The Recognitions - Part III

[Matthew, Assistant List Master]

Discuss part III here

[Michael]

My complete GR review after finishing Part 3

This book clearly influenced Pynchon and DFW and I would imagine Cormac McCarthy as well, but it is pretty damn unreadable. Looking behind The Recognitions, many level that criticism at Ulysses. Well, Ulysses does require some work, but the difference is that Stephen Daedalus as well as the Blooms are fantastic deeply moving and well-drawn characters and we WANT to see them succeed. In The Recognitions, there is a plethora of characters, but none of which I could have more than a shred of sympathy for: Otto is too pathetic, Wyatt is too broken, Recktail disappears before the end...and the characters around the have amusing characteristics (like the guy measuring the cracks in the ceiling, but I was like, so what.
As for comparing it to the next of post-moderns, I think that Pynchon tells a more interesting story, that DFW draws more interesting characters and McCarthy doesn't overload his novels with 1000s of irrelevant characters.
The book is written as a triptych where, for me, the first part starts clean and becomes incoherent, the second part is incoherent and the 3rd parts starts coherent and makes a tiny bit of sense at the end. This generates quite a lot of stress to me as a reader.
The term "recognition" is used a lot in part 1 and then disappears which left me a bit rudderless.
I think this book is interesting only in the historical part it played in influencing other writers, but as a standalone piece of art, it does not hold much appeal.

[Michael]

For me, Part 3 started as incoherent as Part 2 and did not really give me closure. I don't understand what happened to the only character I really liked - Esme - and why Recktail and Basil vanish from Part 3.

[Matthew, Assistant List Master]

Part III = Weekend and Bernie's