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A review by mamimitanaka
Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis
5.0
A torrential onslaught of pure fucking literature. About as perfect an encapsulation of what the medium can uniquely do as a film like "The Seventh Seal" did for cinema, which is of course something the book has in common with "The Recognitions" yet Gaddis succeeds with flying colors in scaling back the sprawl of that novel to a single house in Upstate New York and somehow crafts a novel as universe-encompassing as his debut. The prose is pure music - the dialogue is as real and gut wrenching as any emotional conversation that happens in reality - the narrative beats and the rich symbolic detail are finely tuned to perfection with not a word of fluff - the commentary on masculinity and its relationship to the profit motive and warfare is a master of satire at the peak of their powers - the story forces you inside the heads of its tormented characters in a way that I think it should just be considered a given that only books are capable of. And I think what elevates it above all else is that all of these combine to make a book that's just utterly fucking ferocious, it is a supernova of pure white hot creative energy that reads so urgently that I can almost feel Gaddis' pen about to poke holes in the manuscript just from how powerfully this is written - and I think this is a key to some of the best literature - if it reads like the author had to write it, then I by extension am compelled enough by its urgency to read to the end. "Carpenter's Gothic" fires on all cylinders conceivable, like it's a cataclysmic force of nature barreling down on me, like it knows how investing it is, and this is certainly a page turner despite its difficulties. And to think this is considered by critics to be a lesser work - make no mistake, this is a genius of the 20th century in action.
The glue that holds it all together is Liz, the wife of an abusive Vietnam veteran who is embroiled in the political mechanics of a capitalist preacher in Africa. Liz, like Wyatt, is one of Gaddis' downtrodden heroes, forced to navigate life as a victim of abuse and do whatever she can to handle her existence as the men around her crumble into their own paranoias and weakness. Liz is treated by the men in her life as a vessel for their frustrations, but on so many turns she reveals herself as the only source of light among the main cast - someone whose shine [and thus emotional needs] goes completely ignored by men who can think of nothing but themselves, who see her as an extension of themselves. Liz may have the single most well developed voice I have ever read in literature, there is so much insight into this woman's life and mind without a single instance of interior monologue, a technique which Gaddis has perfected since TR. She is meek, but expressly capable of righteous anger and attempts at self-preservation; she has been taught to do everything for others, but there is only so much she can take before she breaks, which she does many times throughout the story; she is smart and pays attention, but trips over her words, loses focus, retreats into her own mind when the people around her won't listen. Every conversation, I felt for her, as though I was her; every mindless rant from Paul I felt my frustration and sadness rise with her, feeling like I was being ignored as much as she; every time she stood up for herself, I sighed in relief, only to have my guts twist again when the couple's conversations circled the drain back to its abusive pattern. I've never felt like I was fighting the same battles as a specific character before; her voice's cadence, her expressions in reaction to things, her anxiety and fear, I felt it and saw it and heard all of it as though I was watching incredibly talented actors in a film and nowhere was it more potent than in Elizabeth Booth, she is undoubtedly one of the rawest examples of humanity I have ever read in fiction.
Voice in general is the highlight of this novel, in fact between this and The Recognitions I'd venture by this point to say Gaddis has the most consistently good dialogue of any author I've read, there is not a single wasted line or unnecessary flourish here, even when these characters are going into rants that are almost entirely inane. McCandless especially is another highlight; Gaddis really just put in a self-insert OC to roast the fuck out of himself and I was absolutely here for it the entire time. While Paul's belligerent emotional abuse is easier to name for what it is, McCandless represents a more insidious type of dominant masculinity that's more difficult to identify in day-to-day conversation; he is outwardly composed and "civil", but is smug, completely self-concerned and thinks only in terms of what benefits him - even his rants on education and religion's effects on academia are written in a way that shows that all he's really thinking about here is how it effects him, how it insults his ego and intelligence specifically. He takes this ire toward religion for what on the surface are good reasons [Gaddis as always skewers right wing religion thoroughly in this book], and projects them outward onto others, especially Liz, who as with Paul is reduced from her humanity and into his emotional dumping ground. And when she shows interest in his life, much like her husband shuts her out as though she's not even there, like the very idea of her being an intellectual equal is beneath him. Gaddis takes American masculinity and the [direct, underlying] violence it spreads to trial here, and the fact he does this so potently through a self-aggrandized mansplaining asshole who bears many resemblances to himself is one hell of a bold move. In an age of accountability for abusive men [or at least, we're getting there hopefully], this book and this character especially resonates so heavily it's crazy.
The actual texture of the conversations [and rants] here is interesting to note. A lot of the bureaucratic jargon went over my head, but I also think that's kind of the point. The novel's structure is basically composed by staking it to various points of informational intake - conversations flit chaotically, with only the briefest breaks in action, between phone calls, the radio, in-person arguments and long-winded rants containing so much disparate [and connected] information that I think the purpose is to make the reader feel as disoriented and overwhelmed as Liz is - she's surrounded by men who don't care about her other than to stroke their own egos, conversations that circle the drain and go nowhere that shirk her emotional needs, and all she wants to do is escape the torrent of violent information and sensory overload but she is trapped amidst a suffocating world of information she doesn't want to hear, doesn't want to be around but has to. The parallels to the modern world should be clear here, which is something Gaddis excels at between both this and TR. This endless stream of info [or as we like to call it online, content] is one of claustrophobia where we can't ever unplug ourselves long enough to escape its tidal wave.
And I think the glue that really holds this narrative together is indeed that fiercely political substance. The novel not only outlays the manifestation and repercussions of hegemonic masculinity, but it probes at the roots and the underlying systems in place. All the domestic toxicity in the novel is directly traceable back to the horrors of war and colonialism, which the book never once truly deviates away from. Like The Recognitions, the novel is much concerned with sin and how the idea of sin is manifested in societies predicated on the ugly chimera between neoliberal capitalism and Christian fundamentalism - bloodshed is justified in the name of God [who is in capitalism simply a disguise granted to the true god, the Almighty Dollar], and the cycle of trauma is perpetuated; because the patriarchal and capitalistic systems enabling war are not challenged, this overseas violence as a result becomes recursive, and it leaks all the way back into the home, the one place in which Americans erroneously think they are safe. Liz' suffering is her own, but hers is also the suffering of everyone who toils beneath the heel of wartime violence and its inherent relationship to dominator masculinity - in a system whose goal is the maintaining of power for power's sake, no one can escape such widespread evil unscathed.
This is a bleak and angry novel that doesn't provide clean cut answers to the problems it portrays, which is something that I in theory should be sour on; but artists are not philosophers, so they shouldn't be expected to provide all-encompassing solutions to the feelings they want us to sit with in their stories. But despite being black as pitch, it is a distillation of pure humanity at its core, and the tragedy and desperation that unfolds when all of us are ensnared in a system that is traumatic by its very design. I think its bleakness functions as a rallying cry to be better, despite Gaddis' own conservativism which he takes to task in this book; to see people like Liz, and see how they suffer and say "something about this has to change", because people like her are suffering in the world, in their billions, at any given time, and Gaddis is implicating all of us - including himself - for our ideas that we, in this society of rugged American individualism, can do this all alone, because we can't. But above all else it is just literature down to its very essence; the prose is some of the most lyrical realism ever put to paper, the narrative and especially its characters are stunning and nearly impossible to pull away from, the form and structure itself is a work of unfiltered, raw artistic energy. If you like fiction, this is absolutely unmissable.
The glue that holds it all together is Liz, the wife of an abusive Vietnam veteran who is embroiled in the political mechanics of a capitalist preacher in Africa. Liz, like Wyatt, is one of Gaddis' downtrodden heroes, forced to navigate life as a victim of abuse and do whatever she can to handle her existence as the men around her crumble into their own paranoias and weakness. Liz is treated by the men in her life as a vessel for their frustrations, but on so many turns she reveals herself as the only source of light among the main cast - someone whose shine [and thus emotional needs] goes completely ignored by men who can think of nothing but themselves, who see her as an extension of themselves. Liz may have the single most well developed voice I have ever read in literature, there is so much insight into this woman's life and mind without a single instance of interior monologue, a technique which Gaddis has perfected since TR. She is meek, but expressly capable of righteous anger and attempts at self-preservation; she has been taught to do everything for others, but there is only so much she can take before she breaks, which she does many times throughout the story; she is smart and pays attention, but trips over her words, loses focus, retreats into her own mind when the people around her won't listen. Every conversation, I felt for her, as though I was her; every mindless rant from Paul I felt my frustration and sadness rise with her, feeling like I was being ignored as much as she; every time she stood up for herself, I sighed in relief, only to have my guts twist again when the couple's conversations circled the drain back to its abusive pattern. I've never felt like I was fighting the same battles as a specific character before; her voice's cadence, her expressions in reaction to things, her anxiety and fear, I felt it and saw it and heard all of it as though I was watching incredibly talented actors in a film and nowhere was it more potent than in Elizabeth Booth, she is undoubtedly one of the rawest examples of humanity I have ever read in fiction.
Voice in general is the highlight of this novel, in fact between this and The Recognitions I'd venture by this point to say Gaddis has the most consistently good dialogue of any author I've read, there is not a single wasted line or unnecessary flourish here, even when these characters are going into rants that are almost entirely inane. McCandless especially is another highlight; Gaddis really just put in a self-insert OC to roast the fuck out of himself and I was absolutely here for it the entire time. While Paul's belligerent emotional abuse is easier to name for what it is, McCandless represents a more insidious type of dominant masculinity that's more difficult to identify in day-to-day conversation; he is outwardly composed and "civil", but is smug, completely self-concerned and thinks only in terms of what benefits him - even his rants on education and religion's effects on academia are written in a way that shows that all he's really thinking about here is how it effects him, how it insults his ego and intelligence specifically. He takes this ire toward religion for what on the surface are good reasons [Gaddis as always skewers right wing religion thoroughly in this book], and projects them outward onto others, especially Liz, who as with Paul is reduced from her humanity and into his emotional dumping ground. And when she shows interest in his life, much like her husband shuts her out as though she's not even there, like the very idea of her being an intellectual equal is beneath him. Gaddis takes American masculinity and the [direct, underlying] violence it spreads to trial here, and the fact he does this so potently through a self-aggrandized mansplaining asshole who bears many resemblances to himself is one hell of a bold move. In an age of accountability for abusive men [or at least, we're getting there hopefully], this book and this character especially resonates so heavily it's crazy.
The actual texture of the conversations [and rants] here is interesting to note. A lot of the bureaucratic jargon went over my head, but I also think that's kind of the point. The novel's structure is basically composed by staking it to various points of informational intake - conversations flit chaotically, with only the briefest breaks in action, between phone calls, the radio, in-person arguments and long-winded rants containing so much disparate [and connected] information that I think the purpose is to make the reader feel as disoriented and overwhelmed as Liz is - she's surrounded by men who don't care about her other than to stroke their own egos, conversations that circle the drain and go nowhere that shirk her emotional needs, and all she wants to do is escape the torrent of violent information and sensory overload but she is trapped amidst a suffocating world of information she doesn't want to hear, doesn't want to be around but has to. The parallels to the modern world should be clear here, which is something Gaddis excels at between both this and TR. This endless stream of info [or as we like to call it online, content] is one of claustrophobia where we can't ever unplug ourselves long enough to escape its tidal wave.
And I think the glue that really holds this narrative together is indeed that fiercely political substance. The novel not only outlays the manifestation and repercussions of hegemonic masculinity, but it probes at the roots and the underlying systems in place. All the domestic toxicity in the novel is directly traceable back to the horrors of war and colonialism, which the book never once truly deviates away from. Like The Recognitions, the novel is much concerned with sin and how the idea of sin is manifested in societies predicated on the ugly chimera between neoliberal capitalism and Christian fundamentalism - bloodshed is justified in the name of God [who is in capitalism simply a disguise granted to the true god, the Almighty Dollar], and the cycle of trauma is perpetuated; because the patriarchal and capitalistic systems enabling war are not challenged, this overseas violence as a result becomes recursive, and it leaks all the way back into the home, the one place in which Americans erroneously think they are safe. Liz' suffering is her own, but hers is also the suffering of everyone who toils beneath the heel of wartime violence and its inherent relationship to dominator masculinity - in a system whose goal is the maintaining of power for power's sake, no one can escape such widespread evil unscathed.
This is a bleak and angry novel that doesn't provide clean cut answers to the problems it portrays, which is something that I in theory should be sour on; but artists are not philosophers, so they shouldn't be expected to provide all-encompassing solutions to the feelings they want us to sit with in their stories. But despite being black as pitch, it is a distillation of pure humanity at its core, and the tragedy and desperation that unfolds when all of us are ensnared in a system that is traumatic by its very design. I think its bleakness functions as a rallying cry to be better, despite Gaddis' own conservativism which he takes to task in this book; to see people like Liz, and see how they suffer and say "something about this has to change", because people like her are suffering in the world, in their billions, at any given time, and Gaddis is implicating all of us - including himself - for our ideas that we, in this society of rugged American individualism, can do this all alone, because we can't. But above all else it is just literature down to its very essence; the prose is some of the most lyrical realism ever put to paper, the narrative and especially its characters are stunning and nearly impossible to pull away from, the form and structure itself is a work of unfiltered, raw artistic energy. If you like fiction, this is absolutely unmissable.