—Reading it? Christ no, what do you think I am? I just been
having trouble sleeping, so my analyst told me to get a book and
count the letters, so I just went in and asked them for the thickest
book in the place and they sold me this damned thing, he muttered
looking at the book with intimate dislike. —I'm up to a hundred and
thirty-six thousand three hundred and something and I haven't even
made fifty pages yet. (the recognitions 936-7      the book the stubby
poet has is the recognitions itself)

a great but lengthy writer like Thomas Mann (berger      my italics)

theres statistical evidence that readers of trashy superbestsellers
prefer a nice long one they can get their teeth into ¹      the critics
disagree because all that length, it hits them right in the hack!      they
dont get paid enough extra for long books & like the whores they are
they resent it

a novel over 300p can have been published (tolstoy, dostoyevsky,
joyce) but it cant now be published—too much work for the critic.
he has to hover over the same book too long, he might fall in

hear them whine, bellow, and scream:

inordinate length. (berger)

forbidding length (o'hearn)

almost interminable (morse)

interminable conversations (wagenknecht)

self-indulgent verbosity, deadly unfunny repetitiveness, and endless
portentous gasping conversations (swados)

he could have, and should have, used the occasion to make some
apology, however indirect, to all the reviewers who are forced to
read his seemingly interminable tale. (hill)

a sort of monstrous annotation, a dropsical expansion of such
scenes and moods as make up "The Waste Land." (rugoff)

  AND SO WE dove in and floundered around through this literary
Sargasso Sea until somehow we dragged ourselves on shore 956
pages later, completely pooped and the sole survivor. (bass)

  When I complained recently to the people at the Western Review
that I was tired of trying to consider half a dozen novels all at once,
in a mass review, they must have decided to punish me. They asked
if I would like to do a single novel, all by itself. I consented. Then
they sent me The Recognitions. (hartman)

we are swollen and unrecognizable with the effort of trying to
swallow so much. (fremantle)

at times an exasperating novel. This is not due alone to the tre-
mendous volume of wordage (simak)

exasperating in its profligacy of diction (bloom)

maddeningly drawn out and unresolved (burnette)

To claim they give you 956 pages of novel in return for your money
is like offering you a giant headache in return for your aspirin.
(powell)²

the physical labor of turning 900 pages when 300 would have been
sufficient. (klein)

As a whole, the novel would profit considerably from a severe blue-
penciling. (burnette)

If Mr. Gaddis had wielded his shears with the same freedom that
he wielded his pen, he might have produced a highly readable
work. (dixon)

It is a pity that, in his first novel, he did not have stronger editorial
guidance than is apparent in the book—for he can write very well—
even though most of the time he just lets his pen run on. (kirkus)

  —But this book about religion, said a sub-editor, standing aside
for the tall man in the black Homburg to pass. —It's Buddhism.
  —But it's by a Jew, said the other, standing aside.
  —Well, I've told him if he'll change his hero from a Jew to a homo-
sexual, we might accept it.
  —But that's the way it was in the first place.

Gaddis writes with ease and vigor about a Greenwich Village
gathering, but repeats this sequence many times. (kirkus)

(from the recognitions blurb):
The pattern of forgery, emo-
tional and spiritual as well as
actual

FIRE burnette for plagiarism

after paying his debt to editors the writer owes readers too      he
should play back to them what they already think & are, ie write com-
mercially

  The average reader, who, Mr. Gaddis says, lacks intelligence,
talent and sensitivity, will shun this appallingly enormous and
enormously appalling catalog of intellectual and phony intellectual
horrors, thereby disproving or proving Mr. Gaddis' statement, (lay-
cock)

a catharsis for the writer rather than the reader. (rugoff)

Has an author the right to inflict this catharsis on us? The answer
to that is in the enormity of the deed and the price. (laycock)

(the recognitions never was overpriced      $7.50—now $2.75—for a
novel 5 times as long as average)

& the writer owes it to the reader to surrender his privacy:

WILLIAM GADDIS, about whom his publishers are otherwise reti-
cent, is 33 years old. (jackson)

I do not feel that I know him from this book (hartman)

—Earlier, you know, he mentioned to me the idea of a novel factory,
a sort of assembly line of writers, each one with his own especial
little job. Mass production, he said, and tailored to the public taste.
But not so absurd, Basil Valentine said sitting forward suddenly.
  —Yes, I...I know. I know.
  —When I laughed...but it's not so funny in his hands, you know.
Just recently he started this business of submitting novels to a
public opinion board, a cross-section of readers who give their
opinions, and the author makes changes accordingly. Best sellers,
of course.
  —Yes, good God, imagine if...submitting paintings to them, to a
cross section? You'd better take out...This color...These lines,
and...

such readers as he may be fortunate enough to have (hicks)

And if, please God, this book is not a "success," he may meet up
with some human beings whom he can use as characters. Then
perhaps he will really write. (hill)

²this analogy requires careful thought, which it will not repay (Back)

³if prousts novel had been issued in 1 volume instead of 7, how the critics would
have howled! (Back)

⁴there is no greenwich village cocktail party in the recognitions (Back)