Chekhov's Mistress
Marcus on William H. Gass
Of the 8 million inhabitants of New York City, about 45 of them showed up for William Gass’s talk last Wednesday on his new audio-book version of The Tunnel. I was one of them as well as some familiar faces. Fortunately, one of them was James Marcus and he wrote up a terrific piece on the event at his site, House of Mirth:
Was it difficult for Gass to read aloud certain sections of his novel? Again, his answer stressed the sheer physicality of composition, so at odds with its wispy and insubstantial outcome. “My writing is very chewy,” he notes. “I had already mouthed the words on every page, many times. I mumbled the words as I did them. (The curses I usually left out.) Still, reading the book aloud did have a tiring effect on me. Valery said: ‘Every bad sentence you write trails behind you like a monster.’ That constant reminder made the recording a tough process. By now I’m thoroughly sick and tired of the novel!”
comments
No CommentsCreative Commons License Deed Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
You are free:
- to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
-
Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
-
No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
- For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
- Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.
This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (the full license):
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/legalcode
This site employs rank-denial and other anti-spam measures.
Your link here will do nothing for your rankings or traffic. Off-topic comments will be deleted.
Previous entry: Birnbaum, Delbanco, Melville, Life
About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: February 24, 2006
- Filed Under:
Reading Railroad: Events
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
