Tried JR and dgot filtered. Actually it was the book that made me realize I don't really enjoy those modern experimental books. Give me a well those story and I'll be a happy man.
JR is not exactly experimental, it is just written in dialog instead of your standard 3rd person.
just picked it up is it worth the hype or just some more post modern onanism like barth
Recognitions is modernist, Gaddis called it high modernism which is as good of a term as any even though the term sort became meaningless when postmodernism failed to coalesce.
I'd agree with TR having no real "postmodernism" in it. It's a very straightforward story, just incredibly ornate in its prose. There's metacommentary about art, sure, but there was metacommentary about art in fricking Don Quixote.
I feel like people only assume it's pomo because it wasn't lauded until the point of the 20th century when everything else was already pomo and because people bring him and Ol' Ruggles up in the same breath so often.
Tried JR and dgot filtered. Actually it was the book that made me realize I don't really enjoy those modern experimental books. Give me a well those story and I'll be a happy man.
Of all complaints to have about the book, you genuinely didn't enjoy it?
JR is some of the most fun I've ever had reading, it's fricking hilarious. I don't think anybody else could ever handle the slow destruction of that shared apartment the way Gaddis could. And trying to write in that style is great fun as well, but I can only keep it up for one chapter or scene at a time.
>just incredibly ornate in its prose
I would say intricate, not ornate. There is little that is just ornament and those sentences are meticulously crafted. The standard excerpt;
>No fragment of time nor space anywhere was wasted, every instant and every cubic centimeter crowded crushing outward upon the next with the concentrated activity of a continent spending itself upon a rock island, made a world to itself where no present existed. Each minute and each cubic inch was hurled against that which would follow, measured in terms of it, dictating a future as inevitable as the past, coined upon eight million counterfeits who moved with the plumbing weight of lead coated with the frenzied hope of quicksilver, protecting at every pass the cherished falsity of their milled edges against the threat of hardness in their neighbors as they rung together, fallen from the Hand they feared but could no longer name, upon the pitiless table stretching all about them, tumbling there in all the desperate variety of which counterfeit is capable, from the perfect alloy recast under weight to the thudding heaviness of lead, and the thinly coated brittle terror of glass.
Change a few words to make this about writing instead of riding a crowded subway and I think we have a fairly good summary of Gaddis' style.
>it is just written in dialog instead of your standard 3rd person.
Well that sounds great. Guess I'll bump Gaddis further up my reading list. Should I start with this or Jr.?
Doesn't really matter which you start with but the dialog in JR is all unattributed which filters many, takes some time to get the hang of keep track of characters through voice alone.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>but the dialog in JR is all unattributed
So just like Stella Maris?
Tried JR and dgot filtered. Actually it was the book that made me realize I don't really enjoy those modern experimental books. Give me a well those story and I'll be a happy man.
JR is such good fun. I reread it this last autumn and had much more fun with it than the first two times I read it. The first time I read it I was grasping to keep the plotlines and characters straight and felt overwhelmed, and the second time I spent too long tying together all the names and connections. This time, it felt like I was walking down a forest path I'd already wandered through a few times and could actually enjoy and appreciate it. Besides that, Gaddis is hilarious. He said he couldn't stand big, long, serious works with no humor or jokes in them.
If you're going to read JR, definitely watch the video of Gass introducing Gaddis at some conference, and you can consult the Gaddis annotations and the various #occupygaddis blogs that sprung up a few years ago where people did group readings of JR. the "ijustreadaboutthat" is especially helpful because of the bulletpoint plot points and Simon who seems to have at least read the book once before and clears up points of uncertainty.
11 months ago
Anonymous
[...]
TR was the first Gaddis I read, I read it when I was 24 and fresh out of college. It is a young person's book—as Joseph McElroy says, when talking about his first novel, A Smuggler's Bible—,that tries to encompass all of humanity and experience in a page count to match (Beckett had said the same about his endcap to MPTK, "Echo's Bones"). If you read it when you're in your young and bold years, you will feel like you're standing next to a waterfall of sheer force and beauty, you could only wish you had the time and talent to gather all points of your focus into this concentrated, multifarious work.
If you do read TR first, I would highly recommend reading Gass' introduction (NYRB pushed it off to the back as an Afterword but it is an Introduction in my Penguin and Dalkey editions, as it should be) and only consulting the Gaddis Annotations when you feel it's necessary (a lot of times it feels like filler, interesting to look back on after you read the whole thing and the whole picture is fresh in your mind).
I will not lie: it took me 6 months to get through TR the first time, but the same is true of the first times I read Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Canterbury Tales, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tom Jones, and many other big tomes that I now happily reread (Tristram Shandy is an exception: it is so readable, you go back and reread certain passages just to enjoy them again before moving on). Like Nabokov says, good readers are rereaders.
Forgot to mention, the first 100 pages are especially dear to me. I think Gaddis puts everything, all the seeds and germinating ideas of the novel, in the first 100 pages and in such plain, concise, crystal clear writing that reminds me of Flaubert in its precision. I especially enjoy the chapter of Wyatt in Paris (previous pic related) where he lays out all of human corruption and profanity in a nutshell.
Thank you for these posts. I appreciate seeing some sincere enthusiasm on IQfy. Greatly looking forward to giving both of these a read.
[...]
JR is such good fun. I reread it this last autumn and had much more fun with it than the first two times I read it. The first time I read it I was grasping to keep the plotlines and characters straight and felt overwhelmed, and the second time I spent too long tying together all the names and connections. This time, it felt like I was walking down a forest path I'd already wandered through a few times and could actually enjoy and appreciate it. Besides that, Gaddis is hilarious. He said he couldn't stand big, long, serious works with no humor or jokes in them.
If you're going to read JR, definitely watch the video of Gass introducing Gaddis at some conference, and you can consult the Gaddis annotations and the various #occupygaddis blogs that sprung up a few years ago where people did group readings of JR. the "ijustreadaboutthat" is especially helpful because of the bulletpoint plot points and Simon who seems to have at least read the book once before and clears up points of uncertainty.
TR was the first Gaddis I read, I read it when I was 24 and fresh out of college. It is a young person's book—as Joseph McElroy says, when talking about his first novel, A Smuggler's Bible—,that tries to encompass all of humanity and experience in a page count to match (Beckett had said the same about his endcap to MPTK, "Echo's Bones"). If you read it when you're in your young and bold years, you will feel like you're standing next to a waterfall of sheer force and beauty, you could only wish you had the time and talent to gather all points of your focus into this concentrated, multifarious work.
If you do read TR first, I would highly recommend reading Gass' introduction (NYRB pushed it off to the back as an Afterword but it is an Introduction in my Penguin and Dalkey editions, as it should be) and only consulting the Gaddis Annotations when you feel it's necessary (a lot of times it feels like filler, interesting to look back on after you read the whole thing and the whole picture is fresh in your mind).
I will not lie: it took me 6 months to get through TR the first time, but the same is true of the first times I read Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Canterbury Tales, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tom Jones, and many other big tomes that I now happily reread (Tristram Shandy is an exception: it is so readable, you go back and reread certain passages just to enjoy them again before moving on). Like Nabokov says, good readers are rereaders.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Forgot to mention, the first 100 pages are especially dear to me. I think Gaddis puts everything, all the seeds and germinating ideas of the novel, in the first 100 pages and in such plain, concise, crystal clear writing that reminds me of Flaubert in its precision. I especially enjoy the chapter of Wyatt in Paris (previous pic related) where he lays out all of human corruption and profanity in a nutshell.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>the first 100 pages are especially dear to me. I think Gaddis puts everything, all the seeds and germinating ideas of the novel, in the first 100 pages and in such plain, concise, crystal clear writing that reminds me of Flaubert in its precision
God, i fricking love the first 100 pages of The Recognitions. It's incredible how much deeper of a meaning it takes when you reread it after finishing the novel. I've always thought that if I ever write a book of my own I would try to emulate what Gaddis does in the first chapter of The Recognitions.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>It is a young person's book
I felt this too but not in the sense that McElroy maybe did. I read it too when I just graduated college and started working and I think the book's bitter tone really struck a chord with me when I was starting to get jaded from the day to day grind. So it's no wonder that a book about how authentic experience is so hard to come by ended up becoming one of my favorites, as I read it at the point when I had started to feel the same way. I really wonder whether or not I'll hold the same opinion of the book when I'm in my thirties.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I'm the anon you're replying to:
speaking as someone who's in their (early) thirties, has worked a full-time (corporate) job since college, and has reread Gaddis a few times, I can say that I now look back at TR with fond memories, but I can understand why and how Gaddis took 20 years to come out with JR. It is, as Gass writes, "a wholly descendental work." Idealism and will can only carry you so far, this will to see everything set right (I thought about joining an order or a monastery after I read this, but found religion limiting) is really a suicidal, self-destructive impulse on par with Burroughs' weirdest thoughts. Gass: "the progression from the concerns of The Recognitions to those of JR is completely reasonable. The Recognitions, indeed, tackles the fundamental questions: What is real, and where can we find it in ourselves and the things we do? But a generation later there are no fundamental questions to be posed. JR creates a thoroughly descendental world. It is a world of mouth, machination, and money. A few reviewers of JR, more perceptive than most, longed for the spiritual struggle of the earlier book, but—reader—just look around: that struggle has been lost. The large has smothered the small. Be petty enough and the world may make you a Prince. The cheat, not the meek, has inherited the earth."
Gaddis is a gateway to an incredibly bleak, sarcastic, misanthropic, perilous outlook on normal, real, everyday life.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>It is a young person's book
I felt this too but not in the sense that McElroy maybe did. I read it too when I just graduated college and started working and I think the book's bitter tone really struck a chord with me when I was starting to get jaded from the day to day grind. So it's no wonder that a book about how authentic experience is so hard to come by ended up becoming one of my favorites, as I read it at the point when I had started to feel the same way. I really wonder whether or not I'll hold the same opinion of the book when I'm in my thirties.
[...]
[...]
Thank you for these posts. I appreciate seeing some sincere enthusiasm on IQfy. Greatly looking forward to giving both of these a read.
Forgot to mention, the first 100 pages are especially dear to me. I think Gaddis puts everything, all the seeds and germinating ideas of the novel, in the first 100 pages and in such plain, concise, crystal clear writing that reminds me of Flaubert in its precision. I especially enjoy the chapter of Wyatt in Paris (previous pic related) where he lays out all of human corruption and profanity in a nutshell.
[...]
TR was the first Gaddis I read, I read it when I was 24 and fresh out of college. It is a young person's book—as Joseph McElroy says, when talking about his first novel, A Smuggler's Bible—,that tries to encompass all of humanity and experience in a page count to match (Beckett had said the same about his endcap to MPTK, "Echo's Bones"). If you read it when you're in your young and bold years, you will feel like you're standing next to a waterfall of sheer force and beauty, you could only wish you had the time and talent to gather all points of your focus into this concentrated, multifarious work.
If you do read TR first, I would highly recommend reading Gass' introduction (NYRB pushed it off to the back as an Afterword but it is an Introduction in my Penguin and Dalkey editions, as it should be) and only consulting the Gaddis Annotations when you feel it's necessary (a lot of times it feels like filler, interesting to look back on after you read the whole thing and the whole picture is fresh in your mind).
I will not lie: it took me 6 months to get through TR the first time, but the same is true of the first times I read Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Canterbury Tales, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tom Jones, and many other big tomes that I now happily reread (Tristram Shandy is an exception: it is so readable, you go back and reread certain passages just to enjoy them again before moving on). Like Nabokov says, good readers are rereaders.
[...]
JR is such good fun. I reread it this last autumn and had much more fun with it than the first two times I read it. The first time I read it I was grasping to keep the plotlines and characters straight and felt overwhelmed, and the second time I spent too long tying together all the names and connections. This time, it felt like I was walking down a forest path I'd already wandered through a few times and could actually enjoy and appreciate it. Besides that, Gaddis is hilarious. He said he couldn't stand big, long, serious works with no humor or jokes in them.
If you're going to read JR, definitely watch the video of Gass introducing Gaddis at some conference, and you can consult the Gaddis annotations and the various #occupygaddis blogs that sprung up a few years ago where people did group readings of JR. the "ijustreadaboutthat" is especially helpful because of the bulletpoint plot points and Simon who seems to have at least read the book once before and clears up points of uncertainty.
One last thought before tonight's out: I think the hypocrisy is what I hate most about life. The fact I work for a German-Japanese joint, goddamn same people bombed Pearl Harbor, supplied vehicles to the Nazis (notwithstanding the Shoah), caused millions of lives to be lost. If you really want to follow this thread into the new century, read Pynchon's "The Small Rain" and Lot 49, maybe even V. if you're willing to be confused by all the diaspora of 50's/60's life to get to the meat of the Preterite idea that developed and established itself in the 70's of GR, JR, and MJ; and where, I think, the (moral) ideal of the midcentury got crushed into dust. >Some people today can drive VW's, carry a Sony radio in their shirt pocket. Not this one, folks, she wants to right wrongs, 20 years after it's all over.
It is bleak, my friends. It is hard to live, sometimes.
Same, man. Except a few notable exceptions like Calvino or so, I am not cut out for reading exp-fic. I'll try giving TR a read after dropping JR but it's sad that I was le filtered.
wyatt's schizophrenic breakdown still blows my mind as a feat of writing and spiritually effected me in ways im still trying to parse -- the whole book accelerated my conversational abilities tenfold. wyatts way of speaking indirectly yet radiantly relevant to a topic is pretty (concerningly) infectious. theres also so many moments where Gaddis is playing with the narrator voice's rhetoric: the best i've tried to describe it as is "asymmetric, jazzy, playful Ciceronian periods". subversive to the baroque construction of the sentence, but still contains a mastery (I don't think Gass or Pynchon or Joyce really reach the same heights, Joyce reaches his own height in terms of occult crystalline-multidimensional language, Pynchon the bombastic pyrotechnician, DFW the frankly intensely media-literate over-articulacy (obviously) and Gass (who is the closest to Gaddis) is something im still not sure how to describe . . .
addendum: it shows how schizophrenia isn't exactly just disorganized thought but rather the conceptual patterned units (that in themselves make sense) going out of (its proverbial) Wack and becoming completely decentralized. JR and carpenter's gothic and the rest all seem like descents from the grandiosity of Recognitions. I really did think Gaddis was above naming a character "Recktall Brown" though, the sophisticated humor was good enough, it's a Pynchon or fwake type joke. nonetheless, truly a Chavenetian masterpiece, a superByzantine Gazebo and Missile of the Soul, if you Will it (and "Why it" . . .)
addendum: it shows how schizophrenia isn't exactly just disorganized thought but rather the conceptual patterned units (that in themselves make sense) going out of (its proverbial) Wack and becoming completely decentralized. JR and carpenter's gothic and the rest all seem like descents from the grandiosity of Recognitions. I really did think Gaddis was above naming a character "Recktall Brown" though, the sophisticated humor was good enough, it's a Pynchon or fwake type joke. nonetheless, truly a Chavenetian masterpiece, a superByzantine Gazebo and Missile of the Soul, if you Will it (and "Why it" . . .)
yeah there's something special with how gaddis writes wyatt's dialogue. he is probably one of my favorite protagonists in a book.
>—But what I remember is the countryside then, the brilliance of outdoors and outwindows, and the sunlight streaming through the lozenge shapes of glass, and we were locked away from it, locked inside to worship. And there was the sun out there for everyone else to see. Good God, tell me that Clovis wasn't lonely at dawn. Tell me he wasn't sick at the sunset.
who did? both are concerned with different things and have different methods of characterization and writing style. gaddis is even on the record for saying he never read joyce.
Bery gud.
Tried JR and dgot filtered. Actually it was the book that made me realize I don't really enjoy those modern experimental books. Give me a well those story and I'll be a happy man.
JR is not exactly experimental, it is just written in dialog instead of your standard 3rd person.
Recognitions is modernist, Gaddis called it high modernism which is as good of a term as any even though the term sort became meaningless when postmodernism failed to coalesce.
I'd agree with TR having no real "postmodernism" in it. It's a very straightforward story, just incredibly ornate in its prose. There's metacommentary about art, sure, but there was metacommentary about art in fricking Don Quixote.
I feel like people only assume it's pomo because it wasn't lauded until the point of the 20th century when everything else was already pomo and because people bring him and Ol' Ruggles up in the same breath so often.
Of all complaints to have about the book, you genuinely didn't enjoy it?
JR is some of the most fun I've ever had reading, it's fricking hilarious. I don't think anybody else could ever handle the slow destruction of that shared apartment the way Gaddis could. And trying to write in that style is great fun as well, but I can only keep it up for one chapter or scene at a time.
>just incredibly ornate in its prose
I would say intricate, not ornate. There is little that is just ornament and those sentences are meticulously crafted. The standard excerpt;
>No fragment of time nor space anywhere was wasted, every instant and every cubic centimeter crowded crushing outward upon the next with the concentrated activity of a continent spending itself upon a rock island, made a world to itself where no present existed. Each minute and each cubic inch was hurled against that which would follow, measured in terms of it, dictating a future as inevitable as the past, coined upon eight million counterfeits who moved with the plumbing weight of lead coated with the frenzied hope of quicksilver, protecting at every pass the cherished falsity of their milled edges against the threat of hardness in their neighbors as they rung together, fallen from the Hand they feared but could no longer name, upon the pitiless table stretching all about them, tumbling there in all the desperate variety of which counterfeit is capable, from the perfect alloy recast under weight to the thudding heaviness of lead, and the thinly coated brittle terror of glass.
Change a few words to make this about writing instead of riding a crowded subway and I think we have a fairly good summary of Gaddis' style.
>it is just written in dialog instead of your standard 3rd person.
Well that sounds great. Guess I'll bump Gaddis further up my reading list. Should I start with this or Jr.?
Doesn't really matter which you start with but the dialog in JR is all unattributed which filters many, takes some time to get the hang of keep track of characters through voice alone.
>but the dialog in JR is all unattributed
So just like Stella Maris?
JR is such good fun. I reread it this last autumn and had much more fun with it than the first two times I read it. The first time I read it I was grasping to keep the plotlines and characters straight and felt overwhelmed, and the second time I spent too long tying together all the names and connections. This time, it felt like I was walking down a forest path I'd already wandered through a few times and could actually enjoy and appreciate it. Besides that, Gaddis is hilarious. He said he couldn't stand big, long, serious works with no humor or jokes in them.
If you're going to read JR, definitely watch the video of Gass introducing Gaddis at some conference, and you can consult the Gaddis annotations and the various #occupygaddis blogs that sprung up a few years ago where people did group readings of JR. the "ijustreadaboutthat" is especially helpful because of the bulletpoint plot points and Simon who seems to have at least read the book once before and clears up points of uncertainty.
Thank you for these posts. I appreciate seeing some sincere enthusiasm on IQfy. Greatly looking forward to giving both of these a read.
TR was the first Gaddis I read, I read it when I was 24 and fresh out of college. It is a young person's book—as Joseph McElroy says, when talking about his first novel, A Smuggler's Bible—,that tries to encompass all of humanity and experience in a page count to match (Beckett had said the same about his endcap to MPTK, "Echo's Bones"). If you read it when you're in your young and bold years, you will feel like you're standing next to a waterfall of sheer force and beauty, you could only wish you had the time and talent to gather all points of your focus into this concentrated, multifarious work.
If you do read TR first, I would highly recommend reading Gass' introduction (NYRB pushed it off to the back as an Afterword but it is an Introduction in my Penguin and Dalkey editions, as it should be) and only consulting the Gaddis Annotations when you feel it's necessary (a lot of times it feels like filler, interesting to look back on after you read the whole thing and the whole picture is fresh in your mind).
I will not lie: it took me 6 months to get through TR the first time, but the same is true of the first times I read Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Canterbury Tales, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tom Jones, and many other big tomes that I now happily reread (Tristram Shandy is an exception: it is so readable, you go back and reread certain passages just to enjoy them again before moving on). Like Nabokov says, good readers are rereaders.
Forgot to mention, the first 100 pages are especially dear to me. I think Gaddis puts everything, all the seeds and germinating ideas of the novel, in the first 100 pages and in such plain, concise, crystal clear writing that reminds me of Flaubert in its precision. I especially enjoy the chapter of Wyatt in Paris (previous pic related) where he lays out all of human corruption and profanity in a nutshell.
>the first 100 pages are especially dear to me. I think Gaddis puts everything, all the seeds and germinating ideas of the novel, in the first 100 pages and in such plain, concise, crystal clear writing that reminds me of Flaubert in its precision
God, i fricking love the first 100 pages of The Recognitions. It's incredible how much deeper of a meaning it takes when you reread it after finishing the novel. I've always thought that if I ever write a book of my own I would try to emulate what Gaddis does in the first chapter of The Recognitions.
>It is a young person's book
I felt this too but not in the sense that McElroy maybe did. I read it too when I just graduated college and started working and I think the book's bitter tone really struck a chord with me when I was starting to get jaded from the day to day grind. So it's no wonder that a book about how authentic experience is so hard to come by ended up becoming one of my favorites, as I read it at the point when I had started to feel the same way. I really wonder whether or not I'll hold the same opinion of the book when I'm in my thirties.
I'm the anon you're replying to:
speaking as someone who's in their (early) thirties, has worked a full-time (corporate) job since college, and has reread Gaddis a few times, I can say that I now look back at TR with fond memories, but I can understand why and how Gaddis took 20 years to come out with JR. It is, as Gass writes, "a wholly descendental work." Idealism and will can only carry you so far, this will to see everything set right (I thought about joining an order or a monastery after I read this, but found religion limiting) is really a suicidal, self-destructive impulse on par with Burroughs' weirdest thoughts. Gass: "the progression from the concerns of The Recognitions to those of JR is completely reasonable. The Recognitions, indeed, tackles the fundamental questions: What is real, and where can we find it in ourselves and the things we do? But a generation later there are no fundamental questions to be posed. JR creates a thoroughly descendental world. It is a world of mouth, machination, and money. A few reviewers of JR, more perceptive than most, longed for the spiritual struggle of the earlier book, but—reader—just look around: that struggle has been lost. The large has smothered the small. Be petty enough and the world may make you a Prince. The cheat, not the meek, has inherited the earth."
Gaddis is a gateway to an incredibly bleak, sarcastic, misanthropic, perilous outlook on normal, real, everyday life.
One last thought before tonight's out: I think the hypocrisy is what I hate most about life. The fact I work for a German-Japanese joint, goddamn same people bombed Pearl Harbor, supplied vehicles to the Nazis (notwithstanding the Shoah), caused millions of lives to be lost. If you really want to follow this thread into the new century, read Pynchon's "The Small Rain" and Lot 49, maybe even V. if you're willing to be confused by all the diaspora of 50's/60's life to get to the meat of the Preterite idea that developed and established itself in the 70's of GR, JR, and MJ; and where, I think, the (moral) ideal of the midcentury got crushed into dust.
>Some people today can drive VW's, carry a Sony radio in their shirt pocket. Not this one, folks, she wants to right wrongs, 20 years after it's all over.
It is bleak, my friends. It is hard to live, sometimes.
Same, man. Except a few notable exceptions like Calvino or so, I am not cut out for reading exp-fic. I'll try giving TR a read after dropping JR but it's sad that I was le filtered.
just picked it up is it worth the hype or just some more post modern onanism like barth
ahm
wyatt's schizophrenic breakdown still blows my mind as a feat of writing and spiritually effected me in ways im still trying to parse -- the whole book accelerated my conversational abilities tenfold. wyatts way of speaking indirectly yet radiantly relevant to a topic is pretty (concerningly) infectious. theres also so many moments where Gaddis is playing with the narrator voice's rhetoric: the best i've tried to describe it as is "asymmetric, jazzy, playful Ciceronian periods". subversive to the baroque construction of the sentence, but still contains a mastery (I don't think Gass or Pynchon or Joyce really reach the same heights, Joyce reaches his own height in terms of occult crystalline-multidimensional language, Pynchon the bombastic pyrotechnician, DFW the frankly intensely media-literate over-articulacy (obviously) and Gass (who is the closest to Gaddis) is something im still not sure how to describe . . .
addendum: it shows how schizophrenia isn't exactly just disorganized thought but rather the conceptual patterned units (that in themselves make sense) going out of (its proverbial) Wack and becoming completely decentralized. JR and carpenter's gothic and the rest all seem like descents from the grandiosity of Recognitions. I really did think Gaddis was above naming a character "Recktall Brown" though, the sophisticated humor was good enough, it's a Pynchon or fwake type joke. nonetheless, truly a Chavenetian masterpiece, a superByzantine Gazebo and Missile of the Soul, if you Will it (and "Why it" . . .)
dogshit prose
Explain why. I will wait.
those are pages displaying dialogue not prose, moron -- heres a masterful para even in isolation
yeah there's something special with how gaddis writes wyatt's dialogue. he is probably one of my favorite protagonists in a book.
>—But what I remember is the countryside then, the brilliance of outdoors and outwindows, and the sunlight streaming through the lozenge shapes of glass, and we were locked away from it, locked inside to worship. And there was the sun out there for everyone else to see. Good God, tell me that Clovis wasn't lonely at dawn. Tell me he wasn't sick at the sunset.
Any other books about art except The Recognitions and The Moon and Sixpence?
gaddis is the sort of writer who'd blow me away when i was younger but i'd just find irritating now. he's like a pound shop james joyce
they're literally nothing alike. gaddis (at least in the recognitions) is like a mixture of dostoevsky and TS eliot.
They are alike and he even explained how.
who did? both are concerned with different things and have different methods of characterization and writing style. gaddis is even on the record for saying he never read joyce.
yep