The Recognitions

[Anonymous No.20672775]

What does this book say about art, religion, and authenticity in the modern world?

AKA: I just read this /lit/, what did I think of it?

[Anonymous No.20672778]

>>20672775
>what did I think of it?
This isn't /tv/

[Anonymous No.20672845]

>>20672778
It's hard to tell what I think of it. It feels like a book like The Sound and the Fury, where it needs another re-reading immediately to catch everything you missed in the beginning.

My first note that pops out to me in the book is relating to Senor Hermoso Hermoso. I don't doubt that his intentions are genuine in wanting a Saint from San Zwingli, but he obviously doesn't sense the irony in how transactional he makes it seem. This is the same Church that offered indulgences. Is that entirely beside the point, in earnest?

[Anonymous No.20672936]

>>20672845
Most of TSATF's obscurities are intrinsic. Re-reading it reaveals more about the (quite good) plot than anything else. The meat of the book is fairly explicit.

TR is an extremely complicated novel that reveals more about everything (art, society, history, whatever) when re-read, not just the plot. The "events" of TR are all quite clear even when Wyatt is going schizo in his hometown.

[Anonymous No.20673111]

>>20672936
I think you undersell TSATF, but Recognitions is obviously extremely dense

[Anonymous No.20673131]

>>20672845
I think the main point of Hermoso is the way that transactional bullshit is so pervasive that it's getting into everything, even the Church, which is why he (or one of his fellow priests? Can't remember) wants a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People so badly just like all the other more low-brow characters.
But to answer your general question, the book says a lot. It's a thousand fucking pages. Ask more specific things.

[Anonymous No.20673448]

>>20673131
You're probably right, but that seems sort of incomplete to me; he wants it, and he goes to what might be seen as an immoderate expedient to achieve it (suing the paper for libel and using the money to canonize the girl in the white dress), but what does it achieve for him, or where is the religious thrust? Mere peace of mind?

I'd say Gaddis definitely portrays the rural people as more authentic in their lives, even if they are not without major issues of their own.

[Anonymous No.20674611]

Bump for a great book.

[Anonymous No.20674704]

>>20672775
I'll give some incoherent bread crumbs and thoughts

I see a lot of similarities between The Recognitions and Moby-Dick, but the main way is that both authors choose a central subject and use it as a kind of lens to turn in the direction other things and illuminate them in surprising ways. But they do so by looking extremely closely at their chosen subject. Melville talks about all aspects of whaling and through that many interesting things are said about other areas of human experience and history. It's the same with The Recognitions, but instead of a whaling I think it is art and forgery.

The act of Recognition, what is that? Understanding. It is your personal perception interacting with a signifier. Is personal perceptions of the world an important aspect of the book?

Religion and Art are interchanged and substituted for each other in the novel. Remember that the title is taken from a theological book, in fact, the first christian "novel." Wyatt chooses Art as his religion, instead of the religious faith of his father. But the painting that inspires Wyatt to become a painter is Bosch's "The Seven Deadly Sins," a distinctly religious painting.

Wyatt is an extremely skilled painter, but is he an Artist? I think maybe there is some idea that a "capital A" Artist cannot exist if there is no transcendence in the world anymore. In the past, great art was chiefly of a religious nature. If religion is thrown out, what is left for art?

The part around the middle of the book when they find a fake Titian, scrape away a later and find another fake Titian, scrape away a layer and find a real Titian under it all, is a significant metaphor. Maybe there are no artists anymore, just people painting fake Titians over old Titians? Writing Dostoevsky imitations after Dostoevsky? Everything is a knockoff of the art before the death of God?

[Anonymous No.20675446]

>>20674704
>art and forgery
Only at the Otto/Pivner chapter right now, but I get the feeling that commercial power of art has become more important than the cultural power of art. Comes off a bit as "le wrong generation". Medieval art was power flex at the time too.

[Anonymous No.20675538]

>>20672775
You read a 1k word book and don't have an opinion about it.
[x] doubt

[Anonymous No.20675543]

>>20672775
This was the book where I promised myself if I wasn’t looking forward to reading something, I would drop it. Such a slog

[Anonymous No.20675567]

>>20672778
fpbp

[Anonymous No.20675817]

>>20675446
Meh, that seems reductive. And Wyatt is not concerned with medieval art. Painting evolved technically from the early Renaissance to at least the baroque period. In building up from the work of their predecessors painters generally made technical strides that allowed for more lifelike or real or emotive works. It's disingenuous to compare that with the corresponding "advances" made by "artists" like the guy that shows the shirt as a painting.