Summarize this book in your own words

Wyatt is not incorruptibly pure, he is supposed to be Faust. Stanley doesn't follow his example. Jeez man get it together

Great novel though, at least you read it

guy raised by a religious woman that influences him into being abrilliant artist, but renders him incapable of creating his own work, in a strange defiance against god's creation, he forges art, all the while, some cuck runs around pretending he can write, and lusts over a whore, and a pedophile rapes and impregnates a girl somewhere along the way. a climax occurs when a lightning bolt lights the scene of a ritualistic sacrifice of virginity by a woman who was left confused by the same woman who had taught the forger. after that, more cuckery, and the forger eventually trying to figure shit out, and goes to find his daughter someplace. Then a guy plays an organ until the building falls.

Also there's a representation of lucifer that dies in a suit of armor in a rather gruesome way. Really fun book.

Wyatt had a daughter? Fucking what?
I'm pretty damn drunk but I'm like 95% certain that didn't happen

lol wasn't the girl retarded? and did wyatt keep that painting he took from his dad's. what was good with the painting. did he copy it and sell it?

I'm pretty sure he got that hookers pregnant?

it was alluded to, i had to find out from the annotations

he says in the novel that the table he left with his father was a fake, and that the one he brought to the guy (who i'm not sure is actually satan or if valentine was) was the genuine article. the girl was taught to be the same way that wyatt's aunt was, incredibly religious, and she had been taking wyatt's aunt's mercury containing medication for quite some time, which unquestionably fucked up her thinking, when she realized that Wyatt wasn't jesus, just about the moment that Wyatt asks whether or not he was the man for whom jesus died, she loses her innocence, and a lightning bolt much strikes as the devout and absorbed father is confronted with the underground genius son. I read faust alongside the recognitions, and the two climaxes were probably the most incredible parts, all the threads that tied together the climax in the recognitions nearly struck me dead with wonder. the end of the first part of faust was also very hard to ignore. Also reading faust help me "get" master & margarita quite a lot more.

oh and this was the painting i guess

but didn't Janice the retarded girl get diddled behind the piano at church or some shit. I thought the book says she's a retard? like full out says she's retarded. she's fucking boiling a potato lol

that would be a sick table. don't they find out his is a fake tho. the paint seller g

huh, i guess she did, i really hadn't paid much attention to her until the climax. i'm really excited to read the book several more times in my life. there was a lot i missed or didn't understand to be sure.

Young people struggle against the loss of god and the unifying narrative he provides, the loss of a clear conception of what it means to be authentic, and the loss of a dependable future. The relationship between man and art is the dominant means of exploration for all of these concepts. The characters all face personal turmoil which they attempt to solve through some use of art, their myriad approaches to doing this act like 'case studies' in how to live in the modern, postwar world.

This book is large and complex and it is hard to come to a summation of its concepts that is specific without being reductive. I will add that in addition to seeking answers in art (its analysis, creation, appreciation, replication, etc.), a lot of what the characters are doing is attempting to recreate a grand narrative to live within. Something they do partially to feel less alone, but also out of a hope that it will herald them in the future. This desire for a future via grand narrative puts many of the characters into a tricky relationship with religion, as religion is the ultimate unifying narrative, but is seen within their generation as emblematic of the past and the dead pre-war generations. So the characters are stuck in a loop where they want narrative in order to ensure their future, but the best narrative (religion) is no longer hip, so a future means sacrificing a social life. Basically the book describes modern man as trying to reconcile two needs: complex ideology to explain the ineffability of modern life and society to distract from it. The characters want answers, but they also just don't want to feel so damn alone, so the characters seek authenticity as it is representative of the relationship between the dichotomous halves of their emotional + ideological turmoil. That's why Otto idolizes Wyatt, he seems to have almost no need for human contact so he can devote himself entirely to ideological issues, which is what Otto thinks he wants to do. So Otto writes a book to live out the narrative of grappling with the conceptual, when really he just wants people to like him, he's lonely. All the characters feel really alone and in their ideological confusion are driven away from other people in their search for an answer to their loneliness.

I should go further but I gotta go to bed, if this thread is still up tomorrow I'll come back and rejoin the conversation. This probably didn't make a whole lot of sense but maybe someone will get something out of my unstructured thoughts.

I got something my man. it just made me realize how fucking good this book really was..because everyone else always seems to have a different take on it. there's just so much in the book. it's filled with so much fucking shit. I love esme.

i always thought it was neat how many times the term "recognitions" is used, and in how many ways, it always has a different shade or perspective each time, and it's nice to see how he plays with it.