The Recognitions by William Gaddis, | BOOK REVIEW
The Recognitions by William Gaddis is a unique and controversial story about painting. This quick book review will let you whether it's right for you. Some readers love it, but others dislike it, here's why!
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The NYRB is the most available these days, but if you can find a cheap, older editions that'd be better in my opinion.
This is because the NYRB edition cover peeled a lot for me and other readers, and also, I particularly disliked the new Introduction — they moved the former Introduction by Gass which is very, very good to be an afterword, where it makes no sense based on how Gass writes it. We instead have now got an Introduction which is not as suitable (it's less inviting, less informative of the book's context, and more revealing of the plot).
People have suggested this new arrangement is to encourage readers to immediately reread The Recognitions, which frankly I think is a ridiculous idea no matter how much you love this book. Not every postmodern novel has to be reformatted to be cyclic like Infinite Jest. So if you did buy the NYRB edition, I'd strongly recommend not reading the Introduction but instead reading the Afterword (which was the Introduction to the 1st edition).
Sorry, rant over.
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GoodReads Review:
/ 3625263240
Advice:
If you decide to read this, I'd highly recommend following the chapter summaries here:
https://www.williamgaddis.org/recogni...
The strategy is to either read a chapter and then immediately after read it's summary, or vice-versa. You're welcome to try reading it alone, but having additional guidance with the plot allows one to relax and notice the subtle sideplots and writing techniques not mentioned in the summaries.
Additional Remarks:
The Recognitions is a landmark work of fiction, as in 1955 Gaddis with this debut novel changed many conventions for writing fiction, namely dialogue. Gaddis writes dialogue exceptionally well and that's reason enough to want to read this. I can see how Gaddis is one of the black humorists of the postmodern era, and how Pynchon and DFW drew inspiration from how Gaddis writes.
TheBookChemist recently gave up on reading this while I had just started, and honestly I don't blame him. Had I not been part of a 'group read' on twitter, I probably would've quit early, in my case due to offensive jokes, but I'm glad I hung on as I'd have missed some really incredible writing. The party scenes are 5* writing, but they were shorter than expected. The rest was 2-4*.
The inaccessibility makes me give this 3* overall as I can't strongly recommend it to anyone due to how demanding, outrageous, and specific it is. Though I think the book is more divisive than the GoodReads ratings and reviews currently suggest, and there's discussions to be had about it for both sides.
The problem with books this big and difficult is that only diehard fans complete reading them, so there's a distorted perception on how likeable they are for a general audience going by the ratings.
Come find me on GoodReads, where I try to review every book that I read, primarily as a reminder for my future self.
/ oolevityoo
= Dislike (not recommended) ("failed")
** = Okay (recommended to select audience) ("flawed")
*** = Like (recommended to general audience) ("fine")
**** = Really like (strongly recommended to select audience) ("focused")
***** = Love (strongly recommended to general audience) ("fervent")
#TheRecognitions #WilliamGaddis #Bookreview #Levitybooks #Gaddis21
