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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1985 Iannone, Carol: National Council on the Humanities Nomination (1991): Article 11 Carol Iannone

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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. He was ed- the abrasive emptiness of the Amer done? Or by living it through. By false and empty rituals-counter school, public ican dream. locking yourself up in remorse feits of ancient ones-that have larvard, where The Recognitions has a multi with what you know you have been superimposed upon a reality · magazine, the tude of intersecting plot lines. The done? Or by going back and liv too fragmentary and remote for re ing it through. [... ] If it was sin ras disqualified main one concerns Wyatt Gwyon, from the start, and possible all the covery except perhaps through mo . War II on ac- son of a minister. Left motherless time, to know it's possible and mentary "recognitions," when "all 1sorder; he felt, at the age of four, Wyatt comes avoid it? Or by living it through of a sudden everything [is] freed esentful at hav into the care of his dour, punitive, [... ] to go on knowing it's pos into one recognition, really freed :rience that all Calvinist Aunt May. During his sible and pretend to avoid it? into reality that we never see" (as ' Returning to adolescence, he falls deathly ill. Or ... or to have lived it through, Wyatt puts it). Yet unfortunately n.valescence, he After traditional medicine has tor and live it through, and deliber The Recognitions is itself but an the war. After tured him to no avail, he is cured ately go on living it through. other symptom of the disease it got his name in a primitive ritual performed by [Ellipses not bracketed are Gad seeks to diagnose. Nothing in the dis's] s, he was asked his father, who has turned to the novel is alive; everything is self e without a de- study of ancient magic following As EVEN this briefest of extracts conscious, sterile, entirely an affair 1g in his fourth his disaffection with Christianity. suggests, the texture of The Rec of the head. The characters have Wyatt declines to study for the ognitions is fabulistic, parodistic, neither texture nor vitality, but arvard, Gaddis ministry and some years later, after and self-parodistic, layering fiction are instead just limply executed ~ars as a fact· the failure of his own sterile mar upon fiction. The book builds up mouthpieces for points of view ~ Yorker, but a riage, he begins to forge works of on linguistic games and literary de which remain contradictory and soon propelled art in the style of the masters of vices and allusions to a variety of unresolved. ps more typical the Flemish Guild. Others cash languages. Even the annQtated Gaddis is a writer who goes couple of gen· in on his forgeries, but Wyatt is an Reader's Guide to William' Gad about saying a writer must not go his own. For innocent. He actually thinks of dis's "The Recognitions" admits about saying what he means but d and occasion· himself as a "master painter in the that it is often hard to get hold of leave that task to the critics. Read ntral America, Guild, in Flanders," using "pure what is actually happening or to ing The Recognitions one begins ·ly Spain and materials" and working "in the judge if some event is meant to be to suspect that this is because he 1 Africa, inter· sight of God." The novel suggests real or hallucinatory. Bizarre comic does not know wh;i t he means. iroad with time that copying, in the sense of rever events continually intrude into Even the concept of "recognition" illage. Indeed, ential "recognition" of the vision an already surrealistic narrative, is fuzzy; sometimes compared to mian types are of the masters, is more genuinely mingling the ridiculous and the Joyce's "epiphany," it lacks Joyce's creative than the spurious origin serious, the ordinary and the luminous conviction of the con 156 pp .. $12.95. ality sponsored by sentimental ro mythic. Characters have names like creteness of reality. Disintegration, 5 pp .• $12.95. mantic values. Rectall Brown, Agnes Deigh, and dissolution, decline, fragmentation 5.95. Nevertheless, Wyatt sickens of Frank Sinisterra. Several large sec- are not just the themes but _...... ------64/COMMENTARY DECEMBER 1985

the overriding experiences of this any kind and nothing then can be not muffied but open and focused book and Gaddis lacks the aesthe worth much effort. As \Vyatt re his nihilism untroubled by luke: tic (or moral) energy to counter marks, never have there been so warm gestures in the direction of them. many things not worth doing. To "salvation." this principle, Gaddis's work bears If fraud is the leitmotif of The EvEN Gaddis's admirers seem un eloquent testimony. !frcognitions, in ] R it is entropv, able to agree on the most basic as Given Gaddis's abrogation of his 1.e., the tendency of systems toward pects of the meaning of The Rec own role as an artist, which pre disorder and inertness. As a char. ognitions. A volume of criticism, cisely involves the making of neces acter remarks in JR, "Order is sim. In Recognition of William Gaddis, sary distinctions, The Recognitions ply a thin, perilous condition we proffers antithetical interpreta becomes itself a bit of a fraud, one try to impose on the basic realitv tions, with one critic observing ra of those elaborate manipulations of chaos." ' ther tenderly that The Recogni of reality-like the tricks performed The entropic decline in JR is tions suggests that "nothing is emp by the magicians of Pharaoh's seen by Gaddis as the result of the ty or without significance that is court-which impress mightily at subordination of all values in cap spiritually derived from one's deep first but collapse finally of their italist America to greed and profit est and purest humanity," another own emptiness. Some critics have Language must of course reflect almost gleefully remarking that the placed The Recognitions within such a decline, and in JR, the lan novel is "a black book indeed." the modernist tradition, or on the guage-almost entirely dialogue-is And the interpretation that finds cusp that hinges modernism with frantic, fast-paced, fragmentary, full Gaddis declaring that "Art is the post-modernism; others have sug of jargon, cliche, evasion, hesita· ultimate expiation" contrasts mark gested that it stands in a line of tion, deceit, apology, interruption, edly with the one that finds the savage and uniquely American irrelevancy, manipulation. Charac novelist insisting that "Truth must comedies that include certain works ters seem to possess no identities finally be sought beyond art's of Mark Twain and Herman Mel that have not been corrupted or boundaries.'' ville's The Confidence Man. But devastated by the "system." (Per This ambivalence, it has been once divested of its show of erudi haps for that reason their names suggested, is actually part of Gad tion, its literary parodies, its com are seldom given; they often have dis's technique: each reader must plex array of ultimately pointless to be identified through their come to his own "recognition" mythological allusions, The Rec speech habits, as in the favorite and not expect the artist to do it ognitions is actually closer to the epithet of the main character, the for him. Thus, as a novel which type of l 950's melodrama exempli eleven-year-old JR, "hot shit,") Set may in the end be no more and no fied by Arthur .Miller's Death of a tings switch during the brief, blink less valuable than the varying and Salesman (approvingly cited by and-you'll-miss-them narrative sec often contradictory interpretations Gaddis in his essay on failure in tions, and the whole book proceeds it inspires, The Recognitions can American life) and such sub-mid at breakneck speed. be seen as an anticipation of dlebrow efforts as Marty and Re JR is a sixth-grade entrepreneur the deconstructionist movement-a quiem for a Heavyweight: vaguely who parlays his social-studies les work of art that undercuts the effi adolescent tales about sensitive sons in free enterprise into a cor cacy of the artistic act. But then, souls adrift in a harsh modern porate empire. His conglomerate people tend to come to their own world saturated with fraud, com comes to be known as the JR Fam recognitions anyway, so why would mercialism, cruelty, and vulgarity. ity of Companies, an irony since they need Gaddis? Some of us had Stripped of its surface complexity, the actual families portrayed in the naively hoped that art might aim The Recognitions is reminiscent of book, including his own, are all for something more comprehen nothing so much as an especially fragmented or deteriorating in one sive than this. ambitious episode of the old TV way or another. The JR Corpora The fact that Gaddis engages is series, Playhouse 90, though with tion markets all kinds of improb sues of great seriousness and im out the resolution demanded of able and fairly useless goods like portance-faith, salvation, the the popular form and consequently wooden picnic forks, pork bellies, function of art-only makes the without even its modest yield of and green aspirin, and runs a se more exasperating his refusal to satisfaction. ries of deficient services, like an in see his work through to resolution, terlocking chain of nursing homes his yielding instead to an impulse GADDis's two subsequent novels do and funeral parlors. JR operates of aimless accumulation. As he not employ the elaborate structure out of phone booths, chiefly the himself remarks in a recent inter of mythological and literary allu one in his school, using a handker view: "Once one gets a theme in sion characteristic of The Recogni chief over the mouthpiece to dis one's mind it becomes obsessive. If tions. They are, to be sure, difficult guise his boyish voice. it happens to be forgery, then books to read, but more because of Very little, "educationwise," everywhere you look all you see their quotient of counterculture goes on in school. The principal. is forgery, falsification-of religious faddism than because they are ex Mr. Whiteback, is also a banker. values, of art-plagiarism, steal periments in the avant-garde. For who strives for such goals as "the ing." Of course, if everything is a whatever reason, with the passing full utilization potential of in· forgery, then there is little point of the SO's, Gaddis seems to have school television." One of the in working to make distinctions of found his voice. Now his protest is school's teachers tells his class. ,_ .. ----·· ------FICTION/65

n and focused "You're not here to learn anything, fering heiress and would-be roman weapon stupidity's got against in 1bied by luke'. but to be taught so you can pass tic novelist whose money is tied telligence," quoth :\fcCandless.) 1e direction of these tests." JR enlists the help of up in trust, rent a house on the The true believers, aided by bland two of the school's teachers, a writ Hudson River. The house is "car ly corrupt government lackeys, and itmotif of The er and a composer, in operating penter's gothic," imitation gothic prodded by what Gaddis calls the ' it is entropv, his companies out of a catastroph from the outside, the inside rooms "unswerving punctuality of chance," 5ystems toward ically disordered apartment. A poorly planned and crammed-in move toward a denouement in ess. As a char- large cast of supporting charac every which way-apparently an which several characters die violent "Order is sim ters-bankers, brokers, politicians, other of Gaddis's fuzzily inten ly, a nuclear device is exploded by condi ti on we public-relations men, businessmen, tioned frauds. Paul's associates in the U.S. off the African coast while ie basic reality writers, artists, and a number of clude a slick fundamentalist evan the President rages in headlines wives and girlfriends-are either gelist, the Reverend Ude, inspired against the Evil Empire, and every :line m JR is driven ragged by or are perpetra to harvest souls in .-\frica, and a thing apparently returns to business 1e result of the tors of the chaos caused by ringing mining corporation interested in as usual in this black Disney values in cap telephones, blaring radios, intrusive the same part of Africa for differ land. eed and profit. advertising, bureaucratic scheming, ent but equally suspect reasons. The course reflect snoopy reporters, and assorted other owner of the house, ~fcCandless, is IN A way that even The Recogni in JR, the lan disorders deriving from the junky, a failed novelist and a geologist, tions and JR do not, Carpenter's :ly dialogue-is kitschy culture they inhabit. who, having surveyed the mining Gothic shows that Gaddis is not so agmentary, full Corporate values have destroyed site, knows something about the in much an artist as an anti-artist, :vasion, hesita everything, Gaddis thunders in JR: tricate geopolitical schemes it is working with cartoon characters ., interruption, family, education, morality, love, inspiring. A Gaddis stand-in, Mc and disembodied ideas. Instead of lation. Charac all social structures, relationships Candless drops in periodically to shaping, he flattens; instead of syn ; no identities between men and women, sex, and rage against the multifarious stu thesizing, he fragments; instead of corrupted or even art. Nor can there be any pidities of the modern world. ordering, he disorders; instead of ·•system." (Per doubt that the corruption is not an Stupidity is, in fact, Gaddis's ma sifting the chaff from the wheat, n their names aberration but intrinsic to the sys jor theme here. "Carpenter's · he collects the chaff and blows it fiey often have tem. "(W]here do you think you Gothic ... is about getting it wrong in our faces. through their are, over at Russia," asks JR, and stupidity," the author vouch Gaddis enthusiasts have of course 1 the favorite "where they don't let you do any safed in one of his rare explications insisted that the form of his work character, the thing? These laws are these laws of himself. "It's about stupidity is appropriate to its content. And, 'hot shit.") Set why should we want to do some and ignorance, stupidity and greed. at different points in his novels, he brief, blink thing illegal if some law lets us do ... Stupidity is, as someone says Gaddis himself shows his aware narrative sec it anyway ... ?" in the book, a hard habit to break." ness of the kind of criticism he in book proceeds Gaddis does evince a certain skill It is also about the Third World spires by denouncing the simple in JR at capturing the speech pat Africa in the novel but, according minded mentality that demands e entrepreneur terns of different contemporary to Gaddis, Central America as well. ready-made solutions from art. But :ial-studies les types, and at building an intricate, "Stupidity and sentimental values what is this if not a by-now hack ·ise into a cor- ingenious plot. But the book's are guiding us in Central America neyed justification for an impotent conglomerate monomania, with its Cyclopean right now." "Can't we stop wander imagination? In undercutting the is the JR Fam vision of the horrors of capitalism ing off in other people's wars and creative act, Gaddis does more to rn irony since as the cause of every evil, pretty pushing people around?" he won break down the human spirit than ortrayed in the thoroughly discredits this achieve ders. "The Nicaragua picture-it is any system he opposes. It is true ; own, are all ment. JR displays the same help beyond belief what we are doing, that our current funhouse state of iorating in one lessness as The Recognitions in the and stupid, stupid." literary criticism in one way or an e JR Corpora- face of its material. In Carpenter's Gothic, Gaddis other encourages novels like JR 1ds of improb means to show us the consequences and Carpenter's Gothic-tons of less goods like Tms kind of one-note thinking of stupidity. His wrath is un bloodless verbiage and sweaty con >, pork bellies, also characterizes Gaddis's latest leashed on all kinds of "true be trivances to make incomparable and runs a se novel, Carpenter's Gothic, although lievers," not only fundamentalists banality sound like truth. But in ices, like an in it is shorter and takes place in a and creationists but anti-Commu this corruption, from which he nursing homes single setting. Paul Booth, a har nists and diehard capitalists who (unlike the various struggling art ;. JR operates ried Vietnam veteran who pro persist in holding blindly to their ists of his fiction) has handsomely hs, chiefly the motes himself as a "media consult creeds and in inflicting them on profited, William Gaddis himself .ing a handker ant," and his wife Liz, a long-suf- others. ("Revealed truth is the one has had a prominent hand. thpiece to dis e. :ducationwise," The principal, also a banker, 1 goals as "the tential of in- One of the ells his class.