TT 1.3 - "The Recognitions"

[cfabel]

Then TR and The Defense are of the same concern?

 

C. F. Abel

Chair

Department of Government

Stephen F. Austin State University

Nacogdoches, Texas 75962

(936) 468-3903

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Richard Ryan
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 4:06 AM
To: Pynchon-L
Subject: TT 1.3 - "The Recognitions"

 

A post in which we again ask, "Why is this book called 'The Recognitions"?

 

>From the online Readers guide::

 

"The Recognitions: the title of a third-century "theological romance"

attributed to Clement of Rome (see 373.1 ff.). In his working notes for the
novel Gaddis wrote: "The Recognitions as title I like perfectly because it
implies the impossibility of escape from a (the) pattern"; and elsewhere:
"THE RECOGNITIONS is I think in the first place a simple lable [sic],
deceptively simple perhaps, and all the better" (quoted in Koenig's
"'Splinters from the Yew Tree,'" 13, 85).

"

 

I find both of these apparently off-the-cuff authorial remarks completely
opaque.  In any case, one form or another of the word "recognition" appears
at the following locations in Chapter 3

[page.line]: 78.epigraph, 84.24, 88.15, 91.42, 92.6, 98.6, 107.36, 123.9,
139.37, 152.12.  This is the densest concentration of the word so far;
whatever "deceptively simple" significance it may have, that meaning begins
to resonate more deeply in Chapter 3.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20110426/b2edcd33/attachment.html>