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Chapter 2 - William Gaddis and the ‘Novel-Writing-Machine’ of Andy Warhol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2019

Rob Turner
Rob Turner
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

Zanoni. We must not rail if we read the book. Of all the ministers to luxury these novelwrights are the best. It is a trick, a juggle. We are cheated into laughter or wonder by feats which oddly combine the acts that we do every day. There is no new element, no power, no furtherance. It is only confectionery, not the raising of new corn; and being such, there is no limit to its extension and multiplication. Mr Babbage will presently invent a Novel-Writing-Machine. The old machinery cannot be disguised however gaily vamped. Money & killing and the Wandering Jew, these are the mainsprings still; new names but no new qualities […] as we close the book, we end the remembrance, nothing survives, not a ray […] because there was not wisdom in the book nothing fixes itself, all floats, hovers, & is dissipated forever. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal (2 August 1842)

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Chapter
Information
Counterfeit Culture
Truth and Authenticity in the American Prose Epic since 1960
 , pp. 47 - 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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