Born in Medford, Massachusetts, son of James and Gladys (Cutter) Guetti, his family moved to Florida when he was three years old.
He was a massively stimulating colleague, an extraordinary mentor — and (to coin a much-abused term, which in this case is justly applied) an absolutely inspirational teacher."
Another former student, Millburn, New Jersey attorney Anthony Gaeta, said, "He made me more precise in how I communicate, and expanded my ability to really understand what people are saying when they use words.
"[1] Rutgers professor Barry Qualls recalled, "Jim was breathtakingly smart and very funny, and didn't care for other people's sanctities.
Jim could not believe the level of detail I knew about the book and how his novel spurred me to visit Pimlico race track and become a lifelong devotee of thoroughbred racing and start a friendship with a buddy who would teach me the value of reading every word.” Besides being a teaching writer of academic topics, as well as fiction, James Guetti had several other interests.
His brother Michael, a retired Star Ledger sports writer, remembers Jim's adventurousness: "... tramping through the Everglades with just a knife in his back pocket."
Scholar Robert S. Ryf examined Guetti's assertion in The Limits of Metaphor [2] regarding ineffability in the works of Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner.
Furthermore, it has a grand opening sequence that is, by itself, a first-rate short story, and, to boot, a wonderful indicator for any wary reader of what is in store.
This analysis of the complicated response of the individual reader is in contrast to the usual concern with plot, characterization, and other textual topics.
[5] The introduction to the Penguin Books edition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness contains editor Paul O'Prey's citation of Guetti's idea regarding central meaning: "Conrad leads us to expect, because of the myth–like nature of the journey discussed earlier, that by going to the centre, to the 'Inner Station', to the very heart of the matter, there will be some enlightenment, some meaning given.
Yet, as James Guetti shows in his essay " 'Heart of Darkness': The Failure of Imagination", the story " … as the account of a journey into the center of things — of Africa, of Kurtz, of Marlow, and of human existence — poses itself as the refutation of such a journey and as the refutation of the general metaphorical conception that meaning may be found within, beneath, at the center.
[7] He discusses Guetti's explanation of the way that realistic fiction sustains the illusion of life by directing focus to the imagined world and not to the words that the author used.