The Recognitions (New York Review Books Classics)

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There are colors- Colors of the patient sky and impatient homes. Colors of Flemish paintings and forged wonders. Colors of innovative minds and frustrated hearts. Colors of a colorful history and colorless present. And a quest. A quest for identifying real and fake behind the several layers of these colors that emphasize the purity of a blank canvass and the misery of a disquieted soul. I became acquainted with many new shades whose existence was unknown to me. In response to one of my updates while reading this, someone posted an article about this book (I am too exhausted from this book right now to find the article and directly quote it, but if you Google "Why are large, painful books considered classics?" and you will find it.) The gist of it is that people tend to rate these books highly because they are rating their accomplishment of finishing a chunky tome and not necessarily the quality of said tome. I can definitely see that being the case with The Recognitions. I also want to mention how funny this novel is by parts, I had quite a few proper "laugh out loud" moments. The satirical element is brilliantly sharp. He satirises everything from religion and the dumbness of mass culture to the Bohemians of the 50s. Below is just an example how a distinguished, well published and well known writer, the character from the novel writes:

The effort is worth it, for this book is a delight. But never mind - it stands on its own even if we don't get all the references. As Jonathan Franzen says about it, "Peel away the erudition, and you have The Catcher in the Rye: a grim winter sojourn in a seedy Manhattan, a quest for authenticity in a phony modern world." The book is structured in three parts and with many layers of interest such as multiple languages and cultural history; and like Gravity’s Rainbow, in it’s complexity of form, draws upon numerous esoteric forms of reference such as art history and religion, mythology, meta physics, astronomy, mummification and even witchcraft.

The novel begins fairly straightforwardly, with Reverend Gwynn, father of young Wyatt, and the story of how his wife Camilla perished. A man having, or about to have, or at the very least valiantly fighting off, a religious experience” La traducción de Juan Antonio Santos es - en mi humilde opinión porque no la he contrastado con el original - excelente. Me parece increíble que en 1.400 páginas de difíciles equilibrios y virtuosismos de todo tipo no me haya chirriado nada. Milagro. The number of printed interviews with Gaddis can be counted on one hand: he wondered why anyone should expect an author to be at all interesting, after having very likely projected the best of them William Gaddis was the author of five novels. He was born in New York December 29, 1922. The circumstances why he left Harvard in his senior year are mysterious. He worked for The New Yorker for a spell in the 1950s, and absorbed experiences at the bohemian parties and happenings, to be later used as material in The Recognitions. Travel provided further resources of experience in Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Spain and Africa and, perhaps strangest to imagine of him, he was employed for a few years in public relations for a pharmaceutical corporation. Sé que no puedo y sé que no debo hacer una reseña de estas 1.400 páginas, que me han dejado exhausta y que no me atrevería a recomendar a nadie. ¿Me ha gustado conocer a Gaddis? Sí. ¿Tengo ganas de leer más del autor? Pues de momento no. En cualquier caso, la lectura de este tótem de la literatura posmoderna, escrito en 1955, es una experiencia única que encuentro imposible resumir. Así que me voy a limitar a escribir unos cuantos comentarios random, cualidad que de hecho es parte fundamental en este libro: los diálogos sin sentido, las situaciones surrealistas, los personajes que aparecen, desaparecen y mutan sin seguir una lógica... Pues allá van mis apostillas desordenadas a esta obra de Gaddis:

He began looking wildly round the room where shapes refused to identify themselves, and endured only in terms of the others, each a presence made possible only by what everything else was not, each suffering the space it filled to bear it only as a part of a whole which, with a part standing forth to identify itself, would perish.” What greater comfort does time afford, than the objects of terror re-encountered, and their fraudulence exposed in the flash of reason? Carpenter's Gothic (1985) offered a shorter and more accessible picture of Gaddis's sardonic worldview. The continual litigation that was a theme in that book becomes the central theme and plot device in A Frolic of His Own (1994)—which earned him his second National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. There are even two Japanese cars called the Isuyu and the Sosumi. Among the other characters is the hapless Otto, first encountered working in Latin America on his grand play.Many people say it is a difficult novel. I did not feel that way. I sincerely enjoyed it. As any great book one can read it on many levels. And you do not need to be an expert on literature to enjoy it. I loved working on the sentences. But even if you do not enjoy such stuff, you would still find a lot to like. There is a lot of intertextuality. If this is the problem, here is brilliant and detailed guide which is famous by itself: Take this description of Madrid’s Retiro Park, seen through the eyes of Reverend Gwyon, early in the novel: The Recognitions is the 1955 debut novel of US author William Gaddis. The novel was initially poorly received by critics. After Gaddis won a National Book Award in 1975 for his second novel, J R, his first work gradually received new and belated recognition as a masterpiece of American literature. [1]

The complex design of the book, with characters reappearing in different guises and in different situations, small details taking on new significance as they are reexamined, make it a book that benefits from a second reading -- another thought that will scare off potential readers. It is the biggest, funniest Marx Bros. film ever committed to text, and don’t worry too much about what it “means.” Like any great novel, it’s simply about the emotional lives of complex characters. If there’s a message, it’s simple: America has sold out everybody for crap. And the most successful wheeler-dealer is just a little kid looking for someone to talk to. JR knows making money isn’t hard; it just requires enough dedication to get up every morning and do stupid, dishonest things. In the ’60s and ’70s, when it was written, “JR” was about how bad America was getting. Today it’s about how awful America is. The Reverend Gwyon, Wyatt’s father and the town minister. His interest in anthropology and mythology and subsequent dissatisfaction with Christianity lead him to worship the sun. He instills in Wyatt a love of learning and a passion for a spiritual context for the details of life. When his wife dies aboard ship in transit from New England, he buries her in Spain and seeks solace in a Franciscan monastery in Spain before returning to his young son. The introduction to Catholicism impels his rejection of Calvinism and his increasing mysticism, culminating in his sun worship. Now available as a "Penguin Twentieth-Century Classic" it is at least readily available; one suspects that it is still not widely read.

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The book is not an easy read. It is not only difficult keeping up with the myriad and complicated plot lines and who is who. As he will do more so in J. R., Gaddis writes much of the novel in the form of dialogue and it is often not clear who is actually speaking. Indeed, he clearly does not want to make it easy for his reader. However, there is no doubt that this is one of the great novels of the second half of the twentieth century and essential reading for anyone interested in ideas of identity, authenticity and fakery. Publishing history

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 Another thing that I read was that the book was not well received at first, but then it started getting accolades later on because of its complexity and difficulty to read. I am not sure why that is a good thing, but it was enough for it to become a staple on many "must read before you die" lists.

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Franzen compared the novel to a "huge landscape painting of modern New York, peopled with hundreds of doomed but energetic little figures, executed on wood panels by Brueghel or Bosch." [8] He believed that its disappointing reception negatively affected Gaddis's future development as a novelist. [8] Gaddis did not publish another novel for 20 years. Millions of *masterpieces* churned out like cheap garments...(said in the voice of an angry Dr. McCoy).