plot

1 rushed reading of the recognitions makes hash of the plot      which
some rapidreading students found "irritatingly opaque" (time) or even
nonexistent:

Plot does not exist (bloom)

a novel without a defined plot (kirkus)

not strictly speaking, a story at all, but an immense canvas filled
with shifting pictures (morse)

a sprawled giant of a book, with little plot but a great deal to say
(demarest)

Structurally it is a series of symbolic episodes calculated not to tell
a story but to suggest the sterility of contemporary life. (rugoff)

the story shifts from continent to continent through a maze of inter-
locking plots and a veritable forest of symbol and allegory without
ever assuming a skeletal outline of real substance. (bradley)

a careless 1st reader of war & peace might forget who the characters
are & lose the storyline each time its interrupted by tolstoy remarks on
history       if he dared to write a review at this point itd be like jack-
son's who got derailed by the caricature sections in gaddis book:
  There is small use trying to outline any plot in so diffuse a book.
There is a vague narrative line

But this story-thread keeps disappearing like a swimmer with cramps
in the ocean of brilliantly drawn phonies that Mr. Gaddis' fertile
imagination creates.

snyder mysteriously judges that "time and place have little importance"
in the story       in desbarats' fantasy the camera may have discouraged
authors from attempting the novel proper      "stories can be told,
through television and movies, more effectively in dramatic form, as
they were in Shakespeare's time"       by who, chayefsky?      can
greshams law connect the audience of tens of millions with the one of
tens of thousands?       if not, the dishonest tv stories cant drive out the
honest novels
Gaddis tells us not only a story but what he thinks of it.
  Maybe this obviates plot in the conventional sense. (desbarats)
maybe not!       you should shun the quoteprecis of the recognitions in
#10 of newspaper & buy the book instead, but my digest does show
that gaddis has a clear storyline/lines      his storyline has much the
same function as in most novels, including realistic ones & all the
above comments are from fools      bass, taking the opposite suspicion,
is just as wrong:
Every character in the book had drowned along the way, dragged
down by the weight of his words and the plot treadmill upon which
he was forced to operate.