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Agapē Agape by William
Gaddis Rating: • (Read only if your interest is strong) |
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Last Words If we were selecting the strangest book of
2002, the hands-down winner would be Agapē Agape by the
late William Gaddis. If you loved Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, you’ll bask
in the 100 pages of Agapē Agape. Gaddis pastes
words together in a style that flows oddly, as in this excerpt: “Being haunted by
this Other we’ve been talking about, The Kreutzer Sonata’s been banned here
why? because Beethoven’s German? But it’s not the World War when Wagner’s
music was banned here no, no this goes back to the day Wagner’s art was
damned as ‘nothing more than the dope required by a decadent generation’ by
his disciple, his apostle, by the one who believed him to be Germany’s
greatest creative genius, by the, good God can’t you see? Wagner was the
Other, he was the where is that, Michelangelo and the Self who could do more because
that’s what it’s all about so he had to be killed, Nietzsche had to kill him
and be carried away to an asylum a year later, while great Wagner lifts us
aloft above the clouds to the mighty halls old Walhalla where these great artists
will never play again, but their phantom hands will live forever, haunt us
forever. Forever! Good God that’s, question’s whether all this clatter and
bang, old Walhalla and Chin Chin Temple Bells preserved on piano rolls are
part of the hallucination or only escape from it, see what was going on
everywhere out there in this frenzy of invention more than a century ago?” The player piano was like the Industrial
Revolution for artists. Read Gaddis’ reflections and passion on that, George
Gould, and go a little crazy, if you choose to read Agapē Agape. Steve Hopkins, October 23, 2002 |
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ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the December 2002
issue of Executive
Times For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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