Inglorious Bastard: The Mystique of Jack Green

Last month, William Gaddis's first two novels (The Recognitions and JR) were reprinted in new paperback and e-book forms by the fine publishers at Dalkey Archive Press. These reissues were met with muted but enthusiastic response, since the works have been out of print for a few years since their previous release by Penguin Classics. I'm always excited when the works of William Gaddis receive new attention, but I was even more excited when I found out that Dalkey Archive was also publishing Jack Green's Fire the Bastards!, an underground rant against the poor early reviews of The Recognitions. I've read about Fire the Bastards! in the occasional Gaddis essay, and I was quick to snatch up a copy upon its release. In some paradoxical way, I knew what to expect going in, but at the same time I had no idea how Green went about his critiques. I was also challenged by wondering how to go about this written response, since I realized it would be too much to have this be a review of a review of multiple reviews.

When The Recognitions was first published, the reviews were a combination of scathing, confused, and outright wrong about its meaning and often confusing plot structures and dialogue sequences. Upon reading the book, the pseudonymous Jack Green took to his underground publication, entitled newspaper, to provide detailed, unrelenting criticisms of the reviewers who failed to see the genius in Gaddis's work. Steve Moore's introduction to the 1992 printing (which is also available in this year's edition) provides some valuable background into Green's life, and the details are just as entertaining as the book's content.

"He entered Princeton in 1947, where he majored in music, but apparently he left without a degree. In the early fifties he lived in Greenwich Village, studied the psychological theories of Wilhelm Reich, and worked on trying to perfect various gambling systems.....
He then changed his name to Jack Green, perhaps taken from Jack Green's card--a horse-racing tip sheet of the 1940s. Supporting himself as a free-lance proofreader--by all accounts a quick and accurate one--he started newspaper, which he had been planning since his insurance company days (Moore v)."

Another important part of Moore's introduction is as follows: "Green learned of [The Recognitions] from a review in the New Yorker shortly after publication in 1955, and though he admits that he had some difficulty adjusting to it at first, by 1957 he was convinced it was 'a great work of art, the best novel ever written in America.'" Before getting into Green's writings, one would assume the critics of The Recognitions suffered from the same early struggles that Green had. However, Fire the Bastards! is not just a screed against poor book reviewing, but a condemnation of plagiarism, intentional boasting of not finishing a work one is meant to review, and the general attitude of giving up on something that takes time to appreciate. It took Green two years to come around to the book, and it took me months to read it myself (and I'm sure my review has some errors Green would have been all too happy to point out). This problem is the only one not truly touched upon. In the haste to have reviews out in a timely fashion, challenging books might not be given adequate time and reading. Even the fastest readers need time with something as complex as The Recognitions. But, even with this in mind, Green bitingly attacks the other faults committed by the book reviewers. His style is similar to that of Gaddis, taken even further. With the exception of exact quotations, he writes with little to no punctuation or capitalization. It's not distracting, but rather gives his words even more emphasis. Even without adherence to grammatical rules, there's no doubt he's a fiercely intelligent reader and critic.

"FIRE the anonymous hack of the toronto globe & mail he didn't finish the book either headline: It Beats Us

Frequently we sample a new book, reading a few paragraphs here and there to get the hang of it; but several such samplings left us blanker and blanker. It is a most humiliating thing for a reviewer of upwards of 40 years' experience to not be able to understand a novel, not even get a clue. So the samplings became fewer and fewer and farther apart and had stopped when we discovered the able Chicago Tribune man, Edward Wagenknecht, was in the same fix.

'able!' the provincial disciple acknowledges his master--at gold-bricking after 40 years experience faking cant he even write his own review? almost 1/2 of it is right out of wagenknecht (Green 5)."

What I didn't anticipate in my reading was how funny Green is at his most scathing. I read the following line multiple times, and its humor was never diminished:

"im biased for reviewers who favored the recognitions except some who write like cold oatmeal (Green 8)."

For all of my appreciation of Green's intelligence, I'm not going to say, had I read The Recognitions without any background information, my critical eye would have seen it as a landmark novel; I likely would have been just as lost had I not read multiple essays about the book before my attempt. And as I mentioned in my linked piece, I know I missed a slew of references, allusions, and translations, but what I got out of it far outweighs what I didn't. But the heart of Green's argument is that esteemed, professional book reviewers were so quick to find no redeeming value in it. Furthermore, Gaddis's lack of dialogue indication, while relatively daring at the time, was viewed as too anti-establishment and yet another demerit to an already difficult work. This provides yet another method to Green's (emotional) madness, ridiculing the expectations of conformity. Similar to Gaddis, one sometimes has to carefully dissect Green's longer sentences to see the clear meaning embedded in them:

"(yes i know youve heard all about conformity madisonavenue & individuality & you dont want to read another word about topics stale usedup & newly unfashionable which means: youve been conned again! when an idea starts to look dangerous to Them they destroy it with the novelty trick they grab onto it themselves & write it up everywhere & everyphonyway until you get sick of it, the novelty wears off, the ideas not dangerous but passe & meantime the right people have made plenty of money out of it especially compared to what theyd make if they wrote about their own ideas but ideas arent like hats 1 fashions not replaceable by another except among the fashionable timekillers 'conformism's just as important before during & after the henry luce boys get the hots for it)(Green 34)"



As I neared the end of Fire the Bastards!, I couldn't help but wonder if Green was too scathing for his own good. There's such a great buildup, and there are many terrific lines, but I had the occasional feeling that his critiques were repetitive. And given the style, it's easy to see how some assumed, according to Moore, that Gaddis himself was actually Jack Green (this was a rumor that has since been dismissed). Had this been true, then it would have been an utter embarrassment. On the flip side, I wonder how many writers would really want someone like Jack Green on their side. It would be gratifying to have a champion, someone willing to research and defend against negativity, to a point. But Fire the Bastards! is a rare piece of literary criticism that manages to highlight an entire industry, rather than just a single author's negative reviews. The research is astute, and there is undeniable creativity in the venom. And equally as rare is the realization that the work can potentially be read on its own without one having read The Recognitions (although I wouldn't immediately suggest this). So while I cannot help but wonder if Green's work is just a bit too over the top, it's an admirable study of someone passionate about a work of art, done in a style that would have been ridiculous in other hands. Green hits his targets and makes this a helpful companion piece. My own take on it might not be the most in-depth, but the citations are good examples of what he did, and it's proof that literary criticism isn't always solemn and stodgy. Most importantly, the slim volume likely did more for a literary classic than any more academic analysis could have done. By digging into the novel's imagined faults, Fire the Bastards! is just slightly more an appreciation of the book than a rant against the critics. Just slightly, but enough that both sides can be easily ascertained.

Work Cited:
Green, Jack. Fire the Bastards! Public domain. 1962.

Moore, Steven. Introduction copyright 1992 by Dalkey Archive Press.

Everything and More: Dialogue and Voices in "The Recognitions"

Given the volume of history, citations, sources, and secondary texts in The Recognitions by William Gaddis, the novel has often (rightfully) been referred to as encyclopedic. Even though it works as both a historical and (then) contemporary piece, rife with facts both fictional and non-fictional, I sometimes get the feeling that any novel over 500 pages is sometimes labeled encyclopedic, which if it's not, and merely just a long book, renders said label inexplicable at best, and mildly self-insulting to the reviewer at worst, since it hints at a lack of adjectives on his/her part. Some writers and critics have tried to tear away that label from The Recognitions, and the best argument that I've found comes from writer Joseph McElroy in his excellent essay "Gaddis Dialogue Questioned" (re-printed in Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System):

"[The Recognitions]was a work adequate to our underground history and pretension, carried through no matter how long it takes: this was the Gaddis example, an idea of the book itself, what it could hold. (Forget "experimental"; forget "encyclopedic") Worth writing, worth reading, it will be a book to be in, not just to pass through as so much nowadays passes through us and is gone.....
....The hole so overflows with voices (McElroy 67)."

In my introductory essay on The Recognitions, I mentioned that I would be writing a follow-up piece on "some nuances of the novel." This was a terribly vague statement on my part, but while I tossed around various potential specific essays, I could not escape the winding turns, power and sheer abundance of voices and dialogues in the novel. Granted, albeit with rare exceptions, dialogue is a constant in fiction, postmodern or otherwise, and done in ways that are brilliant, subversive, contradictory, or realistic. However, in The Recognitions, Gaddis manages to combine all of those potentials, presented in standard fashions, but also in labyrinth, multi-character discussions that are compelling, intentionally evasive as to who is speaking, and mysterious. Mix these with radio voices, reprinted news articles, and reprinted personal letters, and the novel manages to combine both Realism, an intelligent caricature of bustling city cacophonies, as well as purely seductive, misleading bullshit. However, every piece is intentional; it's up to the reader to decide what's true, what's blatantly false, and what could possibly be a combination of the two. Nothing is set in stone, yet everything is available for an endless equation of possible meanings.

Critics from McElroy to Franzen have made many notes on Gaddis' use of ellipses, dashes, and unnamed or non-cited speakers. A careful reading makes the majority of the conversations understandable, and in the best cases, meanings are both explicit as well as merely implied. Early in The Recognitions, Wyatt has a transforming conversation with a corrupt art critic, and their back-and-forth conversation is deceptively simple, yet weighed with (mostly negative) implications.

"--What do you mean? Wyatt looked up, startled, dropping his arms.
--I am in a position to help you greatly.
--Yes, yes, but...
--Art criticism pays very badly, you know.
--But...well? Well? His face creased.
--If you should guarantee me, say, one-tenth of the sale price of whatever we sell...
--We? You? You (Gaddis 71)?"

The reader knows exactly what is going on, the two speakers are on the same page, but at the same time, there's an air of deception and corruption, which is an appropriate microcosm of the novel as a whole. Other microcosms abound; it would be far too easy to say that the dialogue is representative of the novel's actions (depending on the form, that could be said of any novel or story), but the pieces work as excellent stand-alone movements. Gaddis has an excellent ear for mixed-up party scenes, perfectly evoking the interjecting, sometimes-confusing, alcohol-fueled conversations that inevitably happen at large gatherings. The example below might not make perfect sense out of context, but imagine it being spoken at a random party: in a slightly twisted way, it makes sense even in its confusion.

"--You write a novel! Who'll read a novel with no women in it?
--But baby, there will be, I'll do it just like Proust did, write it about simply everyone I know and then just go through and change boys' names to girls, I know the perfect Odette...
--You ought to go back to analysis. Or have a vagotomy and get it over with. Just because your analyst killed himself...
--He didn't kill himself, it was an accident.
--An accident! He ties a rope around his neck and climbs out a window, but the rope breaks and he falls forty-six stories, so it's an accident?
--Hannah, I'm going, going to get a drink. Herschel said turning on the room, no idea where he was going, but away.
--I didn't know he was a writer, Otto said.
--Writer! He ghosts. He just ghosted some army general's autobiography. A writer!
--Otto looked after Herschel. --I'd say he was a latent heterosexual, he said, immediately regretted wasting such an inspired line on Hannah, and resolved to repeat it later to someone who would repeat it as his own. He even tried to think quickly of a spot for it in his play (Gaddis 180-181)."

Quiet moments of reflection are scarce in The Recognitions, with background noises, conversations, and mild chaos being constant presences. McElroy's essay is mainly focused on Gaddis' second novel, JR, but I couldn't help but notice how a lot of the dialogue themes could also apply to The Recognitions, especially McElroy's assertion that:

"Apt thus for the strandedness of his principles, dialogue serves Gaddis in other ways. And the tumbling out of broken hopes and tentative, even underground will, and bursts of incipient action and frenetic speeches ma bring from Edward, Amy, Jack [characters in JR] in their voicings of frustration a lost and distracted tragic-comicness like that of some Dostoevsky people in their own messy but awful and true crisis-dramas (McElroy 66)."

Tumbling out of broken hopes...frenetic speeches...messy but awful and true crisis-dramas. These are honored standbys of classic and contemporary novels, but in an amazing, saddening way, Gaddis is able to apply these not only in character discussions, but also in advertising. Radio voices pop up every now and then, and Gaddis' satire of advertising culture is blistering, especially given the time period. While 1950s ads have their own websites and DVDs devoted to their nostalgia, and while advertising today is viewed through a skeptical lens, Gaddis shows that nostalgia was the last thing on his mind. Even then, advertising was ludicrous at times, and laughable in its intense pursuit of listeners and dollars. This "ad" from a child's radio show is an excellent example, both comically astute and stunning in its subject, asking children to talk to their parents about birth control.

"--you friend Laughing Lazarus will be here in a minute, but listen kids. Here's one real confidential question I want to ask you first, just between us. Do you have enough brothers and sisters? I know, you love big brother or little Janey, don't you. But too many can spoil your chances. Look at it this way. When you have pie for dessert, how many ways does it have to be divided up? Do you get your share? If you have enough brothers and sisters, or even if you don't have any and don't want any, tell Mummy about Cuff. Cuff, the new wonder preventative. Cuff is guaranteed not to damage internal tissues or have lasting effects. But you don't have to remember all those long words, just tell Mummy to ask about Cuff next time she visits her friendly neighborhood druggist. Remember, Cuff. It's on the Cuff (Gaddis 366)."

Even in the most basic Gaddis dialogue, there are underlying messages, plays for power, distinctions between class, and accents/untranslated passages that lend The Recognitions a multiculturalism that play easily in a backdrop like Manhattan, or in the various overseas locales to which the characters travel or appear in at random. In one particularly comic exchange, the playwright Otto is in Central America, trying to write while interrupted by a housemate named Jesse. Gaddis slightly exaggerates Jesse's diction, but it's not done in a stereotypical way; instead, it highlights the different temperaments between the two men, the pseudo-intellectual Otto and the more "manly" Jesse:

"--Hello, Jesse.
--Hello Jesse. How do you like that. Hello Jesse. What are you doin anyhow? said the tattooed man, and sat down on the other wooden chair.
--I'm writing.
--Jesse put the bottle and glass on the table and looked around him. The corners of his mouth twitched, momentarily confused about something, but something which was going to be pleasurable. He looked over the table, littered with papers illegibly scribbled upon, and at the pictures on the wall.
--Do you want a cigarette? Otto asked him.
--Yeah, give me a cigarette. Jesse put out his hand, and then waved away the green package of MacDonald's Gold Standard.
--What do you smoke those things for? That ain't even American-made stuff.
--I don't know, I...anyhow it is Virgina tobacco, I...
--Yeah what do you smoke those lousy things for? Why don't you smoke American cigarettes? He knocked one of Otto's clean socks from the corner of the table into the cuspidor with his elbow, and watched suspiciously while Otto got up and went behind him to retrieve it.
--What are you doin anyhow? Jesse asked. Then he said,--You're a religious bastid ain't you (Gaddis 154-155)."

For a novel that relies heavily on communications or lack thereof, it's curious to note that the work famously ends on a fatal miscommunication. Stanley, a deeply religious composer, heads to an Italian monastery to play his composition on the monastery's organ. An elderly monk tells him (in Italian) to not play anything too heavy, given the fact that the ancient system is unequipped to handle deeply resonant music. Not understanding, Stanley plays anyway, collapsing the area around him, and dying in the process. The closing lines of the novel are: "He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played (Gaddis 956)." To me, the telling phrase is "most of his work," and the closing would take on different potential meanings if Gaddis had phrased it as "all of his work." Jonathan Franzen felt that this final statement was an unintentional precursor to Gaddis' life-long reception. To expand my reading of it, the mostly completed work is "noted with high regard." Like the dialogue in the novel, we have most of it, but not all of it. The communications are flushed out, but at the same time, it's impossible to know if, as readers, we're getting the complete picture. Reading between the lines in such a mammoth and (yes) encyclopedic work is daunting enough, but even with the brutal honesty of the characters and voices, they are deeply flawed individuals, and aren't as seemingly open as Gaddis makes them. Once more, a seemingly unrelated phrase from McElroy, in reference to JR, makes for an excellent potential reading of The Recognitions, both regarding its voices and emphasis on communication at the end.

"The voice sort of at the end of the line with dramatic persona nonetheless abstracts itself (McElroy 66)."

Works Cited:
Gaddis, William. The Recognitions. Copyright 1983 by William Gaddis.

McElroy, Joseph. "Gaddis Dialogue Questioned." Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System. Rone Shavers and Joseph Tabbi, eds. Copyright 2007 by The University of Alabama Press.

Data Accessibility: "The Recognitions"

"...The Recognitions was perfect for the task. Reading the whole thing would also confer bragging rights. If somebody asked me if I'd read The Sotweed Factor, I could shoot back: No, but have you read The Recognitions? And blow smoke from the muzzle of my gun (Franzen 247)."




I recently completed a long-term goal of mine, a project that has been on my to-do list since I was twenty. Back in December, I began reading The Recognitions, the 1955 debut novel of author William Gaddis. Several times in the past, I started it, but never managed to make it beyond the first fifty pages or so. After a couple of months of on-again, off-again struggling, I finally finished the book. Even though I opened with it, the above passage from novelist Jonathan Franzen does not represent my beliefs. I didn't read the book for any bragging rights or literary hipster street cred. And even though I finished it, I'll be the first one to openly admit that I was lost at times, and that the book is packed with allusions and references that I undoubtedly missed. I had to turn to online summaries to pick up on some characters who were lost in the shuffle, and I found myself being slightly passive at times, skimming through parts written in Spanish, Latin, and Italian without taking the time to translate them. Even though this is an admission of literary sins, I still feel as if I made an accomplishment. Reading can be a combination of pleasure and work, and reading The Recognitions was a lot like my reading of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: I knew it would be a challenge, but a good one. The readings were done out of a desire for the literary pleasure, but with full knowledge that I'd have to roll up my sleeves and devote time to vastly long narratives. Admittedly, this was far from easy. Even when the book was first published, a lot of critics and readers found it daunting, as William Gass explains in his relatively famous introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, which works as an example of Gaddis defenders being extremely devoted to the writer's cause, and also offering a glimmer of hope to the first-time reader.

"Its arrival was duly noted in fifty-five papers and periodicals. Only fifty-three of these notices were stupid. But the reviewers' responses to the book confirmed its character and quality, for they not only declared it unreadable and wandering and tiresome and confused, they participated in the very chicaneries the text documented and dramatized. It was too much to expect: that they should read and understand and praise a fiction they were fictions in. You, too, can let your present copy rest unread on some prominent table. A few critics confessed they could not reach the novel's conclusion except by skipping. Well, how many have actually arrived at the last page of Proust or completed Finnegans Wake? What does it mean to finish Moby-Dick, anyway? Do not begin this book with any hope of that. This is a book you are meant to befriend. It will be your lifelong companion. You will end only to begin again (Gass vii)."

My fascination with Gaddis (despite the fact that I've only read three of his books, including the slim essay collection The Rush For Second Place) began at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where I lucked out and studied under Joseph Tabbi and Rone Shavers, two Gaddis scholars who also edited an invaluable critical collection entitled Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System. It was at that time that I began following Franzen's critical work, and professor Tabbi and I occasionally clashed over the issue of Franzen's assessment of Gaddis, in his essay "Mr. Difficult." At that time, I wasn't anywhere close to being ready to read The Recognitions, even though I gave it some attempts. The enthusiasm that Tabbi and Shavers brought to even the most basic studies of Gaddis rubbed off on me. I still have quite a way to go before I a.) complete the Gaddis bibliography, and b.) can profess to have a more complete knowledge of his style and sources. But even with just one basic reading of The Recognitions, the amount of information and genuinely brilliant passages is exhilarating.

The novel follows several interconnected and dissecting plot lines. A preacher's son named Wyatt Gwyon grows up with intense religious fear, partly due to his Aunt's belief that he should devote himself to God, not the emulation of him (namely, recreating God's creations via art). As an adult, his marriage is strained and possibly sexless, his wife is engaged in multiple affairs, and after bad reviews, he takes an offer to forge the paintings of old masters to be re-sold as originals by a corrupt art dealer named Recktall Brown. Wyatt's path crosses with Otto Pivner, a playwright dogged by hints of plagiarism and pursuing a troubled poet and model named Esme. In the beginning and the middle of the novel, the reader is introduced to a counterfeiter whose son is mixed up with Esme. Showing up at a party and taking the dubious center stage at the novel's end is Stanley, a tortured Catholic composer who lives his life under a continually troubled religious code. Granted, in a twisting novel of 956 pages, this is just a sampling of the complete list of characters. Other ones play small to semi-important parts, others drift in and out, and some make mere cameo appearances. Giving a capsule description of each character would be both helpful and pointless, since, much like the novel's themes, picking and choosing their ultimate destinations is challenging.

The novel's themes and sources are many, and the historical and classical references alone are daunting to keep up with (again, as I mentioned above, I know that I missed most of them; some of the historical allusions are even explained within the novel, but a full understanding of their relation to the story requires nearly infinite background studies and resources). However, the implications and questions pop up at the reader from the beginning, and make for a literal whirlwind of ideas. Religious fanaticism and hypocrisy are bluntly explored. The nature of art, art criticism, and reality are debated. Few, if any, of the character relationships are genuine or truly long-lasting, creating a sense of isolation and despair in the multiple cities and countries in which the stories take place, thereby making The Recognitions a truly underrated example of 1950s unhappiness (Franzen hints that, stripped down, the novel is akin to Catcher In the Rye). What is, on the surface, a continual search for happiness is actually a search for integrity and reality in a false, corrupt world. For such a vast work, it's important to read carefully, since Gaddis had a knack for creating intensely philosophical and sociological details in his fiction. It's really the best of both worlds, with consistent, smaller character examinations mixed in with the novel's more expansive, overall messages. For example, look at the details infused in a brief sketch of the marriage between Wyatt and Esther:

"A year later, they had been married for almost a year; which was unlike Wyatt. He had become increasingly reluctant wherever decisions were concerned; and the more he knew, the less inclined to commit himself. Not that this was an exceptional state: whole systems of philosophy have been erected upon it. On the other hand, the more insistent from those depths, became the necessity to do so: a plight which has formed the cornerstone for whole schools of psychology. So it may be that his decision to marry simply made one decision the less that he must eventually face; or it is equally possible that his decision to marry was indecision crystallized, insofar as he was not deciding against it (Gaddis 79)."

Given that the novel was published in 1955, reading it today still renders it fresh, and shocking in the sense that Gaddis' criticisms were almost literally years ahead of the times, even if this is only evidenced in hindsight. As William Gass hinted, Gaddis seemed to poke fun at his eventual critics, but he also shows a deft hand for critiques of the consumer, political, and overall cultures of the 1950s, especially in the face of art and creativity. Some of these critiques are blunt, but at times, they are sly and carefully worded.

"He listened to the radio during periods of political heat, the speech in which one senator told the truth about another (this was known as a 'smear campaign'); and then the raucous gathering where people were paid in five-dollar bills to shout, clap, parade, and otherwise indicate the totally irrational quality of their enthusiasm for a man they had never met to take office and govern them (Gaddis 290)."

For a novel that packs in a stunning wealth of religious history and study, the subject is another one that doesn't escape Gaddis' wary eye. A few of the characters, most notably Stanley, profess intense religious feelings. Wyatt's father alternates between his life as a preacher, as well as a descent into madness, Mithraism, and pagan worship. However, a prevailing sentiment is the fact that religion is fueled by money and hypocrisy, which isn't so far-fetched today, but one can only imagine how daring this was in 1955. Again, Gaddis combines both explicit critiques with ones that the reader either discovers or stumbles upon.

"There was, in fact, a religious aura about this festival, religious that is in the sense of devotion, adoration, celebration of deity, before religion became confused with systems of ethics and morality, to become a sore affliction upon the very things it had once exalted (Gaddis 311)."




I feel as if I'm picking and choosing various aspects of The Recognitions, but its scope is such that one essay on it cannot hope to reveal every question or theme. However, the prevailing ruminations center on art and creativity, and again, the balance of the real (personal integrity) and the false (corruption, monetary aspirations). Passages and pages of dialogue are devoted to these very notions. Some of the most striking ideas come in conversations between Wyatt and Basil Valentine (an associate of Recktall Brown).

"--You? the, what was it you said, the shambles of your work? What a pitifully selfish career! being lived, as you said? by something that uses you and then sheds you like a husk when its own ends are accomplished?......

--No I, it's just, listen, criticism? It's the most important art now, it's the one we need the most now. Criticism is the art we need most today. But not, don't you see? not the 'if I'd done it myself...'Yes a, a disciplined nostalgia, disciplined recognitions but not, no, listen, what is the favor? Why did you come here (Gaddis 335)?"

A substantial part of the Gaddis "mystique" is his lifelong separation between his work and his personal life. While he wasn't a recluse in the sense of J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon, writer Cynthia Ozick was famously noted for saying that Gaddis was famous for not being famous enough. His art was meant to stand alone with little to no readerly expectations to wonder or assume how personal or autobiographical his novels were. His most famous interview was conducted in 1986 in The Paris Review (The Art of Fiction No. 101), and his first published statement puts to rest any notions of wanting to be a public figure.

"I suppose because I've got some illusion about finally getting the whole thing out of the way once and for all. In the past I've resisted partly because of the tendency I've observed of putting the man in the place of his work, and that goes back more than thirty years; it comes up in a conversation early in The Recognitions. That, and the conviction that the work has got to stand on its own--when ambiguities appear they are deliberate and I've no intention of running after them with explanations--and finally, of course, the threat of questions from someone unfamiliar with the work itself: Do you work on a fixed schedule every day? On which side of the paper do you write? That sort of talk-show pap, five-minute celebrity, turning the creative artist into a performing one, which doesn't look to be the case here."

Perhaps with this introductory essay, I've committed the same mistakes of the early Gaddis readers. I've sketched some of the themes, I've admitted the work's difficulty, but in reality, I haven't dived into anything truly substantial; in fact, given the impossibility of doing so on a small scale, I've left vast amounts of The Recognitions unmentioned. One of my next blog posts will be a more detailed look at some nuances of the novel, but I felt that a general introduction essay was warranted. The Recognitions has been called an encyclopedic novel, has been noted for its vast amounts of data, almost rendering it as a book of codes to be deciphered. However, while these notions are in part true, for an overall assessment, the novel is accessible for a good majority of readers. Given the passion of Gaddis scholars, and the sheer length of his first two novels (the other being JR), there's a definite sense of intimidation that goes along with any attempts to ease into his bibliography. However, the book is a very real novel, and not an impossible mass that some would make it out to be. William Gass makes the deceptively simple advice seem even grander than it actually is: it just takes time and understanding, but the works of Gaddis are not impossible, but challenging in the best literary sense. Again, this is the first of two essays that I'm planning to write about this book. Perhaps I've introduced the important topics, or perhaps I've glossed over more important themes. I'll be getting into specifics in my next piece, and if anyone reading this is unfamiliar with Gaddis, I'm hoping that this introductory outline helps with perfunctory understanding. I'm also writing this for myself, and hoping that within these notes, I'm working towards a more complete understanding of not only the novel, but of the majority of the Gaddis bibliography.

Works Cited:

Franzen, Jonathan. How To Be Alone.
Copyright 2003 by Jonathan Franzen.

Gaddis, William. The Recognitions. Copyright 1983 by William Gaddis. Introduction copyright 1993 by William H. Gass.

Branching Out

I mentioned this quite awhile ago, but some friends of mine have finally launched Collision Detective, a website devoted to video games, video and audio technology, and postings about any other type of media imaginable.

By virtue of being friends with the creators, I'll be making contributions to their site when I can. I just posted my first substantial essay, "The Literary Cipher," an introductory look at William Gaddis. I've written about Gaddis a few times (here is one mediocre example), but for now, I'm pleased with what I just posted. So again, please support the fine people who have put a lot of work into Collision Detective. The link is available to the right, as it has been since the site was launched last year. It's now rolling consistently.

A Modern Spin

"A number of magazines devoted to the player--many of them put out by the manufacturers themselves--were stolidly enough written to convince any player owner that his was the most important instrument in the history of music and that he was its master (Gaddis 2)."

This quote is from William Gaddis, an excerpt from "Stop Player. Joke No. 4," a brief essay on the history of the player piano. While the piece was published in 1951, I cannot help but think how it could also apply to the video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero. More specifically, if he were alive today, would Gaddis see a possible connection? I can't think of a stronger way to ask that question, a way that wouldn't sound like an elementary school textbook (remember questions like "What would George Washington say about democracy today?").

"Although Gaddis had kept perhaps one hundred pages from earlier drafts and he anticipated (at this stage) a finished work approaching fifty thousand words...brief though it is, the essay is complete and it stands as the closest indication of what he had in mind for the player piano project (Tabbi 6)."

In his excellent notes on Gaddis's essay collection The Rush For Second Place, Joseph Tabbi mentions Gaddis's major unrealized project, a (social and chronological) history of the player piano, namely how technology helps or impedes the arts. While the available analyses don't seem to offer any explicit opinions, a reader wouldn't be faulted for guessing that Gaddis believed that the player piano impeded creativity rather than helped it. With the music rolls, the user of a player piano needed no musical knowledge or training, but could appear to be a classically trained pianist.

The connection to the video games came about after seeing Rock Band played at a party a few weeks ago and reading quotes in Entertainment Weekly both praising and criticizing its popularity. (A brief note on EW: If you follow this blog, you may have noticed two or three previous references to this publication. My sister-in-law has a subscription to it, and I tend do do a lot of deep thinking in the bathroom with back issues on hand.) On one hand, the games are fun at parties, especially after a few beers. Plus there are indications that they might steer people to actually learning musical instruments. On the other hand, some (children) might be led to believe that playing music is nothing more than pushing synchronized buttons.

While the games are wildly popular, there's no real reason to fear that they will overtake actual bands and instruments in popularity. When the player piano was in its prime, that idea was a definite possibility. Consider these notes compiled by Gaddis:
1.) "Their piano praised by: His Holiness Pope Pius X, the Sultan of Turkey, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Bros., Prince Tadashigo Shimedsu--and installed on 32 battleships (162)."
2.) "Decade 1900-10, rate of pianos increases 6.2 times that of human beings (163)."
3.) "As for the ultimate consumer of all this musical feast, the American music lover, he ate it up and cried for more. No longer did he have to exert himself even to the extent of pumping pedals or pushing levers. An electric motor now reduced his chores to zero. He merely sat back, relaxed, and dreamed, while his piano, entirely on its own, delivered performances by the giants of the keyboard, from Pachmann and Godowsky to Vincent Lopez, right in his own living room. No czar, sultan, or begum could command more [clipping] (165)."

Then again, what's to say that two current video games couldn't start such a revolution? There are websites that allow users to create songs with just a few mouse clicks. In the early 20th century, entertainment options were limited, so a novelty like the player piano could easily create a diversion monopoly. Today, music and games are just a fraction of the available hobbies and entertainments. Getting back to my original question, what would Gaddis say about something like Rock Band?

My guess is that the argument would be the same--entertainment and karaoke stylings are fine, but people need to remember that the notes and songs being reproduced electronically needed to be created in the first place. A video game can never supplant a live show, just as a book with novel-writing tips and "formulas" can never be a substitute for an idea and creativity. William Gaddis and Marshall McLuhan were two authorities on communications and technologies, yet it's fascinating how different their personalities appeared on paper. McLuhan seemed to be full of excitement and optimism, whereas Gaddis (to paraphrase Franzen) seemed to grow more bitter as he got older. One can only imagine how angry his player piano opus would have been. The notes left behind really seem to be the forming of a mental eruption.

Work Cited:
Gaddis, William. The Rush For Second Place. Copyright 2002 by the Estate of William Gaddis. Introduction and notes copyright 2002 by Joseph Tabbi.

Just Read

My more recent posts have been film-based, which is fine and good, but I'm hoping, at least in the next couple of weeks, to return to more thoughts and essays on literature and writing. As for my personal readings, I've decided to swing for the metaphorical fences, embarking on a study that will have great highs and frustrating lows, perhaps in equal measure, or maybe with the lows taking the edge. I'm reading William Gaddis' 1975 novel JR. I'm fully prepared (but hoping against) for the possibility of tossing it aside in frustration. On a more modest, optimistic note, I will succeed if I can finish it and at least have a basic understanding of the plot. I've caught some of the references and metaphors in the 102 pages I've read so far (out of 726...not a daunting task for another book, but keep in mind that JR has no chapter breaks, no quotations, and lightning-quick scene transitions). I'm sure I've missed twice as many of the references as I've picked up on, but so far, I'm surprised at how enjoyable and witty it's been.

This is my second attempt at the book, since I'm finding notes and underlinings that I have no memories of making. I bought it three years ago after taking many classes where William Gaddis was discussed in awed, hushed tones, as well as after my many readings of Jonathan Franzen's "Mr. Difficult" essay (I'm proud of myself, since I don't think I've referenced Franzen in at least two months on this blog). In part, Franzen writes in the essay about the satisfaction of reading The Recognitions (Gaddis' 1955 debut), and the frustrations of giving up on reading JR. After many hours of reading ABOUT JR, I felt it was time to jump right in. A couple of days ago, I read a few pages, was following along quite nicely, and immediately put it down. It was almost as if I was scared to keep going, since I didn't want to be disappointed when the hilarious, twisting dialogue kept turning into a headache-inducing labyrinth. Last night, I picked it up again, now determined to see it to the end.

I hope to write about it again once I'm finished, but so far, so good (read: understandable). Most reviews/summaries of the novel describe it as a satire of American capitalism and greed (JR, the main character, is an eleven year-old, semi-accidental business magnate). While that description is true and warranted, what I love so far is that Gaddis had a natural knack for business language, namely, as George Carlin put it best, the language of bullshit. When JR's class takes a field trip to a stock exchange to buy a single stock in Diamond Cable (and therefore, as is said many times, to buy a piece of America), one of the brokers gives them a tour:

"--This is the board room, where your board of directors meets. They sit right in the very chairs you're sitting in and, oh Carol just bring those in and pass them around. This is your company's Annual Report boys and girls, we put it out because we believe that you, and all the other company owners, have a right to know all about your company and the activities it's engaged in Carol tell him to get that projector going, the many varied ways your company serves our great country with cable of every kind you can imagine from the defense industry to communications of every sort, the... (Gaddis 91)."

Gaddis hilariously mixes pompous speeches like the one above with dialogue among the brokers by themselves, a great splice of B.S. and honesty.

I'm hoping to have the book finished in the near future, with more thoughts and descriptions to come. In his introduction to the Penguin paperback edition of the book, Frederick R. Karl mentions the double meaning of "JR," stating how it also stands for "Junior," a play on the protagonist's age. For me, "JR" means "Just Read." I've been tip-toeing around it for so long, so it's about time that I just rolled up my sleeves.

Work Cited:

Gaddis, William. JR. Copyright 1975 by William Gaddis.