Evan’s Reviews > The Recognitions > Status Update

A greater book now, re-reading five years after the halfway abandonment. Perfect stuff for fallen Catholics and those co-existing with the Fundamentalist mindset. "The sight of the pains of the damned heaps up the measure of the accidental joys of the righteous." Explains a lot about the MAGA Christian-nationalist cult; though I don't think their joys are "accidental," but intentional. The feature, not the bug.

Re-starting this. Been wanting to get back to this for a long time. Made it to about page 420 a few years back but life interceded. Seems much more a breeze this time; given how difficult Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is by comparison. There's nothing here that seems to be stopping me. I'm liking it a lot more.

I need to get back on this. Of course, I will have to go all the way back and start over at page 1 having reached 422 a long-ass time ago but without the momentum of thought one accrues in the reading none of that previous effort matters now.

It's taking awhile, but this is clearly doable. It's a toughie, no doubt, but not the most difficult book I've tackled. Let's keep going and maybe come out the other end in a month or two.

Every time Gaddis wants to inject a touch of faux reality business it's always "He/she lit a cigarette." What literary crutch like this do we have today in this smokeless future? I guess, "he/she checked his/her phone for texts" ...