Evan’s Reviews > The Recognitions > Status Update

Incompletion as the possibilities of perfection. And completion as the certainty of imperfection. Ah yes, this is where I'd read that idea. Wyatt's severe upbringing has rendered him incomplete, unable to complete. 100 pages in. Gaddis' maximalism is not too much to ask us to help him in completion. The possibility of completion as a reader is all that's required. I accept that role. Onward.

Chapter 1 down, one of the finest ever written, surely. This was closed to me five years ago and now it blooms fully. You have to be ready for a book; I wasn't then, I am now.

What a difference a second reading makes. First 50 pages are so masterful they made me cry, just from the sheer genius of it. Gaddis, you absolute king.

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.