#53 - 'The Recognitions' by William Gaddis

I find it difficult to discuss a book that took me on a 66 day odyssey of confusion and apathy.  Where to begin?  I suppose I could start with the plot, but deep down, I wonder how much I really know about it.  Much of what I write may be things I have taken from secondary reading about the book.  My reading experience, with its ups and downs, quite often left me wondering what was going on.

The Recognitions follows Wyatt Gwyon, a forger, and his adventures into the art world, where he becomes involved with a sorted cast of characters.  I guess the book also touches quite a bit on religion, to a lesser extent sex, and probably a few other things that simply eluded my attention.  In fact I'm sure there is more, but whether or not that 'more' is important could be left for debate.  This is a book that I feel could have easily been four or five hundred pages shorter, and still contained a readable, and maybe more interesting story.  There are just so many parts of the book that seem to drag on forever, seemingly without any reason for doing so.


Looking back, I think my brain started distancing itself from the book quite early on, after a didn't read it for a few days.  At that point I had begun to have trouble following the story, and difficulty keeping track of all the many, many characters.  Halfway through, I was simply confused and uninterested.  But I don't solely blame myself for this.  There are several scenes taking place at cocktail parties, where so many different characters are introduced, half of which don't seem to really have anything to do with the main plot.  It is these scenes that I feel could have easily been cut from the book without taking anything away from the story.  Add this to the two months I took to read it, and I end up with a disjointed, lethargic story that didn't seem to go anywhere.


What I may have disliked the most about this book was how it made me feel like an incompetent reader.  Apparently there is so much brilliance in this book, so why did I not see it?  It leaves me wondering if there is something wrong with me or if I'm just not a strong enough reader to tackle a book of this magnitude.  But then I start thinking that, no, that's not it, that maybe it just isn't my type of book at all.  Gaddis himself describes the book as "not reader friendly."  As I think books should be written for readers, I don't find this to be a virtue.  Jonathan Franzen, author of one of my favorite books, The Corrections, called it "by a comfortable margin, the most difficult book I ever voluntarily read."  I have no problem with "deep reads," but at the same time, I don't approach many books with the mind set that it's a challenge between me and the writer.

Reading other people's reviews of The Recognitions, I see I'm not alone in thinking the book could use a few hundred fewer pages, nor am I alone in finding it to be a very challenging and often tedious read.  However, most people still seem to have taken it more from it than I did.  Perhaps, as I have mentioned before, I was unlucky in when I chose to read this book and maybe, under different circumstances, this wouldn't have been such a struggle, or at least not such a disappointment.


You can read Time magazine's original review from March 14, 1955, right here.

As I have fallen behind in my progress on the list for 2012, I will need to get some serious reading done in the next few weeks to have any chance of reading 25 books this year.  For this reason, I have chosen Ubik as my next read, Philip K. Dick's 1969 science-fiction novel.  It's less than 200 pages, so hopefully I can whip through it as quickly as possible and hopefully I find it a little more interesting than #53.