touch with Mr Gattis because my wife is the executor executor of Mr. So-and-So estate and several irregular irregularities have been uncovered including an authorized sale of some of her stock by Mr get as at a time when Mrs So-and-so was in the hospital in a comatose state. Although Mr. Geddes has claimed to author some books we are not inclined to put much stock in it and believe that he is just an imposter who has assumed your identity. Then I thought we got it we got to clear this up so maybe I should get out in the world a little bit. I think one one point that has always struck me about this is. This factory wrote it wrote an essay short piece called on

being found out and I think this may be part of the sense that one had or that I have. The whole idea that a writer in a sense is a confidence man and that very much when Coleridge talks about about his willing willing suspension of disbelief. This is what fiction is I mean you are asking the reader to suspend his disbelief and go along with this number you're putting on him and that of course is what the conference man is doing too. And I think it's part of why many writers have been very taken with the figure of the carbons man because you know there's a kinship there. On the other hand I think there is no

pleasing the writer I mean he just won't have it. Either way there's a story that I think the one I'm most fond of in the way of jokes which is a man comes into a bar and orders a glass of beer and a girl puts it in front of him and and he lifted up and suddenly put it down says I can't drink this. And the barmaid says well find out what's wrong and he says well there's a mouse floating in it and she says. Oh I know I'm awfully sorry it takes the glass away lets the mouse out and throws it in the drain it puts the glass back in front of him. He says well I can't drink this. And she says well man there's no pleasing you you won't have it with the mounts and you won't have it without the mouth. And I generally think this is this is the way we go on. Although I talk once about this to a writer I like named Stanley elk and elk and I said well you know you're all wrong I mean and of course we can be pleased just all we want is people to tell us it's the greatest thing I've ever read.

And Stanley has something there only me. Question that comes up sometimes. Of whom one writes for you. I think when one actually is sitting down writing you're not writing for anyone but yourself. I don't think it is for the. Reviewers I don't think reviews sell books really. Even good reviews all of course you never know. Even if you've gotten a lot of good reviews you think well they didn't help sell a book but you don't know if you haven't got any. Maybe United might have sold any books. But I think eventually the only the only person that the reviews make much difference to is the is the writer. With that I got was J.R. which might

cheer you up. It was in The New Yorker magazine. He said recently a group of Avalon guard critics has put forward the idea that books should be made unreadable in this is in addressing this problem of difficult or demanding or what have you. This movement has manifest advantages being unreadable. The text repels reviewers critics anthologist academic literate high and other parasitical forms of life. Then he mentions the idea that everyone has the idea anybody can write a book. But what then of the truly unreadable book this surely must be within every man's reach. Yet again the answer is No. To produce to produce an unreadable text to sustain his foxy purpose for over seven hundred twenty six pages demands rare powers. Mr. Guterres has them. So I mean you have to live with that too I. There was meant then this

fellow went ahead and wrote a book and there was a review of his book that I must say cheered me up. Reviewers said. Other critics of reputation are writing in English he is the one who has yet to do an honest day's work a practical criticism. So that helped. Curiously then the question of the academic world. I think at first you write a novel and what you want everyone to come out and buy it and read it and talk about it and say wow you know this is a terrific novel. And then they don't. And then. Then you see a few reviews which say this will be material for a lot of doctoral papers and you think this isn't what I had in mind you know to be in effect in tuned in in someone's thesis. But then gradually you get you get sort of you get quite grateful for this and you realize the only way this thing is going to stay alive. It's probably going to be

through academic preoccupation with it. The problem comes I think when you get into it. What a great deal of academic academic approach has got to be all about which is you know tracing down the particulars. For instance derivation you know what. What does this mean where do you get this. What influence and so forth. In one recent one review of J R someone who wrote wrote the thing said that it was it was filled with farcically symbolic names for instance Bast B A S T who is a central one of the central figures in the book. Best phlegm ph l o e m related to Greek fellows and short for bastard child of opposing values. And I read this and thought Wow where did I. What is this Greek derivation I lifted the name bodily out of a novel of the EM Forster's that I like very much

because Bast conveyed the idea of this character as being a rather passive character. But now here it is in print which some other academician will find and say oh yes he derived it from the Greek and so forth. And you can't keep up with it. You can't run along after it. I mean I can try seeing that. There are other busy hands you know in other parts of the country I'm sure working on a on a on a thesis which is picking this one up. On the other hand with the first book with the recognitions there was a suggestion that this was like Joyce's Ulysses. In the reviews of Joyce's book was mentioned frequently one long very long critical piece appeared in one of the small reviews which said with James Joyce the twentieth century has produced its most consummate literary artist and it is to William got his credit that he has sought and found in

Joyce both a direction toward the future and a definite delineation of what has been accomplished. So the recognition that once acknowledges its debt and proclaims it's individuality which was all very flattering but I had never regular CS and in fact still have and I have to confess to you in that I mean it cited all kinds of parallels things that presumably I had lifted from Ulysses Wyatt's wife Esther is in my book as I obviously learn from Molly Bloom the technique of drawing handkerchiefs on a mirror to avoid the necessity of ironing them. And that when I picked up I was in in town and I had heard this and so I had heard a lot of tankage is when we still used languages and had them drawing on the mirror and panes of glass in the hotel room and a friend came out Panamanian friend and said who's dead and I said What do you mean nobody's. And he got all the mirrors

and everything covered. And I had never heard this story about covering their ears covering glass and so forth. When someone dies. So I wrote it down and got it into this novel out of what I like to call real life. And even following real life reading McTeague at some point which is fought in 1900 or you know it's a long time ago. There is a little old lady on it washing how huge it is and spreading them on the mirror too as a way of ironing them. So this whole problem of derivations I think is something that one should be quite careful of. On the other hand it can work in one's favor. And one doctoral paper I read. Why it's designing a. In the early part of early part of the book this character Wyatt later goes into painting and forging paintings and works on bridge

design and his father is a Protestant minister in New England. Why is designing of bridges relates him metaphorically to his father. It is Pontifex Pontifex bridge builder or high priest reverend going in terms of divine ceremonies wide in terms of human art that had never occurred to me like why he is in another talking about another character in the book. Like why is he set apart from others in the novel and indeed his death by falling stones in the book's climax is in reality a death by proxy of Wyatt rechristened Stephen after the first Christian martyr who died by stoning. And again that had never occurred to me. So you know I feel maybe it's best just to keep your mouth shut and get credit for things like Pontifex and these very elaborate connections which one had no idea at the time and in effect you know if you go

along with it what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts and that's the only way to just let it go on. I think eventually you know people ask you why you write so forth and then you will hear writers talking about what a terribly lonely thing and you know what you what you suffer and and well like people describe the presidency you know it's a very lonely profession. And you agonize all alone and so forth and so forth. Right. That's all true. On the other hand it is really I think I read a monstrous act of ego to sit down and write a long novel and in effect insist one insist one's vision on a lot of total strangers or try to you know who've never done anything to me

and but I expect them to take this as a kind of gospel. There is in the end I mean one chooses to do this. And so to say it is to complain about the agonies of it. I don't think quite holds water because it is on the one hand it's a very self-indulgent thing way to spend one's time. And it also in its ways is I think sort of the last bastion of free enterprise I mean there's no retirement plan there's no pension plan there's no dental plan. As a. With my own insurance since I'm self-employed I get to pay both parts I get to pay the employer's part and the employees part of the Blue Cross.

If I think about the first fan letter I got for the recognition is read this way. I have just read a review of your book The Recognitions and I have just this to say anyone in this day and age who would write a nine hundred fifty six page book and expect people to read it must be a conceited idiot. Yours truly Charles Norcross. And of course I was. You know that isn't what you want to get in the mail but I did think well he's sort of got a point you know. A. Into the into the question of why one does get into this kind of thing. Years ago a friend of mine who was an editor said he did not remember reading a book that he had felt worth reading. Which had not been written out of indignation of some sort or indeed of outrage. I think there is something to that and it can be indignation with anything from

a condition of society to God's ways to man do any of this whole that spectrum of inequity that we live in. But I think often indignation is very at the heart of a lot of novels that are written of good ones and bad ones. I think also I mean my my feeling looking at it my work has been a sense of. Some sense of great disorder in the world and an attempt to restore order order rescue order order find order. On a disorderly world which one can't live with in Nathaniel West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts in 1933 there was a

passage I like very much. He sat in the window thinking man has a trope ism for order. He's in one pocket change in another man's mandolins or tune G D A E. The physical world has a trope ism for disorder entropy man against nature the battle of the centuries keys yearned to mix with change mandolins drive to get out of tune every order has within it the germ of destruction all order is doomed yet the battle is worthwhile. This in effect and then 20 some years later with Norbert winners whole thesis on entropy in communication and nature's tendency always toward disorder. In the area of indignation and outrage when this invitation came and I thought what I talk about I thought you know

what what is what are these books about. And this seemed to be the persisting fact the recognition is a book about a forger of paintings which is a book by a young man who is distressed at the false values he sees prevailing around him which of course was myself when I was a young man. But it's also the idea of it being a book about for the refuge it is the central figure takes as a forger is it he moves into a framework which precludes failure. In other words if you are working in an area where where the lines are of perfection are defined and you have the talent that you presume to have that you can accomplish

something as approaching perfection as the original painter did the painter who he is forging. So there's no way you can fail. Just as in that book being about forgery I got obsessed with forgery and everywhere you look all you see is forgery I got this idea of failure and everyone looks one sees failure. Or are literature as about failure. Then I began to think well all in all Western literature about faith. And you go down a list of American American novels. And I just noted down Melville with Moby Dick and Billy Budd and Stephen Crane Red Badge of Courage and think they're the jungle. Drive your sister Carrie Lewis's Babbit Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath. Hemingway all the way down to the old man of the sea. O'Neill right down

to a long day's journey. Miller death of a Salesman Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar California Diary of a Mad Housewife Didion played as it lays all of these as I was cornering them in my head seem to be the central point is about failure. Also of course about the point being that it is about values and what may be a false value system I think this is why many of us were quite irritated. I was certainly going to address that soldier Nixon gave at Harvard about what a mess America was and about the false values and so forth and so forth. And I thought well you know American novelists have been trying to tell us tell us that for 80 years I mean this is not news. And then what was what was

to me was even more irritating was his solution I mean which which all sounded like. Here is a man who would be very happy in the Spain of Philip the Second. But he's got no room for any of us. The whole I think in America I wondered if we are. I think we have been self-critical back going back through our fiction all the way. And I think often there may be a tendency a temptation too. One falls into danger of seeing common failings or failings in generally in Western society as being peculiarly American. It was Lenin who said who uses whom which I think is terribly at the heart of the whole idea of a manipulative society. So we are not we are not singled out for this

unfortunate approach which is very at the heart of where we live I think in America and in the West. This isn't the point being if want to discuss failure than what one has got to say well all right what is success I mean what are you failing at. I've thought one of the things about America right from the start has been the idea that you should win. You should be able to win. I mean if it if this whole idea of equal opportunity for everybody was propagated then you have no excuse for not winning. And if you do it's your own fault. In Buddhist thought I think our ideas of.

Failure would make very little sense because our ideas of winning would make very little sense and this would make very little sense. This is Vince Lombardi I know some of you have heard this but I think it is a ringing kind of picture of this approach to life. When he was coaching the Green Bay Packers and he said Winning is not a sometime thing. It is an all time thing you don't win once in a while you don't do things right once in a while you do them right all the time. There's no room for second place. There's only one place and that's first place. And I don't know maybe I'm not into football. Maybe that's fine for football but I think when it spills over into again into life we're in trouble when the metaphor curious how the president seemed to always get into this into the

football kind of metaphor maybe it's because their tendency is toward the same idea of winning. It's what it's all about in the water right in the midst of the whole Watergate nightmare. Nixon was still calling out the coach of the Washington Redskins and giving him advice on what play to use that afternoon against the Dallas Cowboys or what have you still thinking in these gridiron terms and what really stunned me was when those absolutely nightmare moments of when we pulled out of Vietnam. There had been this attempt to put up another 69 million dollars and keep the thing going and Congress would not do it and then we lifted and completely humiliating way that we did. And Gerald Ford. His comment was that he thought it was just a shame.

That in the last minute of the last quarter we hadn't been able to come through with that real final try. And I thought my God this guy is still thinking in terms of the football field. I heard elsewhere that he even voted most valuable player on his college football team and the team lost every game of the season. Now there's something to think about. Anyway to try to. Quickly get to this. What I picture is is the kind of background of success and failure in the whole American dream if you like. First I think it has terribly to do with that the individual is much more important in America and always has been. Then see in in Eastern societies Eastern cultures

that a great deal of this came out of the out of out of the rise of Protestantism and the rise of the Protestant ethic. In which one was in effect left alone with a God who was not telling you where you stand. That there was no intervention there was nobody going to help you out and you weren't going to learn. Learn to last moment if you are in trouble or not. That sort of conjunction of the rise of the Protestant ethic. The idea of the perfectibility of man in late in the mid and late 19th century. The proliferation of utopian novels which emerged from a world of ideas of social Darwinism on the one hand and scientific progress on the other and all these things together. Promised in a sense for the first time a world which could be manipulated.

I think the scientific progress was was very much at the heart of the excitement because it did look like all the wonders of science were going to were going to solve everything. The idea of manipulation was became an acceptable one an exciting one and a positive challenge. What science asks always of course is measurement of tangible factors. In order to predict the outcome of something and eventually control its outcome. Right. So all that with the Prophet with the with the Protestant Ethic doctrine of useful work and it was put here to do useful work. The idea of pragmatism which came along late in the century and then William James got together succinctly

right after the turn of the century seemed to be the heart of the matter. In his in his essay what pragmatism means which was a period of about nine hundred six. He wrote if you follow the pragmatic method you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash value said it work within the streams of your experience. Pregnant is don't lie back upon theories we move forward on occasion make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism and stiffens are theories limbers them up and sets each one at work. All these you see are any intellectual as tendencies against rationalism as a pretension and a method pragmatism is fully armed and militant. It is the attitude of looking away from first things principles categories supposed necessities and looking towards Lastings fruits consequences fact. The Pragmatist

turns toward concreteness adequacy toward facts toward action and toward power. James of course this is not to disparage him he was a brilliant brilliant man. And it seems it's always seem to me that pragmatism was a very American kind of philosophy emerging at a time when there was a lot of useful work to be done. At the same time you can see this recipe is really an invitation to all sorts of bad news and we and we've we've been getting it in something I remembered I had written 20 years ago 25 years ago. Something I've been looking at the NGO song he wrote by reducing philosophy to pure science man has not only abdicated his right to judge nature and to rule it but he has also turned himself into a peculiar into a peculiar

aspect of nature subjected like all the rest to the necessary law which regulates its development. A world where accomplished facts are unto themselves their own justification is right for the most reckless social adventures. If dictators can wantonly play havoc with human institutions and human lives for dictatorships are fags and they are also in of themselves their own justification. If you if you have read Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends And Influence People. You will see the deplorable ends that a perfectly dignified philosophy like pragmatism can be brought to in the way of. Exactly manipulation. I mean if science is about manipulation. And if pragmatism is a scientific approach to

life which is to say the tangible concrete The real are the facts facts facts. The reason that science wants facts is to manipulate them. And generally I mean if you manipulate them wrong then then the experiment doesn't work. Presumably I don't know any about signs but I mean I think that's the idea you want something to work. And if you manipulate things wrong it doesn't work so you do something. Try something else. Whereas I think what we know about about facts now. And when you get a. This manipulative approach to them in social Concours. First money as as a Dale Carnegie money money becomes the index of what is worth doing rather than as the present that it had at the beginning. You do useful work and money is sort of piling up over here as a testimonial to the useful work you've been doing

so you deserve it and it's yours and it makes sense but it is always the whole thing turned upside down so that the money became the index and the useful work became anything that would make money these days seems to me started at the heart of the kind of trash values that one reads about in these manipulative books. I was I remember when. At the end of the Watergate thing Haldeman who was an advertising man and which is nothing but the whole point of it is is manipulation. Halderman feeling was it Watergate it happened because of a failure in public relations. And he said this with a straight face and meant it. And when you think you know I'm sure many of you have read in the time that Plato spends in there public trying to sort out the difference

between the just man and the just man who may appear on just as opposed to the unjust man who may appear just but for someone like Haldeman he obviously has this is never he's never stumbled across Plato and. Only preoccupied with is the image. And this is what it was all about to him and I suppose it remains about him. Again I don't know if if you've come across an an English economist named Schumacher who died not too long ago but in a book of his own. Small is beautiful. The subtitle was economics is no people matter which is I like. He quotes Lord Keynes writing in 1930 in reference to the daemon which might not be that far off when everybody would be rich and we can once more value ends above means and

prefer the good to the useful. And then quoting Keynes himself does but beware the time for all this is not yet for at least another hundred years. We must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fellow fair is foul and foul is fair for found as useful and fair is not avarice in use. You theory and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into the daylight. I don't know how many of you that phrase of the daylight at the end of the tunnel is familiar but I mean this was coarse one of the lines out of it as you have now got worse and worse we were being told that Westmoreland saw a light at the end of the tunnel and that seemed a curious kind of confluence there anyway. To me that the whole nightmare of that of Vietnam

fell into this process of logic and manipulation in fact. So beautifully which is to say so depressingly well because it was it was not as other men who had who had brought it off were stupid and venal and and rotten they were is as Howard Stern has said the best and the brightest these were men of high ideals and men of high intelligence and men of all sorts of high resources. And it was from them that we got. Tend to deal with the war in terms of body counts in terms of budgets all of which were lied about I mean manipulating facts in other words being simply lying. That the body counts were lies that they lied. Their own economic advisers to the Congress to the people about the money that was being spent on the war about the real budget because the

end they believe justified means in effect was useful and fair was not so justified. Manipulating the facts but you needed the facts first in order to manipulate them. Certainly McNamara is coming from being this man obsessed with cost efficiency and all the measures he brought to government and the end of the war had to end up in things like body counts and had to end up in budgets that was one figure here at a different figure elsewhere and in effect had to end up where it all did. It was also that I think the whole idea of manipulating you know not just the budget in the body count and the war but in effect this whole vast sub continent and all with good intentions originally.

Obviously I think then the whole youth revolt in the 60s was not that unreasonable a reaction because what it was with a was a was a rejection by these kids of the failure of the parent generation the authority generation and so forth to deal honestly with them and with anyone and with everyone else and on the one hand it's set up it's set up alternative. Of Camarines and alternate things like the kid who has got a doctorate becomes a carpenter or is out there making moccasins or something and his father is thinking wow you know this cost me thirty thousand dollars and he's making belts. I don't have a lot of it to eastern of of the going toward eastern thought which is still a very real thing in this country I mean which is to say rejection of the success values and the

manipulation that with them. And then on the other hand they saw a culture of failure and a drop out in the drug scene and all this all of which to me was was all part of the same rebellion against a manipulative success oriented culture. The thing that. That is terrible as it is that none of it really has been resolved. When you read figures like two thirds of New York City's high school students failed a mathematics proficiency test that's two thirds of them. Forty five percent of them of high school students in New York never finish high school that's half of them drop out. And then most deplorable of all across the nation suicide as a second leading cause of death among between ages 15 and 24.

And this is this. This upsets me I mean that is I think it's just a very specially I mean if you've got kids you know it's a very very distressing figure because to me it comes out of. A low opinion of oneself and I think there is nothing more more destructive and more more terrible than a sense of defeat which then becomes a sense of I'm not worth much. And then finally either a kind of slow self-destruction you know drugs or what have you or as Housman said if it chanced your eye offend you pluck it had pluck it out lad and be whole but play the man stand up and end you when the sickness is your soul. And you think of a lot of kids feeling that way is just one of the worst things I can imagine for any any culture having to face. Again the sumac are writing

about this whole problem of societies which is a western society is not necessarily but but to us of course preeminently never can. Because if human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of the intelligence a man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are and his various successes become failures. The gross and gross national product may rise rapidly as measured by statisticians but not as experienced by actual people who find themselves oppressed by increasing frustration alienation and insecurity and so forth. Well this of course I think is what all our novels are about. Increasing frustration alienation insecurity this is all you get. And the reason they do touch a raw nerve and the reason that people do buy them when they do go to the movies. The same lines is because it does

speak to something in their own experience. The going back to this whole idea of a session with facts and what is curious in terms of facts and manipulation is of course this is this is exactly what any novel is about. I mean a novel is sort of the height of manipulation. It is creating an environment or having a recreated environment which is simply you know stacking the deck however the writer wants to show it to you and it's forcing the characters to move around and manipulating them all the time. The curious thing how facts have tyrannized own ways in American writing. When it broke away from European writing. So-called American realism before the before 911.

This obsession with facts this obsession with the tangible. Jack London and one of his lines shouted shouting the line. Give me the fact man the irrefragable fact and you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and you learn all about the meat packing industry in Chicago whether you want to or not. He's got all the facts to make sure that the picture he is drawing as horrible as it is is is real. This kind of realism it is related to facts. Back back with Melville's Moby Dick. Some little girl wrote about it tells me more about whales and I really want to know. And of course what you learn about whaling. You know if you read that maybe more than you want to know that it is an awful lot about a sheer fact. There was the story of two of drys or his later drives or

in writing an American tragedy when Clyde is going to be executed and rising up to Ossining up to Sing Sing and to Sing Sing prison and got through some kind of god into the cells into the death chamber and got the measurements and got everything got the facts all correct so that when he when he got Clive into the going toward his execution and he would have all the facts right in Sister Kerry he's got he come to Chicago and she's working in a place where they make shoes and the girl beside her is telling one part of it and she passes along on and this girl does something on her machine and fast. And you know the Dreiser didn't make this up. I mean that he's giving it to the Corsair and and shoe machinery and then he went and actually got these facts. This may this may be part I think is still very prevalent part of our

approach to writing is this obsession with facts. And it may also be part of the of a something we see that American writers are much doing which is getting into a kind of journalism even a very personal journalism but still it is dealing with what really happens so you get the so-called nonfiction novel and so forth. It is just an inability to escape from the tyranny of facts which I'm certainly got so I speak with conviction. In this last book that I wrote Jr. This kid who gets into a big stock market conglomerate thing and he's building. I don't know very much about securities in the securities market and I don't really care anything about it. But I thought it was going to work. I've got to get these things about. How a

defaulted bond issue really works and so forth. What could happen. They've got to I've got to have my facts right. In order to manipulate them for the purposes of the novel. Of course to kill himself it is this is what he does I mean he manipulates everything. You could say where is useful and fair is not I mean it is that pragmatic approach of what works is what it's all about. But at some point he goes to he's trying to talk to his teacher about a field trip to the Museum of Natural History. And he said something about where they have these stuffed Eskimos. And he says he's what. And he said you know it's it is a picture of it in our in our book about Alaska. They have a picture of the stuffed Eskimos in the Museum of Natural History. And she's appalled you know and she says How can you think how can you think this.

And he just hasn't thought about it I mean you've seen the picture and these day do look like you know he said well they got stuff wools there and they've got stuffed lions and so forth. The idea of Eskimos as people has never cured him in other words everything outside of himself is is a thing is to be manipulated I mean other people are as much a part of the environment as a tree is. I mean this and this is what I at least trying to get across. And he's not a bad boy I mean let me tell you he's a he's a he's a good kid but he just doesn't. He is totally trapped in this idea that what you do is succeed but everything around you is to be manipulated and to be minute manipulated before for your own advantage. And if possible before someone else does it he has no idea of putting ads in textbooks. Why not what's wrong with that and of course an outcry.

And he said you know you have candy ads for Candie's in the first and second grade books and then you get up into the seventh and eighth grade and you have bicycle ads and so forth. His idea always is that he's helping out. He says in effect you know big bring the cost of textbooks down. And we put all these ads in and then there is this outcry of contaminating textbooks with advertising. And if he says and with some justification I think you know everybody's always getting mad at me. But it's only because I do things first. You know somebody's going to do it anyway. So you know why should they get mad get mad at me if I do it first. The original you know I think this idea of the theme of failure. You know I've only touched on it and it sounds like a negative number I mean you see the signs are that are going to come and talk on the theme of failure and it sounds it sounds like

sounds negative but what it what it really is of course is is a failure in terms of what. That calls attention simply to the idea of what is worth doing and what is worth trying to do which is to say what is worth failing at in the last analysis. I think having written when I first when I was out of college and tried to write for a couple of commercial publications and failed miserably and got very blue and Lowdown about it a long time later realized you know that it is. I never thought it was worth doing in the first place except except colliers and paid a thousand dollars for a short story so that was what made it worth doing right that was the same approach of money as the index of something worth doing. But I think nothing is more demoralizing than to fail at something that you knew wasn't worth doing in the

first place. And I think it's a very basic problem that we have in America. One character in Jr. says there has never been a time when there were so many things so many opportunities to do so many things that aren't worth doing at all. And I mean this is my that's my part of my message and the rest of it really is that the point is to fail and you know if one is going to end the end of course you know we're all going down the drain and it's not going to work and we're going to fail one way or another. I think the point is trying to fit least fail intelligently and fail at something it is worth doing. And to come so that one can come out of it. Placing a value on oneself and the thinking one is worth something in this world. And that's all I have.

My only real advice is to stop smoking and take care of your teeth. That's the only. Real tangible advice I can give any young players especially anyone who wants to write because both things are going to be wrong. There are huge. Thank you very much. Thank you very very much. We've been listening to William Gaddis speaking at St. Michael's College in Windows either much. Gaddis his novel Jr. received the National Book Award for fiction in 1076. His talk at St. Michael's the theme of

failure in contemporary literature was presented as part of the English departments writers and current issues lecture series. This lecture by William Gaddis is available on cassette. If you would like a cassette copy of the program send $1 in check or money order to the University of Vermont's IDC media library Burlington Vermont 0 5 4 0 1. That's $1 to the University of Vermont's IDC media library Burlington Vermont 0 5 4 0 1. This crosscurrents was produced by Fred Wasser with production assistance by Elaine Weiss crosscurrents as made possible by a grant from the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues.