Honestly, can someone please explain this book to me

Maybe from a formalist perspective, though I would say Esme's emotional breakdown is more impressive.

But hey, maybe you just care more about religion than me.

I just thought it was the funniest

Why? I thought the funniest was Otto.

Like I literally couldn't stop laughing when he thought he could just add an 'a' to the word 'play' to make it Spanish but ends up asking all the maids if they've seen the beach he's misplaced in his room.

Lol otto is the epitome of Veeky Forums. I really liked when wyatt came home and no one knew who he was.

I did think the idea of a preacher converting to Mithraism and most people in the town not really noticing the difference was pretty funny.

I have the Recognitions lying on the backburner. Can somebody explain what Gaddis means by "..."

I mean, is it a lacunae or a pause in the dialogues?

It's contextual. Sometimes it means a person was cut off, sometimes they trail off and for others, it can be a pause in dialogue or like a lapse where you just jump ahead because the person was being long-winded and it is as if he is simply implying there was more stuff they were saying but that it isn't actually important enough to have you read.

>Recktall Brown
really, a dirty ass poop joke in a name?

And Basil Valentine was an alchemist. I suspect it's partly a dirty joke, but also an allusion to the use of feces in alchemical literature.

>Basil Valentine was an alchemist
I dont get the joke there

Basilius Valentinus was a real guy

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Valentine

It's a reference to an alchemist that is actually not a real person but was rather a pen name for several other alchemists.

It's thematically relevant.

>I don't believe he has some huge thematic undertaking
>i've already read it, i get the plot, but it seems like all style, barely any substance
>That I think is a rough summation of the central conflict of the book, namely that between striving for artistic integrity in a world that doesn't care and then questioning what value that integrity even has to begin with.

Holy shit, this board sucks. The title of the book -- the recognitions. Recognizing thinks. Recognizing means, you've seen something before, and you realize what it is. It's unoriginal, not new, it's something you've experienced before. The motif of "recognition" -- recognizing something as fake, recognizing something as a plagiary, or FAILING to recognize things as such or failing to recognize something or someone. So, connected with this, throughout the entire book runs the theme of unoriginality, of fakes, of frauds, of hoaxes, of everything in our lives being something we could potentially recognize as just coming from somewhere else.

Christianity (apparently) just comes from Mithraism, has taken lore from Mithraism. This is touched upon in the book with Wyatt's dad.

The importance of Wyatt being someone who forges art.

In today's world, Gaddis feels it's harder and harder to make truly original art -- all that's left is just recombining what we've read, what we've experienced of other art. Thus all the allusions to other artists and books and philosophers, starting almost every chapter with a quote from literature/the classics, all the references to world mythologies and religions. Can we make anything truly original? or is anything we can make just pastiche from what we've experienced, just something that could possibly be recognized as fake? (Connect it to Jung, who also heavily influenced Gaddis, Jung uniting values and images and symbolisms from different world cultures under the idea of the collective unconscious; can we make any new contribution to culture, or, again, does it all just well up from a collective unconscious, can nothing truly new or original be made? Ecclesiastes -- there is nothing new under the sun.

Continuing on in this mystical vein, one can also compare this to Plato's idea of anamnesis, which literally means "without amnesia", the idea of recollecting something. Plato thought all knowledge we have is really just the soul recollecting knowledge from its abode in the heavenly realm of Forms.)

This isn't so far off from what I said (your last quote).

This is also connected with Gaddis's depressed pessimistic view (partially influenced Spengler, I think, and definitely influenced by Nietzsche as well as Dostoevsky) that we were entering a new nihilistic age of civilization where old traditional values were breaking down. So instead of real old moral and religious values that bound communities together like faith, hope, and love, all we have is fake values, fake sincerity, fake goodness. We can try to be Christians, try to think life has intrinsic meaning, but with existentialism, the advent of modern science, with what Nietzsche calls the death of God, this feels increasingly insincere. We're just falsely trying to mimic the real faith that people had in a less scientific age. So another goal of the book is to force us to RECOGNIZE the falsity of the values of modern civilization.

The beginning of the book, the very first sentence, for God's sake, is about how Camilla had always enjoyed masquerades -- of the safe sort, where they can be dropped at the critical moment where the mask assumes reality. For Gaddis, modern civilization is made up of the unsafe sort, where we mistake the mask for reality. Thus all the social satire in the book of parties and phonies and the hipster artistic crowd of New York, such as Otto. These are people who are entirely artificial personality, dominated by appearing nice to other people. So Gaddis wants us to recognize them as frauds, and to recognize modern society as built up on artifice, masks. Thus, again, all the douchebags in the book, all the satire about people who are trying to look good, all the narcissists.

"Recognize" is also an interesting word because sometimes people use it in the sense of "recognizing the truth", as if we already knew what truth was (again, Plato's anamnesis).

Re -- to do again. Cognize -- to think. The book also tries to get us to "think again" -- think really sincerely about things we haven't thought sincerely about before, tries to get us to reconsider our values and to look at the modern world and its values anew.

I don't think anyone in this thread doesn't understand that the social satire is about all of these people being phonies.

I think though that you are overestimating how highly Gaddis thinks of old moral and religious values. I am lead to believe in several sections that his opinion on these matters is that Wyatt is idealizing that period and that he is wrong to do so.

Here's quote from the speech Valentine gives to Wyatt after Brown dies that I think supports my reading of the book:

>Vulgarity, Cupidity, and power! Is that what frightens you? Is that all you see around you, and you think it was different then? Flanders in the fifteenth century, do you think it was all like the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb? What about the paintings we've never seen? The trash that's disappeared? Just because we have a few masterpieces left, do you think they were all masterpieces? What about the pictures we've never seen and never will see? That were as bad as anything that's ever been done. And your precious van Eyck, do you think he didn't live up to his neck in a loud vulgar court? In a world where everything was done for the same reasons everything's done now? for vanity and avarice and lust? and the boundless egoism of these Chancellor Rolins? Do you think they knew the difference between what was bizarre and what was beautiful? that their vulgar ostentation didn't stifle beauty everywhere, everywhere? the way its doing today? Yes, damn it, listen to me now, and swear by all that's ugly! Do you think any painter did anything but hire himself out? These fine altarpieces, do you think they glorified anyone but the vulgar men who commissioned them? Do you think van Eyck didn't curse having to whore away his genius, to waste his talents on all sorts of vulgar celebrations, at the mercy of people he hated?

So basically, I see Gaddis's opinion on the matter of authenticity and the idea that we are living in a corrupted world completely different than the past as an illusion. I think that he thinks that people worried about being original have lost the fucking point of making art to begin with and that this conflict between artistic integrity and commerce has always been around.

This is not to say that I don't see all of the stuff about recognition and references and plagarism, I just don't agree with your end conclusion about what thoses themes point to, but I'm not claiming to have a PhD level reading of this book (and I hope I never do).

This. This is why i love this book. There is just so much to talk about and everyone has a different opinion on what it all means. Fucking genius.

>I think though that you are overestimating how highly Gaddis thinks of old moral and religious values. I am lead to believe in several sections that his opinion on these matters is that Wyatt is idealizing that period and that he is wrong to do so.
Gaddis is a cynical romantic. He appreciates the "old values" more than you'd think. He remained a Protestant Christian to the end of his life. Even in Agape Agape, there's a sort of outrage at the increasing nihilism of the modern world. Look at Stanley: he clearly loves the character of Stanley, but portrays how the modern world doesn't have a use for Stanley and will degrade people like Stanley, shown hilariously by Stanley in the end forcing himself onto/having brutal sex with Esme. I think what he really advocates is coming to terms with the modern world, admitting its cynicism and valuelessness, not being naive, but still holding on to some values -- such as the values of following one's conscience, intellectual development, and an appreciation for the arts and culture.

Basil Valentine is an asshole, that's the point. He's the man, along with Brown, who corrupts Wyatt. He tries to make him believe that there was never anything good, it was all shit, that even the great masters had to be phonies. There's also some truth in what Valentine says because Gaddis is a nuanced author and doesn't create caricatures -- in fact, I think he refers in the book cynically/satirically to viewing the past with rosy lenses; I think he goes so far as to use that cliche of rose-colored glasses. However, Gaddis was reading people like Spengler and Toynbee, influential historians who thought we were entering a new stage of history. There's a definite preoccupation in the book with the "newness" of the modern era in comparison to past ones, a feeling of something new, a radical break from past traditions while simultaneously wanting/needing old traditions to sustain us.

>However, Gaddis was reading people like Spengler and Toynbee, influential historians who thought we were entering a new stage of history. There's a definite preoccupation in the book with the "newness" of the modern era in comparison to past ones, a feeling of something new, a radical break from past traditions while simultaneously wanting/needing old traditions to sustain us
Oh yeah, this is also heavily related to Nietzsche, as I mentioned. Nietzsche/the death of God permeates the book. Stanley is like a darkly comical version of Alyosha from the Brother Karamazov, but written in the light of Nietzsche.

A+

The authenticity of modern life.
But in large part it’s just an examination of a certain sub-section of New York culture.

Sounds like a boring book thanks anons I'll never read it

Best Gaddis thread we've had in a long time. Thanks anons. Do keep going.
I haven't read it yet, but here's my addition to the thread:
>be me, college student in Europe
>try to buy the recognitions
>no bookstore has it, nada in public libraries
>cheapest online option i could find was 60 euros.
>miraculously find copy for 18euros.
>wait 12 weeks
>order gets cancelled (i get a refund tho)
>frustration.jpg.
>finish college (yaay) decide to go study history at Uni.
>Walk through enormous Uni library
>they have the complete word of Gaddis.

Felt so good.

I checked, by still no Women and Men tho.

Cliff got a great review on it. Just wach that.

i obviously picked up on the themes a little, but it seemed to lack unity. also, what's the point of stanley dying? what's the point of wyatt's ending and his insanity?

I don't think it was implied that stanley fucked esme. I think the implication of that section was that he came when trying to restrain her.

meant for

Gaddis saw that traditional Catholicism was the last bastion of authenticity in the modern world but he couldn't himself commit to Catholicism, so the book has got to be weird and with a meme ending.

This is literally and unironically the """"""moral"""""""""" of the story

I mean they were clearly fucking on the ship. And I feel like in that specific section it’s at least alluding that they were fucking. Gaddis is just more subtle than say Pynchon.

I'm not as certain, though I've not read the rest of his work.

Do you think he's essentially saying that the world is too impure for Wyatt? That Wyatt is a true artist and that because the world is so cynical he'll never make it?

I just don't see anything in the book to suggest that Gaddis sees the past as being different than that and I also think there's a clear distinction in temperament between Brown and Valentine.

Brown is a pure capitalist. He has absolutely no interests or values besides money. Valentine is different though, he's a bit savvier. He knows a ton about art history, etc. And he can converse with Wyatt very fluently. I think Wyatt is definitely being portrayed as too naive. I don't think Valentine is a role model or anything but I came away with the understanding that he is what a modern artist is, a savvy operator that sees, understands and plays the game. The playing of the game is more important than the art to most people. Wyatt of course cares about the art above all and this, in my opinion, is why he cannot succeed.

Oh, another interesting thing I was thinking about is that The Recognitions is essentially the same premise as The Fountainhead except that instead of being a bullshit "American dream" fantasy about a self made artist with a vision, it actually looks at how the real systems and players operate in this environment.

A true artist must live deliberately.

Well he did succeed in stabbing Valentine to death.

So really, who won that one?

>Do you think he's essentially saying that the world is too impure for Wyatt? That Wyatt is a true artist and that because the world is so cynical he'll never make it?
Yeah. You don't see this in JR as well? Where Bast is a somewhat idealistic musician who's almost too naive to be an artist in the modern world, and grows more cynical as the book goes on? Gaddis is saying: it's hard to be an artist today, it's hard to have ideals today because we're living in a cynical world. He doesn't go full Nietzschean repute-all-ideals because he's not cynical enough, or full Dostoyevskian sentimentality/return-to-Christianity because he's not idealistic enough. His works are works of disillusionment. As I've said, Gaddis was familiar with and influenced by Spengler and Toynbee, both of whom viewed civilizations as organic entities which were born, developed, reached the peak of maturity/adult age, then declined and died. The implication being that Western civilization, too, had to die. The book has a definite constant feeling in it of the decaying of modern civilization, and it only took place in the 1940s/1950s mostly.

You can also see Gaddis's works getting more cynical, more angry, more disillusioned with the modern world and less idealistic as they go on. I find it hard not to see Gaddis's heavy hatred of the modern world and appreciation of the past, even The Recognitions feels like it was written by an old man -- but in a touching and good way, in my opinion.

Both Wyatt and Bast are parodies of the "tortured artist", I can't believe anyone is dumb enough to take them at face value

I'm reading JR soon, I'll have to consider this reading but I'm still a bit skeptical

I don't know that that really means much unless you want to assert that Wyatt is righteous wrath of karma.

Personally, I view it as Wyatt rejecting a painful reality.

lmao

I insist that you're misreading them to appear less naive and gooey than you really are. Gaddis was, honestly, and sincerely going for the tortured artist trope. I really think that and no one can take that away from me.

I'm the guy you've been talking to this entire thread, not the guy you just responded to.

I don't think Wyatt is a parody but I do think Gaddis thinks he's too naive.

He does, but he still has sympathy for him.

I think though, as you've said, Gaddis does flesh out all of the characters. He doesn't really want any straw men or parodies taking the central stage.

I still have sympathy for him but the way I read the book is that Gaddis is laying out a state of affairs and leaving it up to the reader to decide what is appropriate because I don't think he thinks that anything can meaningfully be done about that state of affairs and Wyatt is definitely not going to succeed under this system.

Is this the greatest novel of all time? If nothing else, the greatest pomo novel of all time?

no, re-read the book fuckhead

Man, it's like we read a different book. All I saw was Wyatt constantly self-sabotaging and then trying to find external things to blame. The "system" is irrelevant...