/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18650538]

I really don't get Wyatt's problem. Society was just as shitty and corrupt and godless in the past as it is today. Basil Valentine was completely right, I really don't get this book's idealization of the past.

[Anonymous No.18650619]

>>18650538
I thought Wyatt was looking for a tradition that he could use to make sense of his vision of the world. He had the Flemish painters because of the breakfast table, and in them he found a place where all lines met and he could complete his works. He created original works albeit in aping the style of past masters. Idealization of a perfect past has always been a thing, but I don’t think it was that superficial. Or maybe it was?

[Anonymous No.18650678]

>>18650619
fpbp

>>18650538
Wyatt is an authentic Master artist trapped in Eliotland. I don't remember him actually engaging with the Waste Land types at all. Totally unconcerned. He talks to Otto like once, right? I don't see the problem.

As for engagement with the past: the past has basically all the Master artists.

[Anonymous No.18650747]

>>18650678
He doesn't talk to Otto much but Esther does say Wyatt likes talking to Otto, more than he likes talking with her or anyone else. But I also don't think Otto is truly a "Waste Land type" like Hannah or Max, he is somewhere in between them and Wyatt.

[Anonymous No.18650887]

>>18650678
Wyatt at least seemed to have a similar mindset to Stanley, since Wyatt was the one going on about how everything the old masters painted back then had a purpose because 'everything was watched by God', and Stanley too falls for the same idealization of the past that Wyatt does. There's one scene where Stanley talks about how everything in the past that used to be beautiful is being warped to have a negative connotation in the present. That's a mindset that I can't relate to much myself tho

[Anonymous No.18650995]

>>18650747
Yes definitely.

>>18650887
>That's a mindset that I can't relate to much myself tho
Have you noticed it happening in American mainstream culture? Obviously you don't subscribe to it, but I saw it a bit in uni and now it's like the floodgates have opened.

I don't think Wyatt or Stanley fall for anything. They're Gaddis's puppets. Wyatt seems to be the voice of what Gaddis wants... but so is Stanley. He just isn't as persuasive as proto-Bast.

Imagine Bast instead of Stanley. Now we might have the greatest novel of all time.

Anyway my point is that Wyatt and notBast are Gaddis' vectors for communicating the highest possibilities of artistic masterworks. I see no reason to think of them as falling for anything inside the world of the novel.

[Anonymous No.18651000]

>>18650619
>Idealization of a perfect past has always been a thing, but I don’t think it was that superficial. Or maybe it was?
I haven't read The Recognitions, but this may warrant a little further explanation in light of The Recognitions' milieu. The widespread nostalgic view of the past in the United States (e.g. as simple, happier, etc) arose out of the post-WWI climate and was then renewed by the Great Depression and WWII. It is related to, but predated by, similar idealization of the rural and agrarian modes of living, from the yeoman farmer republic Jackson (and, more realistically, Jefferson) pined for to the Western frontier to the small rural town. It is only after World War I that this nostalgic mindset became widely applied to time periods.

If the idealization of the past appears as a theme in the novel, it would therefore be extremely fitting considering the widespread resurgence of the nostalgic attitude in the forties and fifties. Additionally, I wonder if Gaddis achieves the same sort of effect between the settings of Wyatt's rural upbringing and New York City, especially if both the NYC vs rural hometown and present vs past themes resolve to the same end (but I haven't read it and have no idea).

[Anonymous No.18651088]

>>18651000
>sort of effect between the settings
No. Which is good.

[Anonymous No.18651171]

>>18650887
>>18650995
>>18651088
Makes me wanna read the novel. Is it really as hard as people say? Is the difficulty because of its length, prose, structure, etc?

[Anonymous No.18651200]

>>18650995
Well, it's easy for us to look back on the past and consider it so beautiful because we're not living in it, that doesn't mean it was better nor that people lived more fulfilling and meaningful lives. There are a lot of examples in the book of people revaluing the past based off of modern conceptions, but the example Stanley gives in the scene I'm talking about is with childbirth. He talks about how back then it used to be a very beautiful thing but now everyone just talks about contraception and avoiding getting pregnant. Now obviously since Stanley is a devout catholic I can see why he would hold these sort of views, and I'm not saying it corresponds 1:1 with Gaddis, but I think there is a longing for the past that goes throughout the entire book and to me I feel like it is a longing for something that never existed in the first place. Hell, just look at Wyatt's rant to Valentine during the part when he goes all crazy:

>Tell them that Peter died an old man, and right side up. Tell them that Mary broke her vows to go off with a soldier named Panthera, and wandered away to give birth to his son. Tell them, the ones who are conscious of what happens to themselves only in terms of what has happened to themselves, who recognize only things they have seen with their eyes, tell them the whole thing hangs on a resurrection that only one lunatic saw, one and then twelve and then five hundred, for visions are contagious, and resurrections were a stock in trade, and the streets were full of messiahs spreading discontent, that Jesus Christ and John the Baptist would both be arrested on the street today, and jailed, and for the same reason.

Well, you could probably analyze that part in a lot of different ways but to me it seemed like Wyatt was obsessed with his idealized or mythologized version of what the past was like and was ranting that people were becoming disillusioned with these things as time went on. But I don't really see this as a bad thing, basically, which is why there are a lot of parts in Gaddis's novels where I find it hard to agree with his main point. This could probably be me misinterpreting him as well, though. The Recognitions is pretty hard at parts after all.

I felt a similar feeling during the scene in J R where Bast was ranting at J R for why he didn't feel anything from listening to Bach's cantata. I felt that J R was completely justified in that scene. Why should he feel something just because Bast tells him he should? Though I do agree with you that Bast is much more likable and enjoyable character than Stanley, or even Wyatt for that matter.

[Anonymous No.18651241]

>>18651200
>that doesn't mean it was better nor that people lived more fulfilling and meaningful lives
But it also doesn't mean that they lived less fulfilling and meaningful lives, or that their lives were worse, which is implicit in your post and in contemporary (all the way to today) attitudes. Sure, our metrics (standard-of-living, quality-of-life, HDI, all of which place a primacy or at least a major component in economic factors) are going up, but there are certainly things that haven't gotten better or have gotten worse: in The Recognitions, the loss of tradition/direction in art and the loss of the (transcendent) experience of religion. Those are much more difficult if not impossible to measure, and without even that understanding we lack completely an ability to put that in perspective when we compare our time with the past. That's always what I took away.

[Anonymous No.18651323]

>>18651171
I think people would find it difficult for different reasons. I read it this year and only found Part 3, the final section, difficult. Part 1 and 2 were not bad at all, except for a handful of pages. If you dislike an overabundance of references or a focus on Christianity (particularly hagiography) I could see why someone would find the book dry and inflated. The other aspects people probably find difficult are the party scenes and the loss of characters' identity (not being referred to by their name). The party scenes jump from various people and conversations but Gaddis writes dialogue in a way that is always engaging and which I found easy to understand. The loss of identity was difficult in Part 3 because it occurs with several characters along with the introduction of new characters and plots with only loose threads to Part 2. The prose in Part 3 is also denser than the other parts (I've heard this is a reflection of the main character's progressing mental state).
It is definitely worth reading if you think the subject will interest you though. I think some people overrate how great the book is but it is still one of the better American novels from the 20th century.

[Anonymous No.18651399]

>>18651171
From what I can tell, the issue most people have with modernist lit and the subsequent movements is that they expect to be able to break down every single metaphor and symbol, get every single reference and understand completely everything which has so far happened by the end of each sentence. Gaddis and his ilk just ask more of the reader, they are not going to offer you mindless entertainment.

[Anonymous No.18651405]

I made it through 320 pages of this book and completely lost momentum. Is it possible for me to recover and regain interest?

[Anonymous No.18651445]

>>18651241
>the loss of tradition/direction in art and the loss of the (transcendent) experience of religion
And that's my main issue, I don't think that these things were as idealized as the characters make them out to be. That's why I pretty much fully agreed with Valentine during his last conversation with Wyatt near the end of Part 2.

[Anonymous No.18651514]

>>18651171
It's long and deep. And shallow. Like putting shallow people on display at parties and hangouts. Juxtaposed with international Jesuit spies, counterfeiters, and the insane and the religious.

The first paragraph of the book hooked me.

>>18651200
>I think there is a longing for the past that goes throughout the entire book and to me I feel like it is a longing for something that never existed in the first place
He's craving the authentic. Not the splinters of the authentic Cross, but the Cross. Wink wink.

That's not the idealized past but a purity of form. The Cross was a real form in real people's real form of forms. When they held the form of forms inside themselves as an absolute.

One of Gaddis' influences was Clive Bell's book Art, which puts forth purity of form as the underlying greatness of art. So following that, each counterfeit down the line distorts the form while it tries to pass on the surface and on and on until we have garbage everywhere.

So not the past for past's sake. It's just that's where there was a different grip on religion... which fed forward into art.

>I felt that J R was completely justified in that scene.
JR's function in JR is (according to Gaddis) the embodiment of pure will. As in purity of will. As in Will. In Bast we have Consciousness as a tangled mess of aspirations that cannot get off the ground. He's pulled in so many directions it's the comedic engine of the novel.

[Anonymous No.18651552]

>>18650887
I think that stanley's arc tells you a lot about where that mindset gets you. It's cool to idealize the past like he does, but the present can't bear the weight of it. Better off to be like wyatt and live through a terrible present that warps the past by preserving it (for better or worse) in terrible ways than to try to recreate the past like stanley does in its final scene.

[Anonymous No.18651560]

>>18651552
That last sentence was a mess. I mean that wyatt preserves the past to live through a terrible present. Because of this he's plagued with guilt and sadness but also a kind of hope for better times. Stanley tries to relive the past and the present can't bear the weight of it. Literally.

[Anonymous No.18651570]

>>18651399
I think this is fair. Though I didn't look anything up. You can grip the whole thing without having to track down all the books and saints. I just let it all fly by the plate and still loved the fuck out of it.

>>18651405
Probably not. The thing that brought me through the book was reading for the next Wyatt or Anselm or Valentine chapter.

>>18651241
Their lives were worse by every measure. Unless suffering brings something we lose without it.

[Anonymous No.18651581]

>>18651552
INHERENT VICE

[Anonymous No.18651628]

>>18651570
>The thing that brought me through the book was reading for the next Wyatt or Anselm or Valentine chapter.
That’s what made me fly through the first part of the book and then slam into a wall on part 2

[Anonymous No.18651636]

>>18651581
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.18651650]

>>18651405
I agree >>18651570 If you were uninterested in the Wyatt & Esther conversations I don't think you would enjoy the rest of the book.
>>18651636
Inherent vice is an idea that Valentine brings up to Brown and that you can't buy insurance to prevent it (the natural deterioration of an object inherent to that objects construction).

[Anonymous No.18651780]

>>18651405
The firsts time I read the book I made it through about halfway and put it down for several months (4-5). Then I picked it back up and read the rest in just a few days. Like Gass says in his introduction, the book will stay there until you come back to it. But like >>18651570 says, I was always hungering for the next Wyatt, Basil, Recktall, Stanley episodes.

[Anonymous No.18651817]

>>18651780
For me it was the Otto episodes, Otto kind of felt reminiscent of Bast to me with his constant insecurity. Though Bast himself felt like he was a mix between Otto and Wyatt. Bast is probably my favorite portrayal of the 'insecure artist' trope honestly

[Anonymous No.18652029]

>>18651650
Ohhh so the present sucks because of the past's inherent vice

[Anonymous No.18652114]

>>18652029
Sort of, I think the other anon was just trying to relate what you said to the concept of inherent vice: we can't just bring the art of the past to the present because it was designed for the past and has now decayed (Stanely). No 'insurance' can protect art in that way. That doesn't mean the art of the past should be disregarded but we should recognize it can't exist in its original form, it has to be changed or reimagined for the present (Wyatt). At least that is how I understood the comment.

[Anonymous No.18652201]

>>18652114
Which would explain the whole ts eliot connection/infatuation, the epilogue's epigraph about a brothel providing no insurance for sick people, and the title allusion.

[Anonymous No.18652271]

>>18651817
I think 90% of /lit/, and probably most people who are serious about art in general, fall somewhere on a spectrum between Wyatt and Otto at all times.

[Anonymous No.18652433]

>>18651570
>Their lives were worse by every measure. Unless suffering brings something we lose without it.

I would argue that suffering is a huge component of what factors into feelings of fulfillment. People of the past may have suffered more, but there's good reason to suspect they felt much more fulfilled than we did today. People might suffer less nowadays, but hedonism does not make for a fulfilling life.

[Anonymous No.18652461]

>>18652433
That's easy for you, who likely has some level of material security, to say

[Anonymous No.18652547]

>>18651514
Reminds me of that quote Wyatt says early on,

>That romantic disease, originality, all around we see nothing originality of incompetent idiots, they could draw nothing, paint nothing, just so the mess they make is original…Even two hundred years ago who wanted to be original, to be original was to admit that you could not do a thing the right way, so you could only do it your own way. When you paint you do not try to be original, only you think about your work, how to make it better, so you copy masters, only masters, for with each copy of a copy the form degenerates…you do not invent shapes, you know them, auswendig wissen Sie, by heart…

the wording of your post it makes me think that you see Wyatt as a sort of Ahab attempting to 'strike through the pasteboard mask', is that what you're getting at? trying to get at the original which everything is a counterfeit of?

[Anonymous No.18652590]

>>18652461
Like your other points this point is also conjecture.

[Anonymous No.18652611]

>>18652461
The whole Whig history concept turning everything into a march of progress towards utopia is nonsense. Lots and lots of aspects of the lives of people living centuries ago were better than ours today.

[Anonymous No.18652627]

>>18652611
Be honest with yourself though, would you trade your life now to live hundreds of years ago?

[Anonymous No.18652678]

>>18652627
This is a ridiculous way to frame the issue. Do you think Hieronymus Bosch would give up his life to be a graphic designer in 21st century Brooklyn making Google doodles?

[Anonymous No.18652756]

>>18652590
Some base level of material security (ie food hygiene shelter) must exist before any fulfilling conception of life is realizable, no?

How does a state with powers as bloated as contemporary advanced nations justify letting citizens starve or live at mere subsistence?

[Anonymous No.18652866]

>>18652756
The main mechanism that robs humans of base level "material" security is the state itself. Even today's comfortable society is propped up on the deprivation of the third world.

It justifies it the same way it always has, by saying it's necessary, and that the past is awful and therefore there must be progress towards some perceived better future at all costs.

[Anonymous No.18652882]

>>18652627
This is a disingenuous question. Certainly no one would want to be a peasant a hundred years ago, but a peasant/farmer wasn't a free person in the sense that common people are today.

Most people would however say yes to being a free-person one hundred years ago. If you live in the country of your ethnicity, speak the language, and aren't someone's chattel, you have way more economic mobility and personal freedom then than you would ever have now. You might die younger, but death is a part of life.

[Anonymous No.18653162]

>>18652547
No. Just that his benchmarks are not Otto's benchmarks, not Max's benchmarks. Think of Esme and her poetry.

>>18652866
huh

[Anonymous No.18653282]

>>18653162
You know, it’s interesting how Gaddis put so much religious angst in The Recognitions yet J R seemed completely devoid of that stuff. I havent read his other novels so I’m not sure how much of those concepts are explored there

[Anonymous No.18653417]

>>18653282
He got it off his chest. Keep in mind The Recognitions is something like 3-5 novelsworth of data.

[Anonymous No.18653479]

>>18653282
>Furthermore, the progression from the concerns of The Recognitions to those of JR is completely reasonable. The Recognitions, indeed, tackles the fundamental questions: What is real, and where can we find it in ourselves and the things we do? But a generation later there are no fundamental questions to be posed. JR creates a thoroughly descendental world. It is a world of mouth, machination, and money. A few reviewers of JR, more perceptive than most, longed for the spiritual struggle of the earlier book, but—reader—just look around: that struggle has been lost. The large has been smothered by the small. Be petty enough and the world may make you a Prince. The cheat, not the meek, has inherited the earth.

[Anonymous No.18654953]

bump

[Anonymous No.18655758]

>>18653479
This is a bit twisted. Gass is stretching something over JR that doesn't fit... JR the character isn't a cheat. I suppose he pretends to be an adult over the phone but I don't see that as a true cheat.

JR, again the boy, is pure spirit. Transformed from the artists of The Recognitions, now the spirit's art is finance. And, holy—did JR do anything good for Bast or not?

[Anonymous No.18656117]

>>18652866
>The main mechanism that robs humans of base level "material" security is the state itself.
But the absence of a state would not guarantee that these needs would be met. If you were given executive power how would you change the US?

[Anonymous No.18656911]

>>18656117
cringe

>>18652866
cringe

[Anonymous No.18657275]

bump

[Anonymous No.18657474]

>>18656911
Cringe but good doubles so sorta based?

[Anonymous No.18657525]

>finish the recognitions
>pretend that i'm wyatt and go around speaking in broken, stuttering sentences vaguely referring to some event in my childhood or some conversation i had in the past and refusing to elaborate further
anyone else do this?

[Anonymous No.18657546]

>>18657525
i did this but with anselm

[Anonymous No.18657617]

>>18657525
so you became otto =^)

[Anonymous No.18657861]

>>18657546
Did you cut off your balls too?

[Anonymous No.18658162]

>>18657861
like he'd have the balls to

[Anonymous No.18658879]

bump

[Anonymous No.18659521]

>>18658162
Probably a latent heterosexual, too.

[Anonymous No.18659580]

>>18659521
wat does this have to do with anselm bruh

[Anonymous No.18659628]

>>18659580
He's just referencing a gag from the book, i think it's a joke that Otto tries to tell a lot in parties

[Anonymous No.18659631]

>>18659628
yea i remember... bazinga! how yew doin

kys

[Anonymous No.18659654]

>>18656117
No, but death is always present and its more in tune with human behavior to be governed by nature than it is to be governed by some contrivance of man.

If I were given executive power of the US I would probably mandate that all journalism be done by the state though.