| Three Experimental Novels About Music By Ted Gioia |
In any contest to pick the most vitriolic novelist of the 20th
Century, Thomas Bernhard makes the short list of leading
candidates. His pugnacious and acerbic manner is now
known worldwide, but the closer one gets to Vienna and
Salzburg, where he lived for so many years, the greater the
antipathy—indeed, no award-winning author of the modern
era is less beloved in his homeland than Bernhard. There he
is known as a nestbeschmutzer—a German word, with no
English equivalent, signifying someone who befouls his own
nest....
To read more, click here
Century, Thomas Bernhard makes the short list of leading
candidates. His pugnacious and acerbic manner is now
known worldwide, but the closer one gets to Vienna and
Salzburg, where he lived for so many years, the greater the
antipathy—indeed, no award-winning author of the modern
era is less beloved in his homeland than Bernhard. There he
is known as a nestbeschmutzer—a German word, with no
English equivalent, signifying someone who befouls his own
nest....
To read more, click here
According to legend and hearsay, Buddy Bolden invented
jazz. And perhaps he did. No one has a better claim to
the honor. But no recordings exist to give credence to the
scattered first-hand testimonies. Bolden himself didn't stay
on the scene long enough to offer his own assessment of
his contributions to the music. He lived until 1931, but spent
the last 24 years in a mental institution. No music historian
ever paid him a visit or sent him a letter, and it's not clear he
was in any state to respond to such queries....
To read more, click here
jazz. And perhaps he did. No one has a better claim to
the honor. But no recordings exist to give credence to the
scattered first-hand testimonies. Bolden himself didn't stay
on the scene long enough to offer his own assessment of
his contributions to the music. He lived until 1931, but spent
the last 24 years in a mental institution. No music historian
ever paid him a visit or sent him a letter, and it's not clear he
was in any state to respond to such queries....
To read more, click here
William Gaddis let his novels gestate slowly, spending
a decade or more on each work in his oeuvre. Yet his
shortest book took the longest to finish. He first con-
sidered writing about player pianos while working as a
fact-checker at The New Yorker in the mid-1940s. But
more than a half-century elapsed before this obsession
resulted in a published book-his Agapē Agape, released
posthumously in 2002....
To read more, click here
a decade or more on each work in his oeuvre. Yet his
shortest book took the longest to finish. He first con-
sidered writing about player pianos while working as a
fact-checker at The New Yorker in the mid-1940s. But
more than a half-century elapsed before this obsession
resulted in a published book-his Agapē Agape, released
posthumously in 2002....
To read more, click here
| Published: September 30, 2013 |
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unconventional and experimental
fiction with a particular focus on the
rise of modernism and its aftermath.
unconventional and experimental
fiction with a particular focus on the
rise of modernism and its aftermath.
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Conceptual Fiction
Exploring the non-realist
tradition in fiction
The New Canon
Great literary works
published since 1985
Great Books Guide
Reviews of current books
Postmodern Mystery
Experimental works of
mystery & suspense
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter
at www.twitter.com/tedgioia
| Contact Ted Gioia at tedgioia@hotmail.com Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tedgioia Visit his web site at www.tedgioia.com Fractious Fiction is an Amazon.com associate Disclosure: This web site and its sister sites may receive promotional copies of review items and other materials from publisher, publicists and other parties. |
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Finnegans Wake
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Novel
Virginia Woolf's Orlando
The First Postmodern Novel?
William Gaddis's The
Recognitions
The Many Lives of James Joyce
A Fresh Look at The Man
Without Qualities
Three Experimental Novels on
Music
The Weirdest 1960s Novel of
Them All
The Making of Ulysses
Buddenbrooks and the Novel of
Business
William Burroughs, Abstinence
Teacher
Italo Calvino's Winter's Night
Can a Dictionary be a Novel?
Ken Kesey's Novel-in-a-Box
The Magic Mountain and Mein
Kampf
Why Only Revolutions Will Not
be Televised
Three Literary Gossip Novels
My Favorite American Novel
The Finnegans Wake Toolkit
Manhattan Transfer: The
American Novel as Scrapbook
William Burroughs's Mexican
Adventure
Still Golden After All These
Years: A Look Back at Lessing
William Gaddis's Eight Rules of
Unruly Dialogue
A Solipsistic Novel Finds a
Reader
Raymond Queneau's Exercises
in Style
Escape from Mango Street
Revisiting James Joyce's
Dubliners
Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
Life A User's Manual
William Gaddis's JR: The
Eleven-Year-Old Tycoon
John Dos Passo's Obsession
with Reflected Light