William Gass is one of these literary fiction authors who apparently appeals to only the highest echelon of the literary fiction community, whoever they are. These writers intrigue me. I’ve noticed over the years that writers and readers tend to have their favorite “big books” from these literary lions but despise most of them. I love Don DeLillo’s Underworld. My patience for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest became finite at page 60.

Last Saturday I checked out Gass’ latest novel, Middle C, from the library. Coincidentally, that evening I was browsing events around town and Gass was listed as participating in a performance at the Meta Gallery, 3151 Cherokee Street, one of the currently hip neighborhoods in St. Louis (Gass lives in St. Louis, as do I). Well,  of course I had to go.

I love these kinds of events. Random. Vague. Cool. Fashionable. Dubious. Curious. Galleries are a display case for the art, the artist(s), and especially those in attendance. Often, I sense that everyone who shows up thinks: (1) Is everyone else as ignorant about the meaning, value, worth of this stuff as I am? (2) Can I convince everyone here that I’m the only one with the true insight into the displayed works? (3) Is standing in front of one work too long the same thing as dropping a fragile object in a store – you drop it, you bought it kind of thing? (4) It is de rigueur  now that the wine has to suck at these things. (5) Is the outfit she’s wearing like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box – a bonus for showing up? (6) I am now defined by the company I keep – I hope no one I work with shows up.

In short, everyone is performing. It’s unlike any other type of cultural excursion.

I find ignorance helpful when viewing art. I bring no pre-conceived notions. I am open to possibility. I also find going solo a blessing. I am absolved of conversing – thinking up something intelligent, something creative, something worthy of what I am viewing, words superior to the displayed works in their artistic flourish! Ignorance and solitude, yes. As long as you can stomach all the people staring at you, or using every muscle not to, wondering why you have no partner and no friends.

Annie Minx was the artist whose works were on display this evening.  No idea who she is. I couldn’t discern her in the crowd. But I liked her work. I guess the best way to describe them, pardon my ignorance and creative flourish, is they were Jackson Pollock in relief map 3-D, or multi-colored (multi here meaning every color from the palette) simulated rock that had bubbled up from a volcano, molten mess quickly fused by flowing water, with no supervision. Some of the them reminded me of mounted wildlife trophies. One began to look like a wild boar every time I returned to the beer in an iced barrel out in the alley. Another resembled tree bark. They were all glossy, plastic or solid waste materials perhaps, with acrylic paints, maybe, and they tended to come together at an apex, triangular pyramidal mostly. The ones mounted on white drywall background stood out much better than the ones against the brick wall. There were no price tags on the works. Mercifully, written descriptions, which usually possess the creative flourish of a rock sinking to the bottom of a pond, were absent.

Minx’ works were only one facet of the evening. There was a musical act as well. It was presaged by the music playing in the background, a group called Swell Maps, a 1970s UK post-punk band, I learned, after asking the guys dressed in black tights and muscle shirts hovering around the equipment. The selected pieces didn’t sound very punk to me, more like ambient electronica a la Kraftwerke only fed through a fuzz master. I failed to make a connection between the music and the art but that’s because I was still thinking too hard after two beers. I avoided the flimsy clear plastic cups of Chardonnay, surely laced with White Oak No. 2 from the industrial flavor chart.

The music performance started with a version of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane.” The version of this song from the album Rock n’ Roll Animal is one of the best rock songs ever, you know, the one with the best intro to a rock song ever. I looked around the gallery and thought, I am probably the only one here who actually heard Lou Reed perform this song live (three times!) in New York City during the reign of punk rock. That was pretty easy to conclude as most of the crowd hadn’t even slithered out of the womb when I was living in Manhattan when NYC hit rock bottom (I entered college there 1974, the year the city declared bankruptcy).

Then the young guys in tights began to do a punk rock impersonation, or maybe it was a parody, or irony, or cognitive dissonance. Like I wrote, ignorance is so helpful at times like this. They kept asking for requests from the audience, none of which had anything to do with punk, or with the period. I often go to things like this insisting privately that I will only listen, absorb, and not project. I failed (I always fail at this). I shouted out a few requests. At least they were from the 1970s (“666,” Aphrodite’s Child) and/or the post-punk period (“White Wedding,” Billy Idol), I thought, obscure enough that these two whippersnappers could show their crowd how hip they really are, but songs not so underground that two hipsters purporting to parody the era I came of age in wouldn’t have become familiar with. (Wow, that was a tortured sentence, but yet with an artistic flourish, no?)

Needless to say, they did not “perform” my requests. It wasn’t clear whether they knew of what I requested. Neither of them even offered up a Billy Idol sneer straight out of MTV. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and figured they were playing along with me, another layer of irony. When I yelled out 666, the only guy there much older than I looked over at me and laughed a knowing chuckle. I thought maybe he was William Gass. Or maybe I just had it wrong from the get go. One of the guys in tights could also have been named William Gass. The William Gass I was looking for never performed, least not before I left.

I am looking forward to reading Middle C.