Sirenita

I have a morbid attraction to long novels. Here’s a convenient scapegoat: one of my worst college English professors. Roundly obsese, corrupt, pompous, possessed of an unimpeachable intelligence, he committed the unforgivable sin of never returning our papers. “He’s read everything,” I was told in the settling moments before class started, as if this expiated his failure to read our essays. During our discussion of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, he alluded to the enormous postmodern coolness of Gravity’s Rainbow with (no kidding) an arched brow and a few wisps of muted, vague praise. The subtext unspoken, Was I up to it?

I was. I spent summer vacation bussing tables for a warehouse sized fried seafood restaurant whose specialty was pillow-sized helpings of fried scallops and a lobster roll so buttery the roll behaved more like a golden oil sponge than bread. The evenings were spent at my desk, sweating as I worked my way carefully through GR. I started calling it GR in my mind, italics and all, since that was how it was abbreviated in my copy of Steven Weisenburger’s A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion.

I was entranced by Gravity’s Rainbow. Loose, slangy, mysterious cool and smart, it had the clipped tech edge I’d loved in Science Fiction, but also the depth and, well, beauty that I’d found in non-genre fiction. Here was the hybrid I was looking for, the happy compromise that pointed a way out of the genre ghetto.

Later I was to find out Pynchon wasn’t the only author with dual citizenship, that many others had tried various versions of this same blend, although I never found anyone who did it better than it was done in GR. To this day, all a back cover blurb needs to sucker me is Pynchon in the list of like authors.

There was more persistent damage from the extended high of reading such a long and involving book. Possibly I confused the medium for the message, or fell for the bogus deduction that all long books were good. Regardless, I’m stuck with the recurring compulsion to buy long novels, especially postmodern ones.

I say buy because much of the time these novels go unread. Vollman’s Fathers and Crows? Bought as soon as it came out in paperback, unread. Joseph McElroy’s Women and Men- Bought the scarce hardcover used on the internet, unread. Don DeLillo’s Underworld? Check. John Barth’s mega-epistolary Letters? Check.

The hot, greasy summer over, I returned to school and tried to find other books like GR. William Gaddis was on the short list. I bought a used copy of J.R. (no relation) and read it - at this point I was not yet collecting dense obscure novels like intellectual Hummel figurines, but still reading for pleasure. Which J.R. was - a pleasure. I haven’t read anyone else with as fine an ear for the sound of American conversation at the end of the 20th century. Elliptical, sentence fragmented, J.R. is a novel told entirely in unattributed speech - phone calls, conversations, radio broadcasts all introduced with an em-dash. Like this:

- Yes but, and then Fichet saying that we have to act because that’s the only way we can know we’re real, and that it has to be moral action because that’s the only way we can know other people are. Real I mean. But look, there’s something, I mean do you think he minds me . . . taking you to lunch like this? [Gaddis, The Recognitions, P. 120, Penguin paperback]

This is my favorite character in The Recognitions speaking, Otto. Otto spends half the novel with his arm in a fake cast aping an injury, the entire novel speaking pretentiously and confusedly about ideas lifted from other major characters or books, and at the very end of the novel is stricken with Menieres Disease, a crippling vertigo disorder, during a civil war in a banana republic. My kind of guy.

Otto’s character and Otto’s speech are nearly everything that is entirely successful in The Recognitions. The rest of the novel is marred by a surfeit of everything: obscure references, dozens of characters, ill-fitting plot arcs. A sadly typical block of twenty dense pages might have a trio of characters exchanging cloaked barbs worthy of Henry James in a dark drawing room, arguing recondite points of Catholic/Protestant/Occult political history.

One can quote from almost anywhere, but like Proust it takes some time to adjust to the hypnotically tedious rhythm of the thing:

Anti-histamine, streptomycin, penicillin and 606: few may question but that Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (”better known as Paracelsus”) was right. It was Paracelsus who emerged from the fifteenth century (castrated by a hog, so they said, in his childhood) to proclaim that the object of alchemy was not at all the transmutation of base metals into gold, but the preparation of medicines, thus opening the way for the hospitalized perpetuation of accident which we triumphally prolong, enlarge upon, finance, respect, and enjoy today. 3:3-diamino-4-4-dihydroxyarsenobenzine dihydrochloride, writes Doctor Ehrlich (after 605 tries), thereby dismissing the notion that syphilis might be a visitation upon that pleasure which, in its perennial variety, had until now afforded the gratification of which only sin is capable. For unlike progressive revelation, the enlightenment of total materialism burst with such vigor that there were hardly enough hands to pick up the pieces. Even Paracelsus was left behind (dead of injuries received in a drunken brawl); and once chemistry had established itself as true and legitimate son and heir, alchemy was turned out like a drunken parent, to stagger away, babbling phantasies to fewer and fewer ears, to less and less impressive derelicts of loneliness, while the child grew up serious, dignified, and eminently pleased with its own limitations, to indulge that parental memory with no doubt but that it had found what the old food and his cronies were after all the time. [Gaddis, The Recognitions, p.132, Penguin Paperback]

When I first attempted to read The Recognitions, it was tantalizingly out-of-print. I found a copy through inter-library loan and tried plowing through it, but the farther I got the slower I proceeded. Passages like this daunted me. At the time, I had no Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, and as the uncomprehended references accumulated my insecurity grew. When I stopped a few hundred pages in I had somehow come to believe I was an insufficient reader for not already possessing an extensive knowledge of alchemy and Flemish art history. This insecurity stopped me for almost ten years, during which time this novel and other large hulks sat on my shelves, adding to my literary insecurity, their spines bleaching a shade lighter in the sun. I continued to feel guilty for not knowing the names of minor apprentice Flemish painters. Earlier last year I started taking mass transit to work, carving out an hour each day I could use to read. I decided to reattempt it.

If anything is wrong with the way that long, erudite, postmodern novels are criticized, it may have to do with the unfair handicapping allusive texture is given. This had fatal results in my case, with the dense warp and weft of the text humbling me until I assumed, in essence, that I was too stupid for the book. Other critics err in the other direction, and seem to think that because a novel demonstrates its author’s deep learning and cleverness that the novel is a good one, regardless of whether they as readers can understand it.

This is a dangerous assertion for me to make. So I’ll be blunt: I think some of the people who read such novels mistake their confusion as a side-effect of literary excellence, the stunned result of genius - I should know, since I’m sometimes one of them. This class of wanna-be intelligentsia are the core fanboys of this kind of novel, and the reason I even heard of The Recognitions. They’ve kept the reputation of the book alive with knowing name-drops in other contexts, arched eyebrow asides that let us know how well-read they are. These tactics work.

In the case of Gravity’s Rainbow, the object of reverence is not only a smart novel but also a great one. One can hardly blame the many graduate students who have flocked to lay their theses on its altar. It is just as easy to understand how The Recognitions would be a regular left-field choice - nearly forgotten, spottily available, chock full of references and early postmodern devices, the book had an almost samizdat attraction for me as a college student.

Novels like this have an unavoidable issue of audience - who are these books meant for? Ignoring for a moment the usual purposes of enjoyment and interest, two objects I relinquished when I started to collect underdog postmodern behemoths, books are read because they are being addressed to the correct person, an appreciative and able reader. A large part of the reason I’ve not yet attempted to read James Joyce’s Ulysses is I insecurely believe I am an unfit audience for it - in other words, not a product of pre-war English Public School education, familiar not only with Greek myth but Irish culture. Part of me thinks this makes me not only inappropriate but, weirdly enough, undeserving of such a book. If much of it would be lost or wasted on me, what’s the point?

Another huge book I’ve not succeeded in finishing is Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Having made it through two-thirds of it, however, I do feel qualified to observe that I believe Proust knew who he was writing to, and more importantly that such an audience existed. Although certainly not postmodern, Remembrance exerts comparable demands on the modern reader, requiring a similar depth of attention span. There are no simple pleasures in Proust for me - it took effort to dig joy out of it, and the remaining third is likely to go unread for that reason.

I also can’t resist mentioning David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. While I lack the hard-core math background to be a truly ideal reader, I’m otherwise very well qualified by the above standards. We share a similar age, educational background, and respect for the same postmodern heroes. First and foremost, I enjoyed reading him tremendously, but I’ll admit some of this enjoyment stems from a sense of deserving, from my belief that I was qualified, as appropriate a reader of Mr. Wallace as an educated contemporary Irishman would be of Joyce. I may not have had extensive knowledge of nuclear wastelands and Qu?b?cois separatists, but much of the rest of the background of the novel was understandable and appreciated. The result was I didn’t feel badly when I failed to understand the math, for example, or the untranslated French.

In an interview David Foster Wallace disclosed that a large chunk of the manuscript of Infinite Jest was about some arcane aspect of dentistry his editor counseled him to edit out, which he did, since it would be appreciated by only a dozen possible readers. Until we have the two-volume Directors Cut edition of Infinite Jest, I assume this chunk will sit safely in boxes in Mr. Wallace’s basement where he’s put them.

I can’t help but sympathize with Gaddis’s editor - I’d be surprised if such clear-cut choices ever presented themselves during manuscript review of The Recognitions. What’s good about The Recognitions is mixed inescapably with the bad. In any of his novels, Gaddis as an author seems too smart to be unaware of exactly what effect he was aiming at, and yet, I find it difficult to discover what effect that was.

In A Frolic of His Own, Gaddis devotes a large portion of the novel to a Civil War era play written by his main character. It isn’t a great play, but it isn’t totally bad either, and it even has its moments of momentary almost-greatness. With Gaddis at his worst - and The Recognitions is undoubtedly his worst novel - one has the strange impression that not only is the prose overwrought and top-heavy with pretension, but that the author knows this, and most significantly, wants it that way.

There’s enough modulation and variance in prose style, as well as skill demonstrated everywhere in his writing, that the especially purple prose sections devoted to Catholic/Protestant/Occult mysticism seem entirely deliberate. And yet, it isn’t entirely bad - sometimes the pomposity seems to mock itself, arch its own eyebrow without breaking the mood, and still continue with the stream of difficult references and name-drops. This mixture is exasperating.

Just as I find it difficult to parse Gaddis intentions for his overreaching style, I find it difficult to imagine who, exactly, this novel was intended for. Unlike the case of Joyce, there is no school system that teaches alchemy or sun-worship on a regular basis, no general curriculum that includes advanced art forgery. The only possible conclusions are that the author knows these things are not going to be comprehended, and is relying on their not being comprehended, or feels that they don’t need to be comprehended. Neither says much about his concern or respect for his audience.

(David Foster Wallace seems to have anticipated this desire for extra-textual goodies by providing extensive footnotes in Infinite Jest, deciding that if there’s going to be a necessary sidecar, who better to build it? Better this tail chasing than the author’s private invention of some ideal reader, well versed enough to follow the references.)

The attentive fellow postmodern fanboy is by now objecting that exactly the same criticisms (except, perhaps, the overdone prose) can be leveled justly at Pynchon, what with his primary texts being ancient Baedeckers and Pavlov’s lecture notes. Fair enough. Maybe what crystallizes these into complaint for me is the partial success/partial failure in so many other departments: inadequate characterization, elliptical, wandering conversations, confused and interminable party scenes. Oh, wait, I’m describing Pynchon again.

I think authors who write long novels get a disproportionate amount of credit simply for going long, as if carpal tunnel was noble self-sacrifice requiring reward (see Vollmann, for example). One problem is that anyone who reads long novels may be reluctant to admit it was a waste of time and therefore a mistake. Finishers may attempt to convince themselves the experience was worthwhile, as prior finishers may have done before them.

I feel badly about discouraging people from reading The Recognitions. Gaddis is one of my favorite authors, and the book is not all bad. But, nearly all of it is marred by defects of one kind or another, and it is far, far too long to justify the kind of time and attention it requires to read.

If so far I’ve only succeeded in goading you to try anyhow, here’s a parting quote. If this appeals to you, disregard my advice and find your own used copy.

The Depot Tavern was presided over by the head of a twelve?point buck, whose look of resignation implied understanding of the fact that his antlers would never again be shed and renewed, a fate tempered by a festoon of Christmas tree bulbs which were, momentarily, seasonal, though he wore them with great forbearance whatever the solstice. Otium cum dignitate, the chipped lips posed up there, and with great dignity, considering his circumstances, the buck gazed down through dust?filmed eyeballs upon the present.
Just now this present was being cajoled toward a disfigurated future by a man with a woman tattooed on his left arm. She reposed there so long as he talked or listened; but when he interrupted to raise his glass, she was strangled. Though she had been suffering this treatment for many years, she bore it with the same surprise contorting her blue face whenever it was repeated; and when it was done, she returned to the same post of unsuspecting tranquility. (True, she was not entirely innocent: turned at another angle, and a portion of her covered up, she was capable of a pose which none who did not know her might have suspected from her placid countenance.) ? The Resurrectionists! said he; and she was strangled.
- The Resurrectionists? What would it have to do with graverobbers? It was the sermon on medicine made from mummies. Mummies ground up in a powder of medicine, said a man as far from the weather as possible, at the far end of the bar.
- Not that any of you have ever heard one of his sermons, said a small man in the middle. ? Relying on what your wives repeat to you.
- And you was there, I suppose, inperson?
- I was. It was the sermon in which the Swiss rooster is condemned to burn to death for laying an egg.
- Fourteen seventy-four. I know that one myself.
There was an air of grudging conspiracy over all this; and if voices rose in argument the overtones were slightly quelled, suggesting, as in any totalitarian society, walls with ears, the ubiquitous dictator long in residence hic, et uibque, disputing no passage, for He was going nowhere. ? But that little man selling brushes ?
- A maniac ?
- Manichee ?
- He was sent here, but Reverend saved us from that. If good and evil was absolutes, we would all of us be Manichean heretics, says the Reverend. I was there, you see. If it wasn?t for evil being a depraved qualification of good, says the Reverend, we should all be Manicheans like the little brush salesman.
? Selling unchristian brushes to honest people ?
? Ha! there you?re wrong, for Manichees was Christian. For them, says the Reverend, the sun itself was the visible symbol of Christ.
? They was not.
? It was so. How could you have the sun ?
? They was not, and what?s more ?
? Here is the sexton coming now, he was there.
? They was not, and what if he was, he goes to church and makes up his own sermon, and afterward he?ll tell you such and such was the Reverend?s sermon which nobody heard but himself. Like the sermon on the American Legion ? him, he?s as deaf as a coconut.
Every head but the buck turned to see the door thrown open, shaking the plate of glass of and the configuration DEPOT TAVERN between the men and the storm. The Town Carpenter entered, pursued by a distant peal of thunder. [Gaddis, The Recognitions, p.415-416, Penguin Paperback]