When I was in the midst of this book I said to Stew that it was "the best book I have read since Infinite Jest". I've since realised what I was saying then was that it was "my favourite book I have read since Infinite Jest". I've since finished the book and it remains the case. This is a great book. I found it a pleasure to read.

I say favourite for a number of reasons. The topic of authenticity, the distrust of religion, the contempt of modern society & its members, these are not things I find it hard to cheer along in a book. As well, reading Jack Green's Fire the Bastards! and his take down of reviews of The Recognitions he found wanting, did lend itself to a kind of feeling of superiority. People Who Read William Gaddis And "Get It". But to stay with that feeling would have been to let myself be unchanged by the book.

I think I read this book over approximately four or five months, with some significant breaks in reading. It is a long book, but I felt not oppressively so? I didn't read it in one week like Jonathan Franzen, and I'm not sure that is the best way to read it. I found reading up prior to starting about how Gaddis indicates spoken dialogue in this book worthwhile, and eventually you don't even miss the speech marks. Yes, there are a lot of characters and I would recommend keeping track of them; this is especially helpful when you have taken a break from the book and are resuming reading it.

The really essential recommendation is to read this book alongside Steven Moore's A Readers Guide to William Gaddis's The Recognitions (http://williamgaddis.org/recognitions/trguide.shtml) (hat tip to Stew for that recommendation). It is excellent; I don't quite know how it is available online for free but make the most of it. There is a review from 1955 by Herbert Cahoon in the Library Journal where Cahoon writes 'The constant use of literary allusions and book titles in the narrative fascinated this librarian.' Without Steven Moore's guide I would have missed the vast majority of these. But it is not essential to comprehend every single one of them. The book works just as well through what's on the page. For myself, reading the first half of the book there was a pleasure navigating pages on my own and reading the synopsis after each chapter and going "oh! that's what was going on there". Later, impatient to finish the book, I would read the synopsise first so I could move through the

As I posted in askphilosophy, next year I do have to come up with my Master thesis topic if I want to join the programme. On of my ideas is described there, the other is mostly "William Gaddis and Philosophy" as I would need to write about philosophy, but I would also want to write about him. (My Bachelors thesis will be about him too... Hopefully the first ever Czech academic writing about William.)

So, my fellow admirers of this excelent novelist, can you tip me some ideas on how to include this man to my master thesis, that is supposed to be inclined to philosophy.

I already tried to come up with something like "Ethics / Aesthetic in works of William Gaddis" but it seems to be quite general and not "philosophical enough" but that was really just idea that I came up with on the spot. Now I have a lot of time to collect my thought so I am asking you guys, do you have any ideas about Philosophy or Philosophers that would work in "dialogue with Gaddis?

Hello there,

I am currently studying literature here in Czech and I will write about aforementioned author, William Gaddis. My bachelors thesis is going to be something along the line of "Development in critical reception of William Gaddis".

I told you this because it is almost a time I have to come up with the topic of my masters thesis, as I need to have the idea prepared before I apply for a programme in philosophy (as there are no master literature programmes nearby)

So basically I will have written the first ever Czech written work about the man and I would love to continue to somewhat write about him in my masters as well, but the only option how to do so is to find some way how to merge the subject of William Gaddis and some philosophical question.

I did think about the epistemology of Gaddis, as he sure tried to stretch the human knowledge to its maximum, but I am unsure how to transform that into a valid question of my future research.

I am quite new in philosophy and I do need to read a lot more than I currently know, so maybe this is the problem aswell, but by the time I apply for my masters I will try my absolute best.

So, I do not want you to come up with the research for me, but I need to push in the right direction because as of now, there seems to be a wall inbetween philosophy and Gaddis for me, so I just need you, and beg you, to help me overcome it.

Recently I have been talking to my, lets say mentor, on the university and I am trying to come up with a topic for my bachelors thesis. Not so long ago we agreed that we will try to write the first ever Czech work on the author William Gaddis which would deal with the critical reception of William Gaddis.

Today when we talked about the topic and the fact that I will have to work with external (American) sources and I am really sure that this topic was not already researched. I just do not want to unintentionally copy someones work, while I will deal with the topic.

So basically, my topic is supposed to introduce William Gaddis to the czech audience and more importantly to write about his critical reception thorough the years.

Thank you a lot.

You know, all those sorta folks...

...or willing to photocopy the chapter on the Recognitions? I can't seem to get it at my uni or local library, and I'm short for cash. (Nor Libgen either). Failing that, can anyone point me towards some good criticism of The Recognitions?

Hi everyone. Yesterday, after about a month of reading, I finally finished The Recognitions by William Gaddis. It was an absolutely unique journey and one that I'll never forget. There are passages that are so brilliant and often hilarious that they will stick in my mind forever. I just finished my write up where I discussed my interpretation and (somewhat?) reviewed the work. What are other people's opinions on this novel, and did you interpret it differently? There are spoilers in this write-up so be warned.

The Recognitions Review And Analysis

introduction

William Gaddis’ debut maximalist novel, The Recognitions, at times parallels Faust’s deal with the devil, and in order to write on this novel, I feel like I’d need to do the same. Nonetheless, I’ll give it a shot. The Recognitions is a book that is the first of its kind. Maximalism was semi-present in previous novels such as Moby Dick and Ulysses, but the massively wide scope of interweaving plots, characters, themes, and references, had truly never been done before. Not only was it the first maximalist novel, but it serves as a bridge between modernism and postmodernism (along with Borges and Beckett) by combining the more discomforting points of the human condition and the vast never-ending stream of different stories. This merging into the postmodern world was just a condition that Gaddis was living in, and with this novel was attempting to decipher it for himself. But the maximalist scope was a deliberate choice, and his reasoning is put perfectly by a quote by Stanley:

>It’s as though this one thing must contain it all, all in one piece of work, because, well it’s as though finishing it strikes it dead.

And that is what Gaddis did. He wanted to discuss forgery, false living, what it means to create art, the critics he knew would bash him, a lack of love, an overabundance of religion, memory, suicide, and so many other topics. He took each of these ideas and put every thought he had into the book’s 900+ pages, creating a massive array of characters that would be able to help enlighten the different facets of these themes.

review and analysis

The main themes Gaddis discusses are art and originality, by asking: what does it mean to create art? is art ever truly original? does artistic talent itself merit creativity, or must it include some form of originality? and finally, what is the toll of plagiarism? Wyatt’s life is defined in childhood, in a moment of forgery – thi

JR is a hurricane of words. It is the most chaotic book I’ve ever read; multiple people having multiple conversations all at once, fragments breaking into each other, sometimes background noises grab the focus of the scene. Nearly every line of dialogue in the book is interrupted by another, which leaves the reader feeling frustrated and tired. There are very few descriptions in the book, and most are fleeting scenes of transition. Roughly 95% of JR is unattributed dialogue. There are no chapters or page breaks for the entire 800 pages or so. Instead Gaddis provides the literary equivalent of a movie filmed in one continuous shot. The viewpoint will follow a character down a hallway into a bathroom where another conversation is going on, or follow a car down the road to the next phone call. Confusion, misdirection, and obscurity reign supreme.

There are many short descriptions about clocks, usually during a scene transition. In these, the clocks are typically described as being out of sight or mind while counting off minutes and hours. A few examples:

>Dead before their eyes, the clock severed another of the minutes that lacked the hour.

>Somewhere a clock with a broken chime had a try at striking the hour…

>A bell rang, lockers banged, clocks clipped away identical minutes out of each other’s sight round corners, down corridors where the tide of sweat rose as lockers banged, bells ran, the door marked Boys slammed, slammed.

> ...and behind them a hand severed a minute’s remnant on the clock beyond the shelter of the lockers.

> For time unbroken by looks to the clock the only sound was the chafing of an emery board, and the clock itself, as though seizing the advantage, seemed to accomplish its round with surreptitious leaps forward, knocking whole wedges at once from what remained of the hour.

There is a violence to the words: “severed”, “broken”, “clipped”, “knocking”. A violence that suggests to me Gaddis was all too aware of time’s relentless march forward bringing everyone closer to their end.

There is one long, sincere moment of clarity roughly ⅔ into the book. Up until these scenes the book has been relatively sterile and emotionally distant, but suddenly two characters spend the night together leading to pages and pages of description and raw emotion. In this novel, description and emotion are linked; speech is cold and corporate. While it may be missing from before and after, for these fifteen pages there is l

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Investing Energy

The majority of Gaddis's characters inhabit a static, mechanistic world explained by Newtonian mechanics and supplemented with Protestant metaphysics. Gaddis's heroes try to operate within this world by using their energies in worthwhile processes rather than to create worthy products. They seldom succeed, but regardless, they act with dignity as opposed to the venal corruption of the balance of characters. Strehle argues that the struggle of these heroes against the materialistic, mechanistic world demonstrates Gaddis's own belief that, ". . . energy and process constitute reality, . . . ".

Strehle argues that JR and Dan DiCephalis are both naive and without a sense of what to do, but are driven to find what to do. JR directs his interest away from his schoolwork and toward business as his goal is to become the model "successful businessman" idolized by the PR-saturated press as an image of American success. After all, what could be more "worth doing" to a child than becoming an American tycoon? Both are characterized as poorly dressed and generally unkempt. They pursue action through intermediate agents or other remote means to hide their current images with the hope that their schemes will eventually have them enjoying tailored suits, expensive haircuts, and other image-based signifiers of success.

Neither find satisfaction in their pursuits or achievements. As Strehle points out,

>"Just as ends take precedence over processes in the Protestant, teleological worldview and in Newtonian, action-reaction physics, the ends pursued by DiCephalis and JR form a coherent part of the antiquated vision of reality so common in their society. Both eager young men fail, in other words, to imagine anything better than the vision, created by PR-men like Davidoff, of materialistic success, reflected in material wealth."

Dan disappears in transmission because the complete technological process has not been worked out. JR is similarly lost in transmission at the end of the novel - speaking into a telephone with no one there to receive his words.

Norman Angel is similarly disheveled but because his interest is completely absorbe

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

This is the concluding post in this series. I hope you've enjoyed them. Please respond with your comments or questions.

Energetic Form in JR

Strehle highlights that Gaddis rejects norms and conventions in the structure of JR. The novel beings and ends in mid-sentence. Furthermore, most of the story's complications are left unresolved, most characters continue, unchanged, to respond to new problems in the same old ways. There are no twists, secrets, or other reveals to bring order to this novel of disorder.

Time flows forward in a consistent manner, but without attention from the narration. Gaddis's use of "french scenes" emphasize the ceaseless flow of time and its dynamic nature. Despite the ubiquitous media presence throughout the novel, there are no objective identifying incidents which define when in time the novel's events transpire. Strehle argues that this choice emphasizes the subjective, open, or plotless nature of how humans experience time.

Gaddis also avoids causality. Chance and accident drive most developments throughout the novel. i.e. - Jack and Amy's chance encounter on a train or the rash of deaths throughout that are the result of various accidents. (Note - however, that Normal Angel's attempt at suicide does not succeed, either. Another accident). However, the traditional appearance of chance in fiction brings about positive change through epiphanies or some resolution. Gaddis's chance and accidents bring pain and frustration.

The novel refuses economy. Instead, Gaddis works to create an experience that seems chaotic, unplotted, unresolved, for many readers - unsatisfying. Gaddis includes several non-narrative pages: JR's "Alsaka" composition, a list of quotations Gibbs carries, a list of potential logos for JR's business, etc. But the novel embraces entropy where others reject it, and this embrace creates a unique experience.

Strehle claims one of the most original features of the novel is the lack of economy in spoken words. Where most produced entertainment cleans up natural speech, Gaddis includes stamm

Hello r/books,

What I am trying to ask is whether there is some specific name or a literary term for this kind of writers and books. I know that they belong in the postmodern current, but I feel like these I mentioned, maybe William Gass, Vollman, all share this "HUGE book which is really hard".

I kinda like the combination of a really hard book that is also HUGE I mean 800+ pages, because it seems like an ultimate reading challenge.

Anyway, I noticed that authors in the generation of these tend to write exactly this kind of books, so I was curious whether it is not called something specific, like if they aren't some sub-current in the postmodern current.

Part 1

This installment is a condensed version of the ideas forming the introduction to Chapter 4 - JR and the Matter of Energy

Gaddis engages contemporary reality through fiction and satirizes deadly materialism.

“An abiding concern with the power of Mammon shapes Gaddis’ fiction; his sense that the lust for money and material goods defines postmodern culture – and in the process deadens spiritual energies that would create art, love, and generosity – accounts for Gaddis’ insistent satiric tone. Posed variously by critics as the battle between strife and love or money and art, this opposition appears in actualistic terms as the conflict between matter, which made up reality in Newtonian physics, and energy, which constitutes actuality for quantum theorists.”

JR includes autobiographical elements – Gaddis wrote for school television for the Ford Foundation and worked in PR for Pfizer International.

Gaddis suggests art has intrinsic merit and power to shape reality, however the artist has to leave a generally self-imposed isolation and become immersed in the “real world”, which is out-of-control, chaotic, noisy, entropic.

Gaddis, like Pynchon, is on record as understanding the importance of entropy to both thermodynamics and information theory. The physics teacher, Jack Gibbs, is named after Josiah Willard Gibbs who developed a geometric model of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (i.e. – in a closed system, entropy always increases). In our introduction to Gibbs, he earnestly tries to teach the students something about reality – turning off the televised lesson he urges the class to reject the mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian view of the lesson and the educational system, “that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten from outside. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos.” Gibbs is introducing the students to an energy-based way of thinking about reality, where entropy increases in closed systems and energy can change forms but not be created or destroyed. This in contrast to the enduring, stable, predictable mechanistic thinking.

In Gaddis’ view, one corruption of the mechanistic worldview is that value is inherent to things, not in actions - so that owning, conserving,

Part 1

Part 2

Clinging to the Material World

Strehle argues that at first, JR appears static because most characters do not undergo transformations and they are fixated on cultivating “the stasis of objects”. They find change or the suggestion of change repulsive and flee – although of course they do change: clothes, jobs, partners and they age, get sick, experience accidents, and die. The novel’s starting point is the word, money. It nearly ends with, “. . . why can’t people just shut up and do what they’re paid for!”. In between, most of the novel’s schemes are concerned with stealing, earning, investing, controlling, winning, spending, borrowing, and attempting to collect as much money as possible. The novel’s titular character, JR, for instance, creates a business empire and the attendant wealth, but he never bothers to buy new sneakers or even replace his filthy handkerchief.

Most of the other characters do exchange money for things – most often, mechanical things. They are meant to be status symbols but often, they work poorly or destructively, i.e. – the mechanical letter opener that tears mail to pieces rather than simply effortlessly opening it. In fact, most of the collective impulses are thwarted by destruction, objects are lost, broken, or rendered worthless. Thus, Gaddis repudiates the hoarding impulse of his characters who seek to define meaning through collections of objects. Although many characters display thrift and repair or protect various objects, Strehle argues that their actions are not redemptive and are driven by a sense of responsibility to the material world – a veneration for things that leads to the decadent materialism derided throughout the text. Ultimately, she argues that these redemptive actions are often undone, things fall apart, and that this demonstrates the folly expending energy to serve matter, rather than to create value. The argument is summed up in the following passage,

“Gaddis’s characters end by imitating the things they value, as if identity were material. Not only do they cultivate a sense of self in and through their clothes, rings, cars, and other goods, but they also aspire to the “thingly” status of these goods. In a seedy automat, J R and the young Hyde admire a woman who performs with mechanical effi

Hey Gang,

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I finally picked up a copy of this criticism and that I planned on sharing her thoughts about Gaddis with this subreddit. Today, we begin that journey. As an introduction, here is the back cover copy,

"In this outstanding book Susan Strehle argues that a new fiction has developed from the influence of modern physics. She calls this new fiction actualism, and within that framework she offers a critical analysis of major novels by Thomas Pynchon, Robert Coover, William Gaddis, John Barth, Margaret Atwood, and Donald Barthelme.

According to Strehle, the actualists balance attention to questions of art with an engaged meditation on the external, actual world. While these actualist novels diverge markedly from realistic practice, Strehle claims that they do so in order to reflect more acutely what we now understand as real. Reality is no longer "realistic"; in the new physical or quantum universe, reality is discontinuous, energetic, relative, statistical, subjectively seen, and uncertainly known - all terms taken from new physics.

Actualist fiction is characterized by incompletions, indeterminacy, and "open" endings unsatisfying to the readerly wish for fulfilled promises and completed patterns. Gravity's Rainbow, for example, ends not with a period but with a dash. Strehle argues that such innovations in narrative form reflect on twentieth-century history, politics, sciences, and discourse.

Susan Strehle is associate vice provost for graduate studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton."

A few comments:

1. I don't have an organized plan for working through this material. I'm not interested in making Strehle's arguments or reproducing her work verbatim in this forum. I just thought this group may be interested in her thoughts about Gaddis so as I read, I plan to share her work, filtered through my consciousness of course.
2. The back cover copy above is a better, more concise introduction to her argument that any summation of the introductory chapter I could produce, so I plan to make a series of posts following this one specifically referencing her points from Chapter Four - William Gaddis, JR and the Matter of Energy.
3. I think there is a strong tradition in American Literature for the "technical novel" which I'll broadly describe as a novel that both captures the spirit of a time based on the technology current to the novel, but that also explores the implications of men coexisting or

Used copies have skyrocketed in the past two years. Luckily, a brand new re-print is hitting shelves. Link:

William Gaddis B&N

In response to a thread on r/ThomasPynchon, I recommended the titular essay comparing the work of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon. It was written by Steven Moore and published in Pynchon Notes. Here is a link to a landing page that permits a .pdf download of the entire essay:

https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/id/2665/

A couple of thoughts:

1. If you're not familiar with Steven Moore, I recommend you familiarize yourself. His introduction to the Chinese version of JR is compulsory reading for Gaddis fans.
2. If you're not familiar with Pynchon Notes, I recommend you familiarize yourself. I believe the entire library is available online. Gaddis is mentioned relatively frequently.
3. "Parallel, not series." is a quote from Gravity's Rainbow. I believe Leni Pokler says this in an argument with Franz Pokler regarding causes and effects.

Topic title says it all. Not an Italian, but I can speak the language and I'm curious to see how an Italian "version" of Pynchon/Gaddis would do Italian word play. So even if all the books (or few books) of an author haven't been translated into English, it's alright to recommend them.

A question for mods: Should I give this thread a flair? If so, what flair is recommended? Edit: never mind, you guys already flaired the thread.

Been reading this book for about a week now and just hit the halfway point, and I was wondering if anyone else thought that it gets dramatically more dense about ~350 pages in.

I had been reading it and thought to myself “why does everyone talk about this book like it’s Finnegans Wake?” because the plot had been pretty easy to follow and most of the allusions are pretty easily cleared up with the reading guide. The Wyatt went back home to his father, and the whole thing just exploded. It’s like all of a sudden every page feels near impossibly dense, the plot gets thicker and muddier, and the kind of philosophical prose becomes more and more esoteric and difficult to parse.

I think I’m at the point of no return, though, so I’m going to finish it, but damn this thing is getting difficult.

This is a long shot since both are pretty damn difficult to come by. I’m in New Zealand and will likely never find a good early hardcover copy of either. I can’t imagine anyone who has read these books and owns a copy would want to part with it but it’s worth a short. Happy to trade something of similar value or even pay for it idm I just needa get my hands on some good old Gaddis. Thanks very much

I wanted to provide some insight into this criticism that I recommended earlier this week. The book is out of print and can only be found in libraries or second-hand. Thus, potential readers have no insight into whether or not this is a book worth reading and/or owning - something most of us probably consider very outdated an unattractive.

Gaddis was a visionary in understanding the trajectory that post-WW2 America was tracing, and in not only exposing the consequences, but in predicting almost inevitable outcomes. The postmodern movement has always fundamentally been about how human beings can cope with uncertainty - and especially the uncertainty implied by modern developments in physics and mathematics such as the uncertainty at the heart of quantum mechanics and relativity, or Godel's demonstration that systems of mathematics are necessarily incomplete. In the context of western Judeo-Christian traditions (and middle eastern and eastern Muslim traditions), the idea of an all-powerful and omniscient singularity drove late 19th and early 20th century physicists and mathematicians toward the "holy grail" of a grand unified theory, or model of existence that was predictive and explanatory. The result of this search failed to meet that goal and conversely, demonstrated that our knowledge is seemingly limited and that there are things in existence that cannot be known. Another way of putting this is that our most advanced knowledge demonstrated that absolutes are a false construct - a tectonic shift in the human framework and philosophy of understanding existence.

From the text:

"Our postmodern world, Gaddis reminds us in all three of his novels, is informed by "the unswerving punctuality of chance" (Recognitions 9, J R 486, Carpenter's Gothic 9), a statement acknowledging the fundamental gap between theory and experience. In the course of a rare interview in Paris Review, Gaddis clarified the ethical implications of this statement, explaining that at the heart of his fiction, "is precisely this courage to live without Absolutes, which is really, nothing more than growing up, the courage to accept a relative universe and even one verging upon chance." This does not mean, however, that our "chance" world is absurd, at least in the conventional sense that Camus meant it. Rather, Gaddis returns us to the Latin root surdus, meaning deaf, making the point clear through J R's comments in the last lines of the novel: "Hey? You listening . . . ?" ( *

"Even so she had never read for the reasons that most people give themselves for reading. Facts mattered little, ideas propounded, exploited, shattered, even less, and narrative nothing. Only occasional groupings of words held her, and she entered to inhabit them a little while, until they became submerged, finding sanctuary in that part of herself which she looked upon distal and afraid, a residence as separate and alien, real or unreal, as those which shocked her with such deep remorse when the features of others betrayed them. An infinite regret, simply that she had seen, might rise in her then, having seen too much unseen; and it brought her eyes down quick. . .

The sole way, it seemed to her often enough when she was working at writing a poem, to use words with meaning, would be to choose words for themselves, and invest them with her own meaning: not her own, perhaps, but meaning which was implicit in their shape, too frequently nothing to do with dictionary definition. The words which the tradition of her art offered her were by now in chaos, coerced through the contexts of a million inanities, the printed page everywhere opiate, row upon row if compelling idiocies disposed to induce stupor, coma, necrotic convulsion; and when they reached her hands they were brittle, straining and cracking, sometimes they broke under the burden which her tense will imposed, and she found herself clutching their fragments, attempting again with this shabby equipment her raid on the inarticulate."

I'm nearing the end of Gravity's Rainbow (exhausting but incredible) which means I've tentatively been thinking about what to read next. I typically like fiction that falls under the genre of 'postmodern' and Gaddis is a name that often comes up. I've read and love DeLillo, Pynchon, Vonnegut, Heller, PKD, etc and I suppose I'm curious if Gaddis is the next author to try.

So please, share your thoughts! And if you have any other books or author recommendations, please offer them.

>I haven’t read Pynchon enough to have an opinion either of his work or whether it might have been “influenced” (perilous word) by mine, though I’ve understood he feels not & who’s to know if he’d ever read mine before V? (August 1982 postcard to Steven Moore)
>
>I think both Pynchon and I—and I don’t know him—are simply involved with different aspects of the same problems. I would doubt that my work has influenced him; his has certainly not influenced mine in any way at all. (November 1986 interview with Zoltán Abádi-Nagy)

>
>https://web.archive.org/web/20021105180739/http://www.komarios.net/gaddis/quotes.htm

I’m currently about 200 pages into The Recognitions, and I was wondering if anyone on this sub has any anecdotes, analyses, etc. on Gaddis that they’d like to share? I’m engrossed in this book and I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on it or any of Gaddis’s other novels.

This review/analysis will contain some spoilers.

The Recognitions Review And Analysis

introduction

William Gaddis’ debut maximalist novel, The Recognitions, at times parallels Faust’s deal with the devil, and in order to write on this novel, I feel like I’d need to do the same. Nonetheless, I’ll give it a shot. The Recognitions is a book that is the first of its kind. Maximalism was semi-present in previous novels such as Moby Dick and Ulysses, but the massively wide scope of interweaving plots, characters, themes, and references, had truly never been done before. Not only was it the first maximalist novel, but it serves as a bridge between modernism and postmodernism (along with Borges and Beckett) by combining the more discomforting points of the human condition and the vast never-ending stream of different stories. This merging into the postmodern world was just a condition that Gaddis was living in, and with this novel was attempting to decipher it for himself. But the maximalist scope was a deliberate choice, and his reasoning is put perfectly by a quote by Stanley:

>It’s as though this one thing must contain it all, all in one piece of work, because, well it’s as though finishing it strikes it dead.

And that is what Gaddis did. He wanted to discuss forgery, false living, what it means to create art, the critics he knew would bash him, a lack of love, an overabundance of religion, memory, suicide, and so many other topics. He took each of these ideas and put every thought he had into the book’s 900+ pages, creating a massive array of characters that would be able to help enlighten the different facets of these themes.

review and analysis

The main themes Gaddis discusses are art and originality, by asking: what does it mean to create art? is art ever truly original? does artistic talent itself merit creativity, or must it include some form of originality? and finally, what is the toll of plagiarism? Wyatt’s life is defined in childhood, in a moment of forgery – this instance being impersonation. Frank Sinisterra, a professional forger, is on the same ship that Wyatt’s parents are. He is impersonating a doctor, and when Camilla, Wyatt’s mother, falls ill with appendicitis, he fails to treat her correctly which leads to her death. From this moment on, Wyatt is doomed to repeat this defining moment. When the novel progresses through its first part, his Faustian bargain calls to power all of his artistic talents, but not in the

“-Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...”
― William Gaddis