Evan’s Reviews > The Recognitions > Status Update

Brown falls down the stairs and dies. Good. One boring character with a juvenile name out of the way. Do 70 more like this and we'll have something.

Almost all the book's characters at a party in NYC. Dubiously comical bits. Counterfeit money being passed around like L'argent. Debauchery, etc. Should be good with all this, but ain't. Nearly 100 pages of sheer agony. OK OK, leave it for the review. Onward. Lord, give me strength.

Another New York party with all our characters prattling incessantly and pretentiously. Wyatt meets Esther and again blubbers like a total cipher. The book repeats itself incessantly. At least I'm at page 600.

There's an odds-on chance that I might finish Finnegans Wake before I finish this. That ought to tell you something.

Dr. Smith: "Oh the pain, the pain."
Bugs Bunny: "Agony Aaaa-goh-neeee!"
Me: "When, oh when, will it end?"

I read somewhere that Gaddis thought he should have won the Nobel Prize for this. Clearly as delusional as all of the characters in this book.

No comment.

Past the halfway point and after a strong start this book is going downhill faster than the stock market whenever Donald Trump says or does some irresponsible dumbassery. Every page, its stock devalues as it repeats the same patterns of nothingness. Last night I already wrote my review but won't post it till I finish the book. I'm afraid it won't be pretty. Lit bros, you've been warned.