Misc. speculating out the wazoo re The Recognitions & TRP

[Mark Kohut]

See the publishing history at the Gaddis annotations site. Took nine years to 
sell out
the first hardcover printing of '55 (in america) and there was no paperback 
until 1962 but
2 printings that year. Meaning some readership.

IF we can presume TRP read, internalized, learned from, this work before 
composing V.
when does anyone but me think he may have read it? Before the paperback 
publication
It seems sure. (too late) 

When it was published, he left Cornell for the Navy where there was lotsa 
reading done between watches
and work, I bet...But, would he be carrying this hardcover?  And lotsa classics 
and others to read.

so, back to Cornell, lotsa English lit now to read and writing to write  and his 
last stories seem written
while there THEN free and Boeing. And somehow starting, conceiving, doing all 
that reading for V.? No more stories, his imagination was a lion, a huge Grigori 
now. 

I suggest irrefutably until TRP tells me I'm wrong that this is when TRP read 
The Recognitions, felt how
deep he might go thematically, mythologically, into the modern world in a BIG 
novel...sucked down Graves
and other history and sportelloed his first world-historical fiction.