Earlier today, I was digging through some old notebooks I kept from around the pandemic when I would try to write longhand as a meditation exercise. I was rereading through several important novels to me at the time half a decade ago--how time flies!--but scribbled haphazardly about several of them. Basically, I wanted to share the comments on The Recognitions here, which follow no particular order. And I felt kind of nostalgic. I spent some time today transcribing the comments, not really a review. I don't write reviews, but hopefully it'd spark some discussion and jog my memories. So thank you in advance of reading. Or apologies.
I’m done with The Recognitions. The novel is just as how I remembered it the first time as an enormous network of references and some of the most incisive narration I’ve read not just those more didactic pages but also the attempt to describe the suffocation of a big city like New York. But to be honest, I’m glad I no longer have to deal with Gaddis’ satirical intent any longer because he is woefully unfunny sometimes but most of the time there’s an erudite humor and the rare odd goofball points are great. It’s especially good when you have them meet like when you realize magic is a real element in The Recognitions. Plus, the literal way phrases impact characters such as the Degas bromide where the artist is a criminal and Stephan must live as a fugitive his entire life and restore paintings. It's not as simple redeeming clichés. It's like miracles, we are condemned by what we inherit in the circulation of received ideas. This is different from Flaubert. (Is Stephan actually restoring the paintings? Or is he making new forgeries? Or is he prefiguring their destruction? I think the situation a slight bit more ambiguous if I’m honest.) Religion is magic in despair and thus the novel has this constant delicious air about itself.
People often quote the last line of the novel about Stanley killing himself. Seldom played, but highly regarded. I think this line condemns us now and is mistakenly thought about as a metareference to the reception of the novel in which Gaddis as a young man honors himself with his Ecce homo moment, but that does not address the preceding three or so paragraphs beforehand. In particular, the way he “looks upon the work with malignity” because it hoarded all the love, killed three people in the course of its making. Gaddis also made a few references to a novel being like taking care of a terminal patient. The irony of the last line where the work reaches the adoration of strangers, the prototypical example of an individual bereft of love to find it in strangers. Religion in despair of a magic it can no longer access. It’s the saddest part of the novel and yet also entirely absurd. Does Gaddis relate to Stanley? On some level, given the melancholia of complete things they do share and how you could describe the novel as a pile of palimpsests. The network of those ideas, quotations (I found several from the Four Quartets on my own), but also the allusions weren’t an exact mystery most of the time either. Gaddis as an author often does provide citations when he feels it does him the most good.
Esoteric Christian novel? I mean Wyatt does implore the ritual and summon an actual devil. But that devil is way more sympathetic than Basil Valentine whose reason for continuing to exist in the novel stopped waaaaay before the epilogue. I will say Gaddis has the nasty habit to imply time, imply deeds through dialogue like when Wyatt finally leaves and Otto replaces him and there is a (for lack of a better term) match cut to imply a great length of time, believe it's a year in the trace of a few sentences. And then there is the crucifixion of Reverend Gwyon which is done through dialogue. People act like J R was such a surprise when he did a lot of these things in The Recognitions. If I had to complain about it, that would be the thing I would say. Perhaps the best formal device though is the disappearances, where for the main character (our Faust) the character remains nameless, anonymous, completely unknown to the world. And yet he cannot extricate himself from guilt. It’s almost Kierkegaardian when the clown rushes out to warn everyone about the fire, only getting laughs for his trouble. But the main character goes through a whole host of different names, people mistake him for others constantly, no one recognizes him in which the important critical task resides. That deep recognition of a work of art. It all ties neat. What did Naphta say of the medieval period? No artist signed their names? Something like that in The Magic Mountain. An epoch where the artist is deracinated in the face of their work given one must mirror the structure of care attributed to a god.
What is it with postwar works that identify the artist as an alchemist? Is it the immediate sense of transmutation? (A thing Gaddis is fascinated by and also parodies.) You have Malcolm Lowry with Under the Volcano and then you have Thomas Mann with Doctor Faustus. Often the devil is a self-destructive instinct in an ostensible genius, whether alcoholism, fascism, their talent and their drive to have it realized, because also all these novels have a thorough satirical intent that becomes apparent over time. Gaddis and his antagonistic relationship to modern art is the big thing. He never dismissed it entirely, loved Julian Schnabel's paintings after all. But also aware enough to realize the ideal is not the reality of an artwork. That someone like van de Eyck might have hated the people he was obligated to serve on a contractual basis through a guild. I guess that’s the strangest thing is how conservative the novel is ultimately, given how advanced it is for our contemporaries. It’s not Evelyn Waugh bad, though Gaddis has admitted to his admiration. Guess that brings me to the next point: faggotry. Young Gaddis is a kind of homophobe, less from open malice and more from a fascinated ignorance, possibly some interactions with the Beats. In some respect his treatment is akin to Dante: homosexuality condemned for its fraudulence, which is integral to its thematization here. Like, when you read a certain story from Carlos Williams about a lesbian couple, we don’t realize the portrayal was taken as a bit inherently ridiculous, rather than naturalism as expected. But I feel it balances itself out since Gaddis also cannot help recording the nastier parts of the art world any queer can recognize (unless whoever it is has money in it) and you find all the usual bullshit in the mouths of genuinely unsympathetic social climbers (a rare feat given the ugliness is so rank, likewise Flaubert does a good job). Hannah as a character has literally not a thing going on with her besides an inexplicable obsession with Stanley and being resentful with regard to “homosexuality.” But the adoption did happen then: Christopher Isherwood, just off the top of my head. If anything the scenario is funnier when you realize the tone of the conversation is a resistance to converting to Catholicism. You even have the character of Arny as a genuine reckoning with himself, trying to actually live like himself, dies at the moment which I could take as another negative portrayal. But two things: (1) his inability to read French; (2) the death of Stanley is a comparable moment I feel. It’s like the world is trying to kill any genuine or real feeling in a person. I mean it is far from a toothless satire. You can see a parallel sympathy that is perhaps somewhat limited in its acknowledgment of what Fuller makes capable. Wyatt has his sympathy, but also Fuller is a real source of magic, with narrative implications being due from his lack of civilized airs. (The question of the male mermaid has been a vexing question anyhow.) So while I wouldn’t exactly weep bitter tears if someone described the portrayal as racist, there is again a sympathy there which helps us find the bright spots in the work where religion is part of the despair. Women probably have the roughest deal in the novel, not even getting into the fact there is a collective interest most of the women have in radicalism. Not to mention his disdain for radical politics generally. Like is Hannah just another Esther but for Stanley? She doesn’t even get a dignified death. And Stephan finds a new reason to live in a way that reminds me of Rimbaud once he gave up poetry. (Blanchot said his letters from then are written quite badly. Perhaps that is a similar thing. I have no idea whether Stephan genuinely did restore the paintings. Or if he is deliberately destroying them, does it matter if the paintings are real ones? If he destroys a fake one versus a real one?) It's a hot bed of complex attitudes of the time. All the references to The Pill feels like another aspect to a novel which yearns for a world rewarded where religion has all the force of it to justify the demand of art. A time which as Pier Pasolini's Medea adaption best described as religion coming out of every orifice.
Otto as a character is an interesting point because he is such a desperate weirdo. I feel bad for him despite how he ends up in the end at a genuine spot. He went to the revolution (Gaddis’ way of narrating revolutionary conflict is straightforward and deliberately disconnected) and received a real injury for a sling. He became a better version of himself: Gordon. The irony is that he is miserable in this new situation and possibly insane. (Plenty of others share the same fate.) It’s a conundrum: the desire to make art is subsumed to the larger desire to live an interesting life where others' push art to a subsidiary role. It makes him interesting. The circulation of bad money being rooted in Otto makes the whole situation that much sadder. Otto is a walking representative of every half-born abortion who calls themselves an artist from the lack of things to do. He even admits in a much different sense to Wyatt that there isn’t much worth doing. Which makes him interesting, He is a counterfeit of what you have in Wyatt. He steals quotations from every possible source all the time and then is surprised other people say his novel sounds familiar. (And they stole their little adages and quips.) He has a complex sexual relationship with Esme. I doubt Wyatt is even capable of that. (The work hoards the love.) Even his brief (mistaken) relationship with his father-figure Sinisterra is based on a complex case of never being unable to see a larger picture. Unlike Stephan whom there is an actual relationship there with Mr Yak feeling genuine remorse over the death of Camilla. Otto can never be himself and found an escape in Gordon since he still feels on the run. He might become a genuine artist now since it is completely enwrapped in criminality. I mean is Sinisterra a genuine artist? Maybe he certainly approaches counterfeit money as an artform. Max is not a criminal, is rather a respectable figure. Which makes his constant thievery and yet disconnect really funny. I mean is Anselm different? He castrates himself, joins a monastery, writes a memoir, becomes a man in public relations. Then you realize he is a rapist and despite the new dregs is still doing the thing he always did as an individual poet with his unkempt appearance. Max does as much in the secular art world for a piece of stolen workman’s shirt.
The moments of autographia (i.e. how one writes about their own life) are funny because no one really contacts “Willie” directly and it is through the worst characters we even find the author in close proximity. Basil Valentine and a professional TV man in Ed Feasley. Then you realize he’s been at every party. Gaddis does not see himself immune in any capacity to the stern judgment of his own novel, which in metatextual consequence is also seen as writing for a very small audience. (Greater irony again is how fuckin' popular the whole thing is nowadays.) Remember reading somewhere that Gaddis had a rather brief interaction with the Beats. And in the troubled world of 1950s art and literature it defeats an insidious nostalgia for any kind. There are people today who yearn for abstract expressionism the way Gaddis yearned for Flemish guild masters.
I wish more was done with Rose. She plays off the twin themes of suicide and insanity related to the artist. Wyatt even says he paintings of eyes are beautiful. It seems Gaddis is not immune to what A. called the pathologization of the impulse to write in our discussion on Kafka where it is an impulse that is barely controllable. [I removed a few sentences here revealing personal information, but the gist is what made Kafka an interesting writer would have been annihilated today before it got off the ground.] It’s also the tension you find in a desire for anonymity. Where the response to anonymity is to perform a sneaky autographia. Gaddis would qualify as much as Joyce does for autofiction if we allow caveats. Hell even Benny commits suicide and does so in the ruination that Wyatt left behind. He lost his ability to make bridges an actual collaboration (which Wyatt does not ask credit for) and therefore lost any semblance of a purpose in life and thus became a success in advertisement. I mean people kill themselves for the lack of anything doing it for them. So maybe there is no dignity in these parades of suicides and it is Stephan who lives in his thankless task to restore paintings. Rose who lives after the attempt finds herself painting eyes. False witness to false witness. Maybe Stanley’s death wasn’t one of a design to become a performance (ironically). Compare Socrates to Seneca.
I almost forgot to mention Reverend Gwyon and his use of ritual slaughter to save his son and furthermore goes on to show the esotericism the novel might have a genuine attachment. Although this seems downstream from Sir Frazer and The Golden Bough. Hardly unique to Gaddis, but here it seems the dramatic aspect is from its genuineness.
Like I know a YouTuber is a low bar. [Not sure who I am referring to here anymore.] But the extremely simplistic idea the novel is merely a Catholic sermon to the fallen world does not really dig into the novel. Nor is Mr. Pivner simply a victim of advertisement. Mr Pivner is what some might call a "cold Christian" where the percepts are there but inexplicable. Science: or rather at least the utopian idealism scientific achievement is represented in the type of person it produces in Mr Pivner, later lobotomized by a son he found. (You can compare it to the fact Stephan is eating the bread made from his father’s ashes. In a way, the novel says parents are the victims of their children once they become old and find their place in the world. It’s a parody of the Freudian interpretation of myth.) Like I guess if you’re a Sam Harris aficionado the portrayal of Mr Pivner perhaps feels like an insult. But the real target comes down less to pious atheists than Christians without skin in the game. People anatomized to the littlest atom of their actual soul. (People who treat historical materialism as a hard science might also feel a sting, maybe.)
The Recognitions all in all is perhaps the novel with the most hold on me. Whenever I think of a superior work to my own endeavors, I inevitably come back to this novel. If one wants to make a critical gesture in reading the work, you have to leave some of yourself exposed also. I’m humbled, not in the way Gravity’s Rainbow is humbling. Where you can tell the novel has its own purpose and I do not feel the need to write like that at all. Gaddis here has presented a first novel that is supposed to be the last Christian novel. I always thought I wanted to write the first atheist novel in answer of it, maybe that is the motivation behind every novel with the demand of alpha and omega. To finally write a novel that is not beholden to religious impulse, to doctrinal terminology. And when I first encountered The Recognitions, there was a real sense of defeat. How could I ever write something so large in scale? I spent the last two and a half weeks totally immersed in this parade of fakes. The fact it is a gift from my best friend is also not lost on me each day I held the book in my hands. The peculiar quirks of my copy. It’s ragged appearance, some pages are printed upside down. The unique aspect of a book that is my own. Perhaps it is redeemed for that fact alone, despite it being a copy among many hundreds of others in warehouses, bookshelves, and closets.
As I said, it is one of the most important novels in my life. The least embarrassing one as well since my adolescence owes a lot to The Stranger and The Catcher in the Rye. At least To the Lighthouse forced me to leave behind my adolescence while Gaddis’ novel is what made me pursue literature on the level of the demand without realizing what it was for a long time. And I have only recently articulated what the demand even is.
But if I’m more honest with myself, I also find the satirical intent to be a burden. I’m glad to feel at last the weight of it off my chest. As much as the novel feels limitless, there are extremely noted points of dissatisfaction and even disappointment. Novels are never perfect, the pursuit of such a thing is more than enough. I can’t take Gaddis with me on every excursion and it is a high idiocy to attempt it. I need my own path. My own process and my own ideas. I have to!
It’s like that with Joyce. You can’t do what he does in the slightest. And that’s okay.