[…]threaten’d in this place!” I have plans to explore the Gaddis of contracts further in later critical work, but here, in the limited space of this archive-based piece, let me emphasize the counterintuitive aspects of Gaddis’s criticism of contract law in J R by referring to one of the novel’s most adroit readers. In a 2012 review of J R’s reissue by Dalkey Archive, Lee Konstantinou notes that Gibbs is citing nineteenth-century English jurist Henry Maine’s ideas, in Ancient Law (1861), about the movement from anchoring life in social institutions and their often hierarchical networks (Status) to grounding it in […]
[…]book Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis: “At the time, I was working on a novel with the pretentious title Awake, which I imagine, if it had ever been published, would have put most people asleep. I looked at it a few years ago, and it certainly had its soporific charms. In any case, Gaddis was pleasant and patient with me during our weekly meetings. He made suggestions for editing, and talked generally about my work, but thirty-five years later, I do not remember the specifics. One event I do remember, however, is […]
[…]installing innumerable traffic lights, or anonymous programmers, writing billions of lines of code, have shaped ours. The mound builders must have realized that by rising higher, they were not only able to see further, but understand more deeply the fabric of life they were part of. Using Google EarthPro we can get a intimation of why they revered the bird, soaring above them at 38°39’33.64″N 90°04’27.69″W. But instead of just looking at the pictures, look at the Pro data that makes this view possible: Imagery Date 3/13/2022 38°39’33.64″N 90°04’27.69″W elev 0 ft eye alt 3281 ft Image © 2024 Airbus. […]