just finished. like it. wasn't incredible. credit to him for seemingly inventing the style of using complicated/fractal plot structure with absurdist irony. or did he? but by the end, the sections not re: wyatt were pretty tough to get through, and his habit of making fun of people through overheard dialogue grew tired. anyways, i did like it - should i try "junior" or is it "j.r.", or is that worse? the themes of it sound more interesting. anyone who has read the recognitions and not seen orson welles' 'f is for fake' should check it out.
hearing that he read the golden bough right before writing it makes a fuck ton of sense - what are yer opinions on it?
There is an interview on youtube where he goes on about the title meanings and what he is trying to do with constraints.
Juan Reyes
reading it right now, p fun read :) story went right from wyatt to this otto fella and caught me off guard. gotta keep yer wits about ya with this book
Liam Campbell
Today I started it (the first chapter) and It's really good so far.
Juan Long
In a sense, you could say the encyclopedic, multi-narrative postmodern doorstop is just a modern manifestation of the picaresque novel (Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels) although it's closer to Rabelais, Sterne, Carlyle, with some help from the essayists.
Wikipedia already mentions the Clementine Recognitions as an influence, as well as Faust. Read JR, it'll change your life. The last part was kind of a slog, if only because the other characters weren't as interesting as the main ones; but when you look back to, you realize most of the novel is built on their stories, and they're minor manifestations of Wyatt's quest.
Ian Robinson
will pick up jr based on this
Gabriel Carter
i just finished it too, last night! I agree, Wyatt was the most compelling and relatable of the characters, and I feel a lot of connection I missed out on due to my lack of recognition of some of the headless voices that floated in and out of the narrative, though I think that was a part of the effect. It was a brilliant book, and I'm definitely getting into JR. ah, another picaresque fan! I'm surprised you came to this conclusion, I think a picaresque would be a hard sell on this, as a genre, I would happily give it some of its aspects that classification, it never struck me that any of the characters were in the true picaro style, even Wyatt lacked that aspect to him. I have yet to read anything modern that truly captures the picaresque, do you have any suggestions that I may have missed or that we might confer upon? I'm taking a break at the moment to read V., and incidentally, Gargantua and Pantagruel, so it's quite interesting that you mention them.
Jace Moore
(not getting into, but rather going to read it soon, JR that is)
Thomas Stewart
He pronounced it as jr, not junior in this one interview, but it's obviously supposed to look like junior.
Landon Hernandez
So JR is significantly better than The Recognitions?
Caleb Ramirez
There's a thread about this insubstantial topic now for some reason?
Lucas Lopez
The amazing part i noticed from this novel was how many ways the term recognitions could be used and interpreted, the number of times i considered how widely used the term was and yet how interconnected they all are served almost as a defining web, a glistening representation of the author's thoughts to maintain the thread while being deceptively invisible to its prey, the reader, you cannot help getting caught in it as you go down the sidewalk, and aren't ever sure if it's gone even after you've tried to wipe it away. Gaddis really sticks with you.
Henry Morales
>tfw working backwards through Gaddis to end up at JR and The Recognitions
Agape Agapē and Carpenter's Gothic are 10/10
Parker Lewis
So you didn't like A Frolic of His Own?
Christian Davis
>just finished. like it. wasn't incredible. Ok, now can you say it in a non-retarded way?
Nathaniel Powell
just finished it and liked it, but about halfway through it had the potential to be one of my very favorite books. didn't finish up that way.
John Robinson
Everything from the second Spain part towards the end and on did drag a bit I guess.
Kevin Sanders
Havent touched it yet
Thomas Morgan
Then you're not really going backwards are you? If you were the order would be
AA->Frolic->CG->J R->TR
Though actually Agape Agape was something he started over 50 years before it got published in its final form so it could be thought of as his earliest work in a backwards way.
Ian Richardson
Can someone be a pal and link me an epub of The Rush for Second Place?
Kayden Martinez
I've only been able to find it as an rtf for some reason.
Dylan King
Where?
Christian Ward
Just go to williamgaddis.org. Most of the essays in Rush..., along with Steven Moore's collection of essays, are posted there as PDFs.
Alexander Butler
#ebooks on IRCHighWay
They do also have the rest of his stuff including his letters in the usual formats.
It precedes The Matrix in it's exploration of what is real or what we agree is real. It uses religion to "anchor" the characters, like eliade discusses, because only then will we have some sense of identity. Mr. Pivner, at one point, sees humans as batteries.
Jonathan Jenkins
What did Anselm represent? Was he just a hypocrite? Does his ending redeem him at all?
Zachary Fisher
I'm thinking of reading this but I've got to finish the last 100 pages of Moby-Dick and I also want to read Ulysses, should I read that first? lol
Cameron Allen
He represents (sometimes hilarious) cynicism (which, for Gaddis, always covers up a deeply conflicted personality, i.e., the personality of the type of people who castrate themselves and become monks in out-of-the-way European countries).
Jayden Murphy
So did he really rape that little girl?
Henry Hernandez
nnn... no. Definitely not. Where'd you get that from? Sorry if I'm being dense, I haven't read the book for quite some time.
Logan Turner
Max says he's been raping her for a while in that one part where he Otto and Stanley are walking down the street then she ends up pregnant near the end right after Anselm takes off to Italy and her father suspects that he was the one who knocked her up.
Xavier Brown
I'm fairly convinced that it was all talk. He did some foul stuff, but mostly just to be offensive to distract from his real inner turmoil. And when he would humiliate himself while he was drunk it seemed aligned with the notion of Christian guilt that always follows such mistakes. Sort of like a forced cycle of sin and repentance. Sin to cover up and humiliation to repent. If I remember correctly, it was Max that claimed Anselm did it, and Max was a shit eating cockstain. I dont know if any of what I said makes sense.
Justin Robinson
Max did initially say it and it could've just been a rumor he was spreading because they hated each other, but despite Max being a fraud, most of the things he says in that part are true, and the girl's dad suspected Anselm did it as well, so it could've gone either way.
Besides, would he really have felt guilty enough to castrate himself if he didn't at least do something that fucked?
Ian Gomez
You could be correct, I read the book a year or so ago so I don't quite remember. I remember him carrying pornographic magazines but I thought he hid legitimate shit inside. Could be telling of a faux sense of perversion? I distinctly remember him being negligent towards the girl but that is it.
The castration thing does have me stumped.
Jeremiah Torres
Oh, and another thing is that Anselm was described as having a poxxy face which is a parallel to the guy who tried to rape the little girl that ended up dead and being canonized in Spain.
He might've caught something from Esme and raped the girl in accordance with that old belief that raping a virgin cures STDs. Gaddis kept it ambiguous, but you could make a case for him doing it.
Adam Flores
Shit well good idea. I had a different idea completely. Just that he served as the critique of the inauthenticity of modern Christians (hated Charles' Mom, disliked Stanley's naivete but liked his authenticity), while also being inauthentically blasphemous. Essentially, repressed Christianity. The nihilistic "how could God allow this all to exist" met with faith. He's named after the bloody saint but who knows what Gaddis thought of him.
All this doesn't mean he couldn't of diddled the girl of course. For reference, the rapist was at the monastery in Spain correct?
Eli Mitchell
No shit? I could have SWORN Carpenter's was the penultimate
Well....time to fix this
Juan Powell
have* it was bothering me
Gabriel Wilson
Yes. I don't doubt your analysis, but I think Gaddis being Gaddis opens up the possibility. No one in the book is necessarily beyond reproach no matter who they're named after or what they represent.
Yeah, Frolic was the penultimate one Carpenter's Gothic came out inbetween J R and Frolic. There's even an interview from around the time CG came out where the interviewer says Gaddis has had a "three book career" up to that point.
