Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Education: National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities Nomination (1991) Humanities, Subject Files I (1973-1996)
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University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Education: National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities Nomination (1991) Humanities, Subject Files I (1973-1996) 1985 Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Humanities Nomination (1991): Article 11 Carol Iannone Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/pell_neh_I_34 Recommended Citation Iannone, Carol, "Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Humanities Nomination (1991): Article 11" (1985). Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Humanities Nomination (1991). Paper 38. http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/pell_neh_I_34/38 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Education: National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, Subject Files I (1973-1996) at DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Humanities Nomination (1991) by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ... .r 1ct1on CiJ r'°' IY' ..: f'TO r 1 .J Gaddis Recognized pent er' s Gothic,•• another and eve more corrosive diatribe against ca; i~alist an? sund~y other corrup. t10ns, agam told m near-hysterical Carol Iannone running dialogue, but this time only 262 pages of it, has been greeted with enormous enthusiasm and respect. Although he is still no o millions it may have seemed ranged from cool dismissal to sput candidate for best-sellerdom, Gad T the promised land, but to cer tering outrage that focused espe dis is nevertheless light years from tain of its native sons, post-World cially on the novel's bulk and com the days when he was forced to \Var II America had gained the plicated technique. But the book labor for his livelihood in the very whole world only to lose its soul. gradually began to gain a reputa thick of the asphalt jungle he so Such, at any rate, was the view that tion as an underground classic, richly despises. He has, in fact, be impelled the evolution of "meta prompting paperback editions in come something of a cult figure fiction" in the postwar years-a fic 1962, 1970, and 1974. Favorable among the young, and his most tion whose form and content were revaluations by John W. Aldridge, loyal academic followers have meant to mirror, in an ironic way, Tony Tanner, and David Madden worked energetically to establish the extravaganza of hype, fraud, appeared, and Anthony West pre his reputation as an American mas and mounting materialism that the dicted that The Recognitions ter. United States, its critics said, had would "one day take a place in finally been revealed to be. The writ classic American literature." Aca GADDIS was born in Manhattan ers of "metafiction" now include demic critics, who soon enough in 1922 and reared in New such near-venerable men of letters as rallied to the Gaddis banner, have York City and on Long Island in John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and, indeed maintained that The Rec the "fairly Calvinist tradition" of perhaps less well known, William ognitions is an American master the Congregationalists. He was ed Gaddis, who in hindsight can be piece on a par with Moby-Dick. ucated at boarding school, public seen as a pioneer of the form. A. year after the first reissue of school, and then Harvard, where Gaddis's The Recognitions The Recognitions, in 1963, Gaddis he edited the humor magazine, the (1955), • a thou~and-page "meta was awarded a grant from the Na Lampoon. Gaddis was disqualified novel" about forgery, religion, art, tional Institute of Arts and Letters for service in World War II on ac and the quest for meaning in the and garnered high praise from the count of a kidney disorder; he felt, contemporary wasteland, brought patriarch of the literary main he later reported, "resentful at hav. the principles of late literary mod stream, ~falcolm Cowley. Gaddis ing missed the experience that all ernism to bear upon the American soon accumulated other prestigious my generation had." Returning to novel. Lacking an authoritative awards, and as the fiO's progressed Harvard after a convalescence, he narrative voice and the usual signs he began to enjoy as well the pecu- found it emptied by the war. After of fictional organization, full of 1iar literary fame of the neglected a drinking incidt>nt got his name complex mythological, literary, re writer; a 1968 Book World feature into the local papers, he was asked ligious, historical, and occult allu cited him as one of "ten neglected by the dean to leave without a de sions, The Recognitions uses and American writers who deserve to gree, despite his being in his fourth parodies many sources, among them be better known." year. T.S. Eliot (especially "The Waste And the times they were a After leaving Harvard, Gaddis Land"), Sir James Frazer's The changin'. By 1975, the year of worked for two years as a fact· Golden Bough, Goethe's Faust, and Gaddis's second novel, ]R,t a cor checker for the New Yorker, but a a 3rd-century Christian work, Rec rosive diatribe against capitalist sense of alienation soon propelled ognitions of Clement. corruption told in 700 pages of him to a life perhaps more typical The Recognitions was widely re near-hysterical running dialogue, of young people a couple of gen viewed-and widely damned. In Gaddis's voice fell on eagerly re erations later than his own. For what a Gaddis supporter has since ceptive ears. JR was awarded the five years he traveled and occasion called "one of American criticism·s coveted National Book Award-in ally worked in Central America, weakest hours," all but a few of part, as has been suggested even by Europe (particularly Spain and The Recognitions' first, reviews Gaddis's admirers, because a lot of France), and North Africa, inter there were fifty-five of them- critics felt obligated to undo past spersing his trips abroad with tirn~ damages. In 1982, in a crowning in Greenwich Village. Indeed. touch of reparation, Gaddis was many Village bohemian types are CAROL IANNONE teaches English litera ture at Iona College in New York. Her chosen as a recipient of a five-year ' ( article," 'Our Genius': Norman Mailer "genius" grant from the MacAr t a • Penguin (paper), 956 pp .. $12.95. l and the Intellectuals,'' appeared in our thur Foundation. t Penguin (paper), 726 pp., $12.95. 'r October issue. Gaddis's most recent novel, Car- • • Viking, 262 pp., $16.95. 62 FICTION/63 immortalized in The Recognitions, the dishonesty involved in forgery. tions of the book are devoted to and Gaddis himself appears in Declining into mental breakdown, recording at great length and in Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans he begins a search for his true self. intricate detail-and to no effective as a "kid called Harold Sand," "a ..\.fter a failed attempt at a recon purpose-the vapid, superficial, de Jther and even young novelist looking like Leslie ciliation with his father, he departs ceitful conversation at artistic ga be against cap. Howard." Following his travels, for Europe, where he becomes en therings among various hangers-on other corrup Gaddis held a variety of jobs tangled in yet another conspiracy, in the "creative" world. near-hysterical making army films, corporate this time a counterfeiting ring. There is heavy emphasis in The mt this time speechwriting, and doing public \Vyatt, who has now changed his Recognitions on sterility-in the it, has been relations for a drug firm. Some name to Stephen, eventually comes general sense that characters can •US enthusiasm where in these years he also mar to spend time at the monastery bring nothing original to pass, and h he is still no ried, had two children, and was to which his father had retreated in the particular sense that couples ·llerdom, Gad subsequently divorced or separated. years before. cannot or will not conceive, or :{ht years from Not a promising career from a :\t the monastery, Stephen eats even carry out plans to adopt, a was forced to certain point of view, and it is per bread containing his father's ashes, child. Another emphasis is on sex 0od in the very haps no surprise that some years which have been mistaken for oat ual confusion. The Recognitions jungle he so later, as Distinguished Visiting meal. Here too he resumes his art features several homosexuals, an tas, in fact, be- Professor at Bard, Gaddis under work, but now it seems he "re apparent hermaphrodite, and one a cult figure took to teach a course on Failure stores" paintings by scraping off character who is taken to be a and his most in American Literature. In one of their paint. Eventually, Stephen homosexual, apparently without illowers have his handful of essays, he rebukes seems to leave the monastery, hav reason. And of course, forgery, y to establish the United States as "a society ing arrived at a sort of salvation plagiarism, fakery, impersonation, ..\.merican mas- where failure can arise in simply by means of "recognitions" such counterfeiting, and many other not being a 'success,' " and which as these: kinds of dishonesty abound, all "holds its most ignominious defeats Look back, if once you're started metaphors for Gaddis's chief point in Manhattan in store for ... 'losers'-who fail in living, you're born into sin, -that the world is a fraud. red in New at something that was not worth then? And how do you atone? As Gaddis sees it, religion, art, "ong Island in doing in the first place." Gaddis's By locking yourself up in re medicine, all the supposedly sal t tradition" of work is based on such a vision of morse for what you might have vific structures of modern life are >ts.