The Recognitions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Recognitions is a 1955 novel by American William Gaddis. It is widely praised, and also known for its complexity. The novel was poorly received initially, but Gaddis's reputation grew, twenty years later, with the publication of his second novel J R (which won a National Book Award), and The Recognitions received belated fame; it is usually placed at least on a par with the later novel.

[edit] Plot summary

The story loosely follows the life of Wyatt Gwyon, a Calvinist minister's son from rural New England. He initially plans to follow his father into the ministry, but he leaves and travels to Europe to study painting. Out of frustration with his own career, a need for money, and a disregard for anything but perfecting his own skills, he takes on work as a forger, making copies of paintings that successfully pass for originals. This eventually develops into making "new" originals--paintings so perfectly in the style of known masters that they pass for newly discovered works.

Much of the story follows the lives of people around him, their own faithfulness to their ideals, and the roles of forgery or similar falsehoods in other parts of life. Wyatt's father gradually converts from Calvinism to Catholicism to Mithraism, taking his unsuspecting congregation with him until he is finally committed to an asylum. Otto is a playwright who romanticizes himself as a Byronic hero, and remembers things people say so that he can put them in his play, in the mouth of the character representing himself. He idolizes Wyatt, who tends not to notice him. He also feigns a broken arm, which he tells people he got when he was caught up in the South American revolution; later he is caught up in such a revolution, and does break his arm. He has never met his own father, and imagines him to be Albert, King of the Belgians. Wyatt's wife, Esther, is frustrated with his inattention to her, and they separate, after which she has an affairs with Otto. Esme is a drug-addicted poet and model who has an affair with Otto, works for Wyatt and falls in love with him, and then travels to Europe to become a nun. Recktall Brown is the unscrupulous art dealer who, along with Basil Valentine, moves Wyatt's paintings onto the international market. Valentine is an art critic who steals original works to move them back to Europe, "where they belong", replacing them with forgeries. Stanley is an idealistic young Catholic man writing music that he hopes to play in Rome.

[edit] External links

• Annotations to The Recognitions at williamgaddis.org
• Jack Green's Fire the Bastards!, a response to the original critics of The Recognitions