#therecognitions

"Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it's right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of…recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it and, it shouldn’t be sinful to want to have created beauty?"

Were The Recognitions written today instead of 60 years ago, it would be hailed as the defining novel of the Millennial generation. It's a tale about authenticity and the ways in which we forge it — in artwork, in drama, in social interactions. There's Otto testing out lines for his play in real life, or Wyatt's forged masterpieces, or Feddle's bookshelf full of his own novel just with different book jackets. Characters "reek" of honesty or sincerity, and the distinction between the two is rendered rather pithily ("Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves").

We are all, always, performing. The novel at one point speaks of the consciousness of being looked at, and it explores at all points the obfuscation that occurs when one works so hard at an inauthentic portrayal of himself that it morphs into the authentic. This is salient stuff in the 21st century.

The Recognitions is nearly perfect on a technical level; Gaddis' control of language, of punctuation, of characters is all on point. There are dozens of turns of phrase I want to steal: the way genius is "disheveled insanity suddenly assembled," how Stanley wants "everyone to be like I want to be," a gun as "the manhood implicit" in a jacket pocket, or breasts as "cumulous embankments." Open up to any of its 956 pages and you'll find writing to admire.