Recognizing The Recognitions

[Richard Ryan]

Mr Burns (besides running a mean nuclear power plant), is obviously
going to school us all in things Gaddisian.

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
> there's tweets in Gaddis too, of course; on page 306 reference is made to an
> (apocryphal?) book titled _Twit Twit Twit_
>
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Greeaaate f'in quote....Great!
>> I am gonna tweet it..presently!
>> ________________________________
>> From: Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
>> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Tue, March 22, 2011 9:09:49 AM
>> Subject: Re: Recognizing The Recognitions
>>
>> yes, laugh --
>>
>> "--He said, It makes the present. He said, it must be shared, and being
>> so, makes the present. Laughter."
>>
>> (p380)
>>
>> This is one of my favorite quotes from _The Recognitions_ and I think
>> central (pivotal!) to Gaddis' concerns. To reduce it to a twitter-sized
>> soundbite: The past is very serious, the future is very serious. In the
>> present, all you can do is laugh.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:12 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Analytic 'spoiler"..(let's get some of this labeling out of the way, I
>>> say):
>>> To play a big joke on modernism is one of the ways postmodernism is born?
>>>
>>> Therefore, pivot [The Recognitions is a pivotal book?] and laugh?
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
>>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Tue, March 22, 2011 7:37:20 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Recognizing The Recognitions
>>>
>>> "The novel began as a much shorter work"
>>> Don't they all? ;-)
>>>
>>> I would like to argue that the "amazing erudition" of _The Recognitions_
>>> is in large part a very big joke by WG on modernism, on the Eliotic need to
>>> shore fragments against one's ruins, this being the most evident in Gwyon's
>>> gusher in Chap 3 where there are pages and pages of references, an attempt
>>> to assemble a modern mithraism out of his broad and eccentric reading. What
>>> gets me is that Gwyon knows this is mostly mumbo jumbo, to ensure that the
>>> priesthood retains mystery, and to ensure that the majority remains "outside
>>> the mysteries."
>>>
>>> As impressive and enlightening and fun as scrabbling through these deep
>>> piles of references can, as with TRP that should not be the main point of
>>> the exercise.
>>>
>>> I expect we will eventually get into an argument about whether Gaddis is
>>> able to create characters that are not flat, in contrast to the typical
>>> critique of TRP. I find the characters in The Recognitions to be wonderful,
>>> yet often deeply etched stereotypes as Gaddis works his allegory -- but
>>> then, as is so often mentioned, The Recognitions is a roman à clef, and many
>>> of the characters are real people Gaddis knew (incl Ernest Hemingway and of
>>> course Sheri Martinelli;
>>> http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/martinelli/smartinellismoore.shtml),
>>> so it cuts both ways.
>>>
>>> I am currently listening to the extraordinary audiobook of _The
>>> Recognitions_. Nick Simpson proves that the characters are anything but
>>> flat.
>>>
>>> etb
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Gaddis spent seven years writing The Recognitions. The novel began as a
>>>> much
>>>> shorter work and as an explicit parody of Goethe’s Faust. During the
>>>> period in
>>>> which Gaddis was writing the novel, he travelled to Mexico, Central
>>>> America and
>>>> Europe.
>>>> Gaddis also found the title for the novel in The Golden Bough as Frazer
>>>> noted
>>>> how Goethe’s Faust originally came from the Clementine Recognitions, a
>>>> third-century theological tract (See Clementine literature). It was from
>>>> this
>>>> point on that Gaddis began to expand the novel. The novel was completed
>>>> in
>>>> 1949.[3]
>>>> [edit]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>



-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
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