The BURIED Book Club discussion

Bayliss, who lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts, was a close friend of the famous poet Charles Olson. He wrote a tetralogy of complex experimental novels that "employ a vast vocabulary, contain mathematical and philosophical puzzles, and avoid pop culture references in favor of historical and mythological allusions."

"With a literary ambition that rivaled James Joyce or David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Bayliss of Gloucester took on the big book, not once, but four times.

The first three of his quartet of novels about Gloucester add up to more than 2,300 pages, and he was putting the finishing touches on the fourth in recent months. That page count, however, may substantially exceed the number of readers who have attempted, let alone finished, his books of unconventional fiction.

Unable to interest a publishing house, he published the first three himself and later placed scanned copies on the Internet for all to read. He may have used a narrator in one book to voice his own thoughts when he said the volumes were written "unsupported by any more sanguine hope than that the effort will become known to a friend or two, here or there."

(...)

Though undaunted by the paucity of readers, Mr. Bayliss wished there were more.

"Jonathan tried as hard as any writer I know to find a mainstream publisher," Anastas said. "It was a source of tremendous frustration to him that he couldn't get the kind of reading that he felt the books deserved and that those of us who knew Jonathan and knew the books felt that they deserved."

Because Mr. Bayliss wrote complex fiction that ranged freely over the natural, political, social, business, and cultural aspects of Gloucester, some authorial analogies seem obvious, Anastas said, particularly given the length of his books.

"If someone were to ask, 'Who could I compare Jonathan to?' I would compare him to Thomas Pynchon, compare him to David Foster Wallace," he said. "I think someday this will be understood. I think someday a publisher will come along and want to republish Jonathan's work in some form."

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe...

"With its narrative energy and totality of vision, Gloucesterbook is an important contribution to the art of the novel. Groundbreaking European fictions, such as Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers and Musil's The Man without Qualities, come to mind as comparisons . . . It returns the novel in English to its experimental roots, with the wit and outrageous inventiveness of Tristram Shandy. Jonathan Bayliss uses language in a way that makes our native tongue come alive for us as though we were experiencing it for the first time in all its freshness and hard-edge originality." --Peter Anastas, author of At the Cut, Broken Trip, and Decline of Fishes

https://jonathanbayliss.org/
https://www.gloucesterman.org/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonatha...

Seems a rather fascinating sort of person, and I am glad he had some people take up interest in his work, but not sure I could get through a series with this many pages myself ;>>

Just try the first volume, Prologos, and see if you like it! Each novel in the series is a standalone, so you don't need to read all of them. LOL

Stevens wrote: "Just try the first volume, Prologos, and see if you like it! Each novel in the series is a standalone, so you don't need to read all of them. LOL"

Actually for some reason I am picturing Powys' "Glastonbury Romance" when reading the first post. Haven't read that one either ;>>

And I could try that then, though I usually focus on genre fiction.

I wrote the original Wikipedia entry for Jonathan Bayliss you link above. I ran across Prologos at the Boston Public Library many years ago and I still think it's one of the most fulfilling literary experiences I've ever had. It's certainly his greatest work and should be a lot of fun for any fan of Joyce or similar experimental fiction.

It's fair to compare him to Pynchon. Not only was Bayliss prone to let his imagination run wild, but like Pynchon putting his time in as a Boeing employee, he worked as a business systems manager for Gortons of Gloucester and developed a familiarity with engineering concepts and systems analysis that made its way into his fiction. Prologos is a multi-level examination of the systems and knowledge that define our lives and our culture, and like Pynchon's work, has a great comic sensibility.

Disclaimer: I'm not a friend or relative of Bayliss, but I belong to the Jonathan Bayliss Society, the nonprofit literary organization that Bayliss's family set up in Gloucester after his death.

I notice that Prologos is available for borrowing on openlibrary if anyone wants to check it out: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20295...

If anyone is still interested in Bayliss's fiction, here's a video introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYRTe...