The Recognitions by William Gaddis
"The Recognitions" is a novel by William Gaddis, published in 1955, that delves into themes of authenticity, morality, and artistic integrity through the life of its protagonist, Wyatt Gwyon. Set against a backdrop of pretentiousness and imitation, the narrative explores Wyatt's struggle between the desire for fame and the pursuit of genuine artistic expression. Raised in a conflicted household—his father, a reverend promoting intellectual curiosity, and his Aunt May, who instills a dogmatic faith—Wyatt grapples with feelings of guilt surrounding his creativity, ultimately resorting to forgery to achieve success.
The novel features a cast of characters who represent various approaches to truth and morality, including artists and intellectuals who either embrace or reject superficial societal values. Gaddis's work is noted for its complexity, employing dense language, fragmented dialogues, and rich symbolism, prompting readers to actively engage with the text. Initially met with mixed reviews and later falling out of print, "The Recognitions" has gained recognition over the years for its depth and has been likened to the works of literary giants such as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. Readers interested in a challenging yet rewarding exploration of philosophical themes in art and existence may find Gaddis's novel particularly compelling.
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
First published: 1955
Type of plot: Social morality
Time of work: From about 1910 to shortly after World War II
Locale: New York City, Paris, Spain, and Rome
Principal Characters:
Wyatt Gwyon , the protagonist, an artist, forger, and adventurerEsme, , a poet who seeks the truthStanley , a composer of organ massesBasil Valentine , an art critic in a counterfeiting ring with GwyonAunt May , Gwyon’s aunt, a devout Calvinist, whose “face wore the firm look of election”The Reverend Gwyon , Wyatt’s father, who is the town minister but who secretly worships the sun
The Novel
Most of the characters inhabiting William Gaddis’s novel The Recognitions pretend to be intellectuals in order to attain fame and money. They do not seek the universe’s principles, God’s laws, like the novel’s few true intellectuals. These few, because they struggle to recognize the universe’s rules and to obey them, live moral lives. The impostors, on the other hand, do not.
Wyatt Gwyon is the novel’s main character and, because he seeks fame, its main dissembler. The book follows his journey from pretense to truth, illuminating the way to discover morality.
The novel begins with Wyatt’s childhood. His mother has died, so his father, the Reverend Gwyon, and his live-in relative Aunt May rear him. The two adults battle each other over whose philosophy Wyatt will follow. Gwyon tries to teach his son to think and learn. He lures him with mythology, tales of his travels, and the excitement of discovery. May tries to deaden the boy’s mind with blind, unquestioning faith in God. She berates him for being one of Adam’s descendants and therefore a sinner who will go to Hell unless he believes in Jesus.
May fears creativity more than anything else because man imitates God when he creates. He tries to become God, she reasons. Therefore, when Wyatt, still a child, shows her his first picture, that of a robin, she asks: “Don’t you love our Lord Jesus, after all?” He says that he does. “Then why do you try to take His place? Our Lord is the true creator, and only sinful people try to emulate Him.” She goes on to tell him that “to sin is to falsify something in the divine order, and that is what Lucifer did. . . . He tried to become original. . . . And he won his own domain. . . . Is that what you want? Is that what you want? Is that what you want?” From then on, Wyatt “made drawings in secret . . . more convinced as those years passed, and his talent blossomed . . . that he was damned.” He buries the paintings in the yard.
Wyatt feels such great guilt for creating as a child that as an adult he ends up painting only reproductions. He becomes good at copying, and because he wants fame and money, he starts forging paintings of fifteenth century artists. Recktall Brown, a rich collector, claims that he finds the paintings in old houses he buys; Basil Valentine, a renowned art critic, first disputes, then concedes their authenticity, allowing Brown to sell them for large amounts of money, which the three men split.
The counterfeiting ring dissolves, however, when Brown dies and Wyatt tries to kill Valentine. The critic reveals to Wyatt that the fifteenth century works and, therefore, Wyatt’s copies have too much extraneous detail cluttering them up. He accuses the artist of concentrating on detailed, limited work rather than trying to find “the origins of design,” the order of the universe. The criticism negates all that Wyatt has done, making him murderously angry.
He flees to Spain and changes his name to Stephen. There he realizes that Valentine was right. One must not limit oneself to details if one wants to find an orderly universe, for such a universe applies its principles to all things equally. That is why it is ordered, because it has right and wrong. To find rules that apply to all things one must try to study all things; but since that is impossible, one must study a great many things, in order to recognize the rules common to everything.
Artists try to reveal principles in their works, an act that takes great creativity and imagination; for, because one person cannot know everything, he must theorize and struggle to find the rules that God made. Then he imitates them. Wyatt fears to “emulate” God because May’s lesson that God punishes those who create has never left him. He has simply buried his creativity, as he buried his original paintings. His bringing the fear to light and overcoming it allows him to start seeking the eternal principles and living a moral life.
The Characters
Wyatt, of all the pretenders, changes to become a truth seeker. Most of the other characters loiter at the right bars, attend fashionable parties, and go sightseeing at the correct places. They gossip, drink, develop their images, and, whenever they can, because they have nothing better to do, antagonize and distract the moral characters. Hannah tells Anselm to “shut up,” “go home,” and “take a nap” when he and Stanley discuss religion. Don Bildow asks Stanley for methyltestosterone (“I’m with this girl, see”) and later “the Italian word for contraceptive” when Stanley frantically pursues Esme.
Three other characters besides Wyatt seek the truth in the novel: Esme, the poet; Stanley, the composer; and Valentine, the art critic. They warrant the reader’s attention because they discover truth.
Gaddis has created a fascinating character in the beautiful Esme. She has the self-discipline to make herself look beyond details to find the eternal principles. Her use of the third-person singular when talking about herself illustrates this asceticism. The use of the third person allows her to think of herself as she would another person, with the distance necessary to ignore petty needs and selfish desires. These needs only get in the way of her broad study, for they are details such as the ones Wyatt has painted for so long.
Using the third person, Esme says beautiful things. When Stanley gets her pregnant, she asks him, “Will you marry her . . . ? For he put it there and did not take it away as he promised, as he always had done before, as he promised.” When the “damned black androgyne,” the epithet that she gives Father Martin, holds up the cross to exorcise her, she says: “Take him away, he’s hurting her.” When she gets the sore on her lip which later becomes infected and kills her, she explains that “something bit her perhaps.”
Unlike Esme, Stanley does not believe that man, by himself, can find the truth. He thinks that God works through prayer and ritual to make man forget the limited and look for the infinite. His efforts to convert others to Catholicism show his belief in the power of faith. Since he composes a piece of music good enough “to offend the creator of perfection by emulating his grand design,” he justifies his belief.
Characters in the novel often ask the question, “Should we understand in order to believe or . . . believe in order to understand?” Gaddis never gives an explicit answer. Since both Stanley and Esme find truth, however, perhaps both methods are valid; a character’s temperament determines which alternative is right for him.
Valentine, though a Jesuit priest, never says whether he thinks a person must have faith to find truth or truth to find faith; but one way or another, the art critic does find the eternal principles. His trenchant comments to Wyatt prove that. His ability to discover truth makes him an intriguing character because he lacks genius, unlike Wyatt, Esme, and Stanley. Gaddis, through Valentine, shows that average people can also look beyond details and recognize truth; they simply cannot express it as beautifully as artists can.
Critical Context
The Recognitions first appeared in print in 1955. Very few critics gave favorable reviews because the reader must stumble through 956 pages of obscure analogies, unfinished conversations and sentences, events not explicitly described, interspersed foreign languages, and characters who talk at one another in enigmatic language. Gaddis does give obscure explanations of glossed-over events and supplies some omitted details as the story progresses, so that a reader who uses his imagination and creativity to fill in the blanks can work through the story slowly. Gaddis litters the path so that only those willing to take great effort will finish.
Few people have wanted to struggle enough to uncover the novel’s message until recently. The book went out of print in the late 1950’s. In 1962, Meridian published it in paperback, and in 1970 another paperback edition came out. More and more people have read it and praised it, so that now numerous critical articles have been devoted to it. Some reviewers even compare Gaddis to James Joyce and T. S. Eliot.
The novel sufficiently rewards the reader who perseveres. The conversations amuse; the analogies, beautiful poetry, and poetic language provoke thought; the mention of arcana fascinates. Finally, in deciding how to live, everyone should know the argument advocating a moral life, even if the argument is ultimately rejected.
Bibliography
Comnes, Gregory. The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Novels of William Gaddis. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. Comnes explores Gaddis’s view on ethics and moral imperatives and notes that Gaddis “provides readers with a chance to consider what it means to have values without absolutes . . .” An excellent study that offers readers an illuminating perspective on the philosophy undergirding Gaddis’s work.
Gaddis, William. “A Carnival of Disorderly Conduct.” Interview by Laurel Graeber. The New York Times Book Review, January 9, 1994, p. 22. Presents insight into Gaddis’s style and themes. Gaddis tells why he is not interested in becoming a prolific author. He also describes his approach to writing, which emphasizes dialogue over narration.
Knight, Christopher. Hints and Guesses: William Gaddis and the Longing for an Enlarged Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. The first scholarly work to discuss all four of Gaddis’s novels, Knight’s book focuses on Gaddis’s significance as a social critic and satirist. Knight highlights Gaddis’s major concerns, including Flemish painting, forgery, corporate America, Third World politics, and the U.S. legal system.
Moore, Steven. A Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions.” Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. In this revised edition of his 1982 work, Moore provides synopses of each chapter of Gaddis’s novel, as well as detailed annotations. A useful resource for the study of the novel.
Wolfe, Peter. A Vision of His Own: The Mind and Art of William Gaddis. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. Offers an in-depth study of major themes and characters in Gaddis’s fiction, including The Recognitions. An indispensable study for general readers and scholars alike.