Just Following Up: J R
"i know of no great novel that was permanently defeated by the enemies of art"
Of The Recognitions, William Gaddis’s first novel, possibly the true beginning of American postmodernism, it might be best just to say: they didn’t like it. The general public, book reviewers, whoever you want they to be: they did not like it. The nearly 1000 page book, published in 1955 (so, 6 years before Catch 22 and 8 years before V.) and prefiguring the crisis of authenticity that the age of the massively reproduced image has wrought, made its way to the remainders pile after a wan reception, and was remembered only by a small cadre of ardent fans, including a funny guy named jack green.
green was the pen name for Christopher Carlisle Reed, and under his pseudonym he put out a zine called Fire the Bastards! which at once celebrated The Recognitions and lambasted 53 out of the 55 critics who did a “lousy job” reviewing the book. (The other two wrote “adequate” reviews.) Like some sort of proto-dril, green goes off on all the “boners” the professional critics made - “blunders will happen, especially when you hate your work” – and all the lazy cliches that they leaned on. There’s ‘influenced by’ namedropping (“you cant say anything worth saying about joyce and proust in 1 offhand phrase”) as well as loaded accusations of ambition (“add innuendos & you have a powerful weapon against good books”) and difficulty (“unless you hug impoverishment why worry?”). green saves the brunt of his ire for those reviewers who clearly didn’t finish the book (“stealing a moderate amount from the jacket blurb is common practice in the profession & therefore, im told, i must consider it ethical”) or, even worse, boasted that they didn’t finish the book (“isnt it pleasant to be paid for work you havent done?”), but, to be fair, Gaddis had already seen that coming: in The Recognitions, a man runs into someone carrying a book that looks and sounds very much like The Recognitions, who remarks that he’s not reading the book, he’s “just reviewing it… Christ, I could have given it to you, all I need is the jacket blurb to write the review.”
So Gaddis had seen it all, had put it down nearly flawlessly, had seen the moment of his greatness flicker, and seen that flicker get snuffed out. Sure, he had a weird guy (who Gaddis was constantly being accused of being, along with also secretly being Thomas Pynchon or the similarly named William Gass) writing about how great he was, and he had weirdos like David Markson and others writing him adoring letters, but success, a comfortable career in writing, eluded him. Gaddis entered the workforce of the real world, copywriting for large corporations and generally becoming an ill-fitting suit, but another book, as it will, kept chasing him, accumulating in his head, till, 20 years after The Recognitions, he came out with J R.
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