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A review by george_salis
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
“The romantic disease, originality, all around we see originality of incompetent idiots, they could draw nothing, paint nothing, just so the mess they make is original…Even two hundred years ago who wanted to be original, to be original was to admit that you could not do a thing the right way, so you could only do it your own way.”
The first few chapters in this bogged-down book were medievally dark and delectably eldritch, as stimulating as the electricity within the Frankenstein monster’s grave brain, but then the chryselephantine allusions and celestial diction descend in New York. Here we eavesdrop on the Eve’s droppings of Wyatt and Esther’s quotidian conversations, and it’s true, Gaddis does know how to mimic the subtleties of realistic dialogue, the veritas of tête-à-têtes, and I was still on board the HMS Recognitions, appreciating the talent and acknowledging that a book of this magnitude must alternate between various registers to be a successful reading experience, to be an accomplished novel no less.
As Gaddis himself writes: “Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition.”
There's a masterpiece wanting to come out of this chunk of marble, but it's strangle-entangled by veins of puddle-deep chitchat that fluctuates between interesting and dull, indeed, we are more than “merely” assailed by only “chattering” until the prose is as Ann as the nose on Plain's face, if you’ll allow me, sometimes showing distant and divided glimmers of the unfulfilled promise of the opening chapters (see Laura Warholic for examples of chattering that is digressive yet wholly entertaining). So what we have here is a book both bloated and choked by its own blather (we’re talking hundreds of pages here), yet more than this, because seemingly engaging and stimulating scenes are rendered with yawning ennui, infected disinterest, almost bunglingly biblical in their lack of a climax and understanding of literary execution, such as the ‘scene’, if you can call it that, when Anselm performs autocastration or when there’s a freeloader who clings to the wing of an airplane. Even the ending, which I had heard about ahead of time (then forgotten with time), sounds amazing when described but is symphony-deaf when read. In a word, bathetic with a ‘b’.
This was advertised by readers and critics as a maximalist novel but it didn't have everything I love in such a genre, only two modes: poetic prose, which is a lost love that never returns except for emotionless and condom-constrained flings afterward, and the party banter, which I was interested in then tolerated then was fully dulled by, and but there was a brief couple of fun moments of radio advertisements that I wish had been, well, maximized (I’m told by a friend that I’ll get my wish in Gaddis’ second novel). And what it did have in the way of maximalist tics it didn't have enough of for such a long book: vast vocabulary, epiphanic allusions, topsy turns of phrase, etc. One more thing: Gaddis, through one of his characters, does excoriate the expectations of m(ass) readers, yet his praise of “long sentences” is nearly the service of lips considering the absence of sentences approaching, say, the breathless likes of Joseph McElroy. Fine, another thing: the comparisons to Joyce’s Ulysses aren’t nearly as Polyphemus-blind as comparisons of other books to that Irish masterpiece, but The Recognitions is still lightyears behind it even though there’s the age of Christ between their release dates (1922 – 1955), “a whole Odyssey without Ulysses” indeed.
“…this passion for wanting to meet the latest poet, shake hands with the latest novelist, get hold of the latest painter, devour…what is it? What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around.”
As it stands, this debut novel is certainly more ambitious than most of the literary debutantes that have shown their skirts since this one was published (and remaindered) over half a century ago, yet ambition alone can’t save a novel, especially when the ambition is abandoned for the bland and never redeemed (despite the claim that “a work of art redeems time”), neither linguistically nor structurally. Of course, the themes of this novel, such as whether any piece of art is truly original, the artistry or lack thereof behind forgeries, the unfulfillment of fulfillment, the mental darkness of religion, all these are worthy and important themes, but they are not explored in a satisfying way (even if they were done Gaddis’ way), only hinted at when compared to what takes up most of the page count. And but so the first several instances of the word ‘recognition’ appearing were sufficient, yet it gets repeated ad nauseam, as heavy-handed as the book in the reader’s hand. According to Douglas Lannark, there are over 80 instances of the word in one form or another (though nowhere near as sinful as the 19,396 instances of "the fact that" which appear in the hyper-bloated piece of non-literature titled Ducks, Newburyport).
I can recognize (pun not intended; I’ve heard enough of that word) the fact that (and that phrase!) this novel influenced and anticipated great fiction written by Pynchon, DeLillo, and even DFW, but in comparison, this novel is dated and failed to amaze and stimulate this 21st-century reader beyond the promise of its opening chapters, resulting in diminishing and diminishing returns, unfortunately....
“There is always an immense congregation of people unable to create anything themselves, who look for comfort to the critics to disparage, belittle, and explain away those who do.”
I take no pleasure in writing negative reviews, which is often why I would prefer not to review books I don’t love, and sometimes I opt out of Goodreads star ratings too. As for creating anything, be on the lookout for my second, maximammoth novel, Morphological Echoes.
The first few chapters in this bogged-down book were medievally dark and delectably eldritch, as stimulating as the electricity within the Frankenstein monster’s grave brain, but then the chryselephantine allusions and celestial diction descend in New York. Here we eavesdrop on the Eve’s droppings of Wyatt and Esther’s quotidian conversations, and it’s true, Gaddis does know how to mimic the subtleties of realistic dialogue, the veritas of tête-à-têtes, and I was still on board the HMS Recognitions, appreciating the talent and acknowledging that a book of this magnitude must alternate between various registers to be a successful reading experience, to be an accomplished novel no less.
As Gaddis himself writes: “Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition.”
There's a masterpiece wanting to come out of this chunk of marble, but it's strangle-entangled by veins of puddle-deep chitchat that fluctuates between interesting and dull, indeed, we are more than “merely” assailed by only “chattering” until the prose is as Ann as the nose on Plain's face, if you’ll allow me, sometimes showing distant and divided glimmers of the unfulfilled promise of the opening chapters (see Laura Warholic for examples of chattering that is digressive yet wholly entertaining). So what we have here is a book both bloated and choked by its own blather (we’re talking hundreds of pages here), yet more than this, because seemingly engaging and stimulating scenes are rendered with yawning ennui, infected disinterest, almost bunglingly biblical in their lack of a climax and understanding of literary execution, such as the ‘scene’, if you can call it that, when Anselm performs autocastration or when there’s a freeloader who clings to the wing of an airplane. Even the ending, which I had heard about ahead of time (then forgotten with time), sounds amazing when described but is symphony-deaf when read. In a word, bathetic with a ‘b’.
This was advertised by readers and critics as a maximalist novel but it didn't have everything I love in such a genre, only two modes: poetic prose, which is a lost love that never returns except for emotionless and condom-constrained flings afterward, and the party banter, which I was interested in then tolerated then was fully dulled by, and but there was a brief couple of fun moments of radio advertisements that I wish had been, well, maximized (I’m told by a friend that I’ll get my wish in Gaddis’ second novel). And what it did have in the way of maximalist tics it didn't have enough of for such a long book: vast vocabulary, epiphanic allusions, topsy turns of phrase, etc. One more thing: Gaddis, through one of his characters, does excoriate the expectations of m(ass) readers, yet his praise of “long sentences” is nearly the service of lips considering the absence of sentences approaching, say, the breathless likes of Joseph McElroy. Fine, another thing: the comparisons to Joyce’s Ulysses aren’t nearly as Polyphemus-blind as comparisons of other books to that Irish masterpiece, but The Recognitions is still lightyears behind it even though there’s the age of Christ between their release dates (1922 – 1955), “a whole Odyssey without Ulysses” indeed.
“…this passion for wanting to meet the latest poet, shake hands with the latest novelist, get hold of the latest painter, devour…what is it? What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around.”
As it stands, this debut novel is certainly more ambitious than most of the literary debutantes that have shown their skirts since this one was published (and remaindered) over half a century ago, yet ambition alone can’t save a novel, especially when the ambition is abandoned for the bland and never redeemed (despite the claim that “a work of art redeems time”), neither linguistically nor structurally. Of course, the themes of this novel, such as whether any piece of art is truly original, the artistry or lack thereof behind forgeries, the unfulfillment of fulfillment, the mental darkness of religion, all these are worthy and important themes, but they are not explored in a satisfying way (even if they were done Gaddis’ way), only hinted at when compared to what takes up most of the page count. And but so the first several instances of the word ‘recognition’ appearing were sufficient, yet it gets repeated ad nauseam, as heavy-handed as the book in the reader’s hand. According to Douglas Lannark, there are over 80 instances of the word in one form or another (though nowhere near as sinful as the 19,396 instances of "the fact that" which appear in the hyper-bloated piece of non-literature titled Ducks, Newburyport).
I can recognize (pun not intended; I’ve heard enough of that word) the fact that (and that phrase!) this novel influenced and anticipated great fiction written by Pynchon, DeLillo, and even DFW, but in comparison, this novel is dated and failed to amaze and stimulate this 21st-century reader beyond the promise of its opening chapters, resulting in diminishing and diminishing returns, unfortunately....
“There is always an immense congregation of people unable to create anything themselves, who look for comfort to the critics to disparage, belittle, and explain away those who do.”
I take no pleasure in writing negative reviews, which is often why I would prefer not to review books I don’t love, and sometimes I opt out of Goodreads star ratings too. As for creating anything, be on the lookout for my second, maximammoth novel, Morphological Echoes.