I felt at looking at William Gass' top novels of literary import a sense of loss both on his behalf and for myself. How long had he spent reading those same books over and over again, and joe recently had he touched them? A man and character such as him likely had read and read them multiple times, but i suspect that the significant moments with the books are from his young age. His best moments and most profound insights are likely from his youth, and the time of the freedom to feel. When young, I'm sure also his reading was for him; now he reads for his image. Or does he now? Perhaps those books fresh on his mind even after a lifetime of reading has given them a proper place; their ability to be remembered is their greatest asset; they are rendered again more memorable for having been inducted into yet another man's pantheon. He ennobles the titles, and they inform him.
I can imagine a young william (substituted for a young gass — gas that would have been) reading with eyes wide open the mort darthur, and feeling in the moment the splendors and tragedies of the english king. I can see him, young and free to his thinking. I see him now — his body has made him differently free. Liver spotted veiny hands on thin limbs attached to a paunch which has been sitting in silk approximations of the hairshirt; The neck bulges not with boom but sag, and any expected tightness in the image is found where the belly and ribcage join, and around the light of blue eyes upwards glancing. He has been totally freed of his youth, even before his time, to pursue the place of the reader and writer. He wears it like a sash.
The image hurts me some. Even a wise man can be a fool to his body — and this wise man no less, who among his favorites is Plato, mouthpiece to Socrates, himself a soldier and citizen foremost, and a philosopher simply for having been remembered by his pupil. Socrates spoke of the need to know the body. Gass I wonder at.
And I fear the lesson. To settle into a position can overtake you. to be overtaken because you occupy a role is to forget will; at the same time it feels as though will must guide to the place where one cannot forget ones future, and must always be aligning for the purpose yet to arrive. I have a need to know, but not so emptily as to learn while leaving my body behind. The world does not gift that man a name beyond his smallest circle.
I can imagine a young william (substituted for a young gass — gas that would have been) reading with eyes wide open the mort darthur, and feeling in the moment the splendors and tragedies of the english king. I can see him, young and free to his thinking. I see him now — his body has made him differently free. Liver spotted veiny hands on thin limbs attached to a paunch which has been sitting in silk approximations of the hairshirt; The neck bulges not with boom but sag, and any expected tightness in the image is found where the belly and ribcage join, and around the light of blue eyes upwards glancing. He has been totally freed of his youth, even before his time, to pursue the place of the reader and writer. He wears it like a sash.
The image hurts me some. Even a wise man can be a fool to his body — and this wise man no less, who among his favorites is Plato, mouthpiece to Socrates, himself a soldier and citizen foremost, and a philosopher simply for having been remembered by his pupil. Socrates spoke of the need to know the body. Gass I wonder at.
And I fear the lesson. To settle into a position can overtake you. to be overtaken because you occupy a role is to forget will; at the same time it feels as though will must guide to the place where one cannot forget ones future, and must always be aligning for the purpose yet to arrive. I have a need to know, but not so emptily as to learn while leaving my body behind. The world does not gift that man a name beyond his smallest circle.