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belwau's review against another edition
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
captainfez's review against another edition
4.0
It's taken me a while to write this review because it's taken a while to read its subject. The Recognitions is an undeniably skilful creation, a wellspring of erudition and multiple narratives, a thumbnail sketch of religion, of bums, of certain locales around the world at a certain juncture in time, as well as a meditation on falsity, on misdirection and true paths. But it's also, for all its brilliance, often a sluggish read, and one that provides brilliantly polished vignettes at the cost – for me, at least – of overall coherence.
I'd long heard about William Gaddis. I mean, I was a lit student many moons ago, and this first-novel bombshell casts a long, supposedly under-appreciated shadow, especially when it's considered how many That-Guy-In-Your-MFA-approved authors (Pynchon, Barth, King of fuckin' Footnotes DFW and more) the book's dense, learnedly cryptic prose has influenced. I eagerly awaited the NYRB release of the work so I could finally find out what I'd been missing.
This was my mistake.
To read the rest of this review, please visit my blog.
I'd long heard about William Gaddis. I mean, I was a lit student many moons ago, and this first-novel bombshell casts a long, supposedly under-appreciated shadow, especially when it's considered how many That-Guy-In-Your-MFA-approved authors (Pynchon, Barth, King of fuckin' Footnotes DFW and more) the book's dense, learnedly cryptic prose has influenced. I eagerly awaited the NYRB release of the work so I could finally find out what I'd been missing.
This was my mistake.
To read the rest of this review, please visit my blog.
levitybooks's review against another edition
3.0
Video Review
The video review gives a quick overview of the book for people who haven't read it.
This GoodReads review covers stranger theories I have about the book for those who have.
Controversial hot take but The Recognitions was more enjoyable for me than Gravity's Rainbow but (far) less enjoyable than Infinite Jest.
The Recognitions is hard to understand, but it wants to be, so it's hard to talk about. This is why most reviews are abstract and vague, and this one tries not to be but tries in vain.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
—
I think this book is divisive and can see why it was disliked on first publication. Currently it's in vogue, but I think with due time it'll have a more average rating, many people preferring JR. Part 3 was too incoherent for this to be a book I could love.
This story is basically impossible to follow without following a synopsis:
https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/I1summar.shtml
If reading a synopsis to understand a story isn't appealing, then you're probably not going to enjoy this!
The question nobody seems to be asking about The Recognitions, which I am most interested in, is: 'Why do so many people in this book die for no reason?'
—what was the point of what actually happens in this story?
—
The Recognitions is about Syphillis
I think everything that is not said in The Recognitions is about Syphillis:
The reason Wyatt can't complete his mother's painting (in Part 3 her corpse's face was said to have syphillis by strangers on the train), the reason her husband Reverend Gwyon goes insane, the reason Wyatt goes insane (inherited syphillis), the reason so many of the sexually active characters die while not in the right state of mind, the reason Anselm castrates himself...
It's a hunch, but it comes from the mention of the Columbian theory of Syphillis in Part 3, which would thematically parallel Valentine's returning of Flemish paintings from America. I think what actually happens in The Recognitions beyond the surface level themes of the art and money scandals is a bunch of people dying from venereal disease, a lack of love, and a lack of religious faith.
—
I had a vivid dream where I met the talking skeleton of an army general William Gaddis, who told me:
"
Welcome, my boy, to The Recognitions, an inventory of moral decay.
'This is how humans have dealt with all human disasters — the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, the plague, the cold war, global warming, overpopulation'
"
Simply put, I think this dream communicated to me that Gaddis like many postmodern authors is saying that illusion and faith are important to the world no matter how much we can criticize them. They prevent bad things from happening. Near the end of the book, Wyatt, Anselm and Stanley are the main religious characters remaining in the book, and some of the few surviving. Stanley's death is hard to understand, but it seems things got quickly worse for Stanley when he started having sex without love.
Though that said, I also don't think Gaddis is really strongly for any side in this book, intentionally — the book is on the whole a disorientating experience showing a lack of unity of world values.
The video review gives a quick overview of the book for people who haven't read it.
This GoodReads review covers stranger theories I have about the book for those who have.
Controversial hot take but The Recognitions was more enjoyable for me than Gravity's Rainbow but (far) less enjoyable than Infinite Jest.
The Recognitions is hard to understand, but it wants to be, so it's hard to talk about. This is why most reviews are abstract and vague, and this one tries not to be but tries in vain.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
—
I think this book is divisive and can see why it was disliked on first publication. Currently it's in vogue, but I think with due time it'll have a more average rating, many people preferring JR. Part 3 was too incoherent for this to be a book I could love.
This story is basically impossible to follow without following a synopsis:
https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/I1summar.shtml
If reading a synopsis to understand a story isn't appealing, then you're probably not going to enjoy this!
The question nobody seems to be asking about The Recognitions, which I am most interested in, is: 'Why do so many people in this book die for no reason?'
—what was the point of what actually happens in this story?
—
The Recognitions is about Syphillis
I think everything that is not said in The Recognitions is about Syphillis:
The reason Wyatt can't complete his mother's painting (in Part 3 her corpse's face was said to have syphillis by strangers on the train), the reason her husband Reverend Gwyon goes insane, the reason Wyatt goes insane (inherited syphillis), the reason so many of the sexually active characters die while not in the right state of mind, the reason Anselm castrates himself...
It's a hunch, but it comes from the mention of the Columbian theory of Syphillis in Part 3, which would thematically parallel Valentine's returning of Flemish paintings from America. I think what actually happens in The Recognitions beyond the surface level themes of the art and money scandals is a bunch of people dying from venereal disease, a lack of love, and a lack of religious faith.
—
I had a vivid dream where I met the talking skeleton of an army general William Gaddis, who told me:
"
Welcome, my boy, to The Recognitions, an inventory of moral decay.
'This is how humans have dealt with all human disasters — the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, the plague, the cold war, global warming, overpopulation'
"
Simply put, I think this dream communicated to me that Gaddis like many postmodern authors is saying that illusion and faith are important to the world no matter how much we can criticize them. They prevent bad things from happening. Near the end of the book, Wyatt, Anselm and Stanley are the main religious characters remaining in the book, and some of the few surviving. Stanley's death is hard to understand, but it seems things got quickly worse for Stanley when he started having sex without love.
Though that said, I also don't think Gaddis is really strongly for any side in this book, intentionally — the book is on the whole a disorientating experience showing a lack of unity of world values.
scorwin's review against another edition
5.0
While the Recognitions may present as entropic at first glance – a fractured, anti-narrative collision of disparate characters, themes, and ethics – a governing set of egalitarian laws do indeed exert their force upon the novel. First or foremost is inauthenticity, a disease to which no one character (save possibly Stanley) is immune. While at times the author may appear romantically earnest in his fore fronting of the capital-A artist as the arbiter of universal truth, one doesn’t need a magnifying glass to see he’s far more interested in undercutting this notion with reckless abandon. In the R, Gaddis has produced a spectacularly angry novel, ripe with dramatic and lyrical irony.
This is where the contemporary bellwethers of the postmodern movement – pastiche, fragmentation, and disingenuity – come into play. While the artists (capital-F) of his New York dreamscape believe themselves to be members of the Ascendant Elite through their one-of-a-kind visionary creations, they are inherently acting out of self-delusion. One only needs to scratch the surface of their magna opera – whether it be Wyatt’s flawless facsimiles, Otto’s play, or Esme’s poetry – to realise that something far less original is hiding underneath. The author takes it so far as to implicate himself by stitching a myriad of unattributed quotes and historical references throughout the narrative; Ones that may ring a bell in the back of your mind and make you think “where do I recognise that from…?”.
Many reviewers ended their analysis here and critiqued The Recognitions as nothing more than a self-reflexive lampoon of the art world. If this were solely the case, I would write off the author’s worldview as cynical, too-cool-for-school drivel. Yes, he’s undermining modernist ideals of absolute ontological truth; yes, he espouses that anyone will compromise their integrity when the price is right; yes, he accuses religious dogmatism of being simply a thinly veiled means to a commercial end. But if you take the time to look a bit closer, you’ll realise that there’s another layer underneath. I stand in solidarity with Jack Green when I say “fire the bastards” – I reject those critics’ flat conclusion that his narrative goal ends at the level of pure satire.
In true, meta-textual, maximalist fashion, Gaddis hasn’t simply constructed a novel that is one or two layers deep. Midway through the novel, a brief exchange between secondary characters follows the discovery of an original masterpiece hidden under another painting, which in turn was hidden under another. This scene encapsulates the experience of The Recognitions elegantly in a few short sentences. If one were to wipe away the “worthless” painting that lies under the façade of the genuine Titian – the face-value appearance of the novel – they would realise that something authentic was there all along. While forgery, plagiarism, and double-crosses govern the World of the R, I hold in my heart of hearts that the author believes that true autonomous authenticity is possible and lies in the acceptance of the “cumulative self”. Everything we are is the amalgamation of everything we encounter, engage with, and absorb.
Gaddis is smart enough to realise he’s not the first to reach this conclusion – “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me” – but has created something entirely original, nonetheless. Stanley, Wyatt, Esme, Otto, and Gaddis himself are all composites of their forebearers, both in influence and lineage. They’re linked into a chain of literary and artistic tradition, which comprises everything from adaptation, to transposition, to facsimile. That “transcendental” experience I was promised came when I realised, I was just another link in the chain. It’s in this moment of realisation that I’m left staring at a closed cover and a moment of literary beauty: This novel has become a part of me… it only took me 950 pages to recognise it.
#Gaddis21
This is where the contemporary bellwethers of the postmodern movement – pastiche, fragmentation, and disingenuity – come into play. While the artists (capital-F) of his New York dreamscape believe themselves to be members of the Ascendant Elite through their one-of-a-kind visionary creations, they are inherently acting out of self-delusion. One only needs to scratch the surface of their magna opera – whether it be Wyatt’s flawless facsimiles, Otto’s play, or Esme’s poetry – to realise that something far less original is hiding underneath. The author takes it so far as to implicate himself by stitching a myriad of unattributed quotes and historical references throughout the narrative; Ones that may ring a bell in the back of your mind and make you think “where do I recognise that from…?”.
Many reviewers ended their analysis here and critiqued The Recognitions as nothing more than a self-reflexive lampoon of the art world. If this were solely the case, I would write off the author’s worldview as cynical, too-cool-for-school drivel. Yes, he’s undermining modernist ideals of absolute ontological truth; yes, he espouses that anyone will compromise their integrity when the price is right; yes, he accuses religious dogmatism of being simply a thinly veiled means to a commercial end. But if you take the time to look a bit closer, you’ll realise that there’s another layer underneath. I stand in solidarity with Jack Green when I say “fire the bastards” – I reject those critics’ flat conclusion that his narrative goal ends at the level of pure satire.
In true, meta-textual, maximalist fashion, Gaddis hasn’t simply constructed a novel that is one or two layers deep. Midway through the novel, a brief exchange between secondary characters follows the discovery of an original masterpiece hidden under another painting, which in turn was hidden under another. This scene encapsulates the experience of The Recognitions elegantly in a few short sentences. If one were to wipe away the “worthless” painting that lies under the façade of the genuine Titian – the face-value appearance of the novel – they would realise that something authentic was there all along. While forgery, plagiarism, and double-crosses govern the World of the R, I hold in my heart of hearts that the author believes that true autonomous authenticity is possible and lies in the acceptance of the “cumulative self”. Everything we are is the amalgamation of everything we encounter, engage with, and absorb.
Gaddis is smart enough to realise he’s not the first to reach this conclusion – “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me” – but has created something entirely original, nonetheless. Stanley, Wyatt, Esme, Otto, and Gaddis himself are all composites of their forebearers, both in influence and lineage. They’re linked into a chain of literary and artistic tradition, which comprises everything from adaptation, to transposition, to facsimile. That “transcendental” experience I was promised came when I realised, I was just another link in the chain. It’s in this moment of realisation that I’m left staring at a closed cover and a moment of literary beauty: This novel has become a part of me… it only took me 950 pages to recognise it.
#Gaddis21
jtth's review against another edition
5.0
If you're on the fence about whether you should read this, read William H. Gass's introduction (in this edition the afterward). It is a book of such tremendous scope. I definitely did not get every connection, every structural reference or articulation, but getting them all is not the point. Nor is knowing the references, or following completely and mechanically the webbed mappings between characters. It will come. This is one of the best books I've read.
Also no one writes dialog like this, which is probably good for my heart and anxiety. I had to stop reading this in the mornings.
I read this mixed between this edition and the Nick Sullivan (Audible) recording, which is a triumph of the form. Sullivan does different voices, so the Gaddis method of the quote-dash to initiate dialog without terminating it becomes more demarcated. Getting exposed to this helped me learn to differentiate speech from description when reading, though it never fully congeals.
Also no one writes dialog like this, which is probably good for my heart and anxiety. I had to stop reading this in the mornings.
I read this mixed between this edition and the Nick Sullivan (Audible) recording, which is a triumph of the form. Sullivan does different voices, so the Gaddis method of the quote-dash to initiate dialog without terminating it becomes more demarcated. Getting exposed to this helped me learn to differentiate speech from description when reading, though it never fully congeals.
alexlanz's review against another edition
This was brutal to read in some stretches yet hilarious and so influential on modern fiction in innumerable ways.
offboss's review
5.0
Don't read reviews of this novel, the odds are -increasingly, now - that it is misguided and lazy. 55 reviews greeted its publication, only fifty-three of those notices were stupid. It was wrong of someone so young to be so ambitious [Gaddis published at age 32], the reviewers though; the result was sure to be pretentious, full of the strain of standing on tiptoe. If the author works at his work, the reader may have to also.
I could go on plagiarizing Gass's introduction to the 1993 edition endlessly. It is not avaritia, after all, but love that motivates copying - calumny only comes with the copied signature. His introduction spans much further than its twenty pages, I reached back to it for much of the first century to reassure and re-fuel (or gas, haha) until I finally fell into the rhythm of Gaddis's satire-rant-epic.
I may have sacrificed my May and buried it in the kitchen midden to save my reading, close attention pays long term dividends here, and I would curse my March for slacking off. At the risk of over-valuing time (God cares as much for a minute as for an hour, after all), I spent more of it on this novel than any other piece of art or entertainment and would happily pay it twice again.
I could go on plagiarizing Gass's introduction to the 1993 edition endlessly. It is not avaritia, after all, but love that motivates copying - calumny only comes with the copied signature. His introduction spans much further than its twenty pages, I reached back to it for much of the first century to reassure and re-fuel (or gas, haha) until I finally fell into the rhythm of Gaddis's satire-rant-epic.
I may have sacrificed my May and buried it in the kitchen midden to save my reading, close attention pays long term dividends here, and I would curse my March for slacking off. At the risk of over-valuing time (God cares as much for a minute as for an hour, after all), I spent more of it on this novel than any other piece of art or entertainment and would happily pay it twice again.
61dccain's review
5.0
Rereading a novel twenty years later is very much like reading an entirely new piece. Quite the masterpiece, it seems only slightly related to the novel I once read. Brilliant in every way.