>>8248203
Actually the only Gaddis I've read so far.

I really liked it alot, anon. I'm a big fan of anti-climax in a narrative, but there are plenty of crumbs provided that allow the reader to interpret, or remain mystified, as to what happened. The events don't actually matter though, it's the fever pitch of deplorable humanity that made the book work for me.

I read Gaddis' Paris Review interview, and a review of the book by Cynthia Ozick as well, and Ozick and the interviewer both hone in on the possibility of McCandless madness, but I think they're lending it too much importance. I think that contemporary readers often try to use mental illness as something more than it is, but if you look at people suffering madness from syphilis in a text like Ulysses, it's more of a character flaw than any sort of extenuating condition. I get that it is a by product of the syphilis, but I think the point I'm coming to is that it's more a description of a perceived societal condemnation than it is the clinical exposition of why a person is the way they are.

>>8248543
It's not what happened that was the issue for me, but how jarring it all was as a whole.

I did enjoy it, but I guess it was as strangely constructed as its eventual title. That aspect of it caught me off guard at the end somehow.

I have a first edition signed copy.

>>8249539
Pic of his signature.