Gass v. Doctorow

Over at The Millions, Garth Risk Hallberg turns in a nice post comparing the two recent books of criticism by Gass and Doctorow.

The title essay also lends the book its canny structure: most of the other pieces here are pegged to a specific author. To sit and read the collection straight through is to subject oneself to a lot of Gass, which is to say a lot of philosophy, a lot of alliteration, a lot of wordplay. Characteristic Gass productions like the peevish "Influence" or "The Sentence Seeks Its Form" (the distillation of at least a dozen other essays from other books) may slow the reader down (as Gass no doubt means to do) or even trip her up (which can seem bellicose.) But those new to Gass can just as easily treat A Temple of Texts as a reference work, can dip into disquisitions on Rilke and Rabelais at will, and be rewarded. The accessibility of form, and the richness of thought, make A Temple of Texts a wonderful and unusually gentle introduction to Gass’ extraordinary mind and, as importantly, to the works that formed it.

Comparatively, Creationists is slender – 176 pages for $25, or 14 cents per page – and makes few claims for itself. Doctorow intends, he tells us, to stay close to the works he’s writing about, rather than rising above them to make sweeping assertions. The word "modest" appears in the book’s first sentence. But in its keen, almost surgical intelligence, in the sly insights smuggled into its readings, Creationists is a fraternal twin to A Temple of Texts. Where Gass’ sensibility is European, Doctorow’s is distinctly American – he is most convincing when discussing Twain, Melville, Fitzgerald, and Arthur Miller. Especially in the Melville essay, we see the way a life of reading has informed Doctorow’s own fiction.

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