& adds: "I have learned more psychology and psychiatry from it than I did in ten years at the Neurological Institute"      its neuropatho- logical to write that ulysses has no "orderliness, sequence or inter- dependence"      & just as mad to make the same criticism of the recognitions the legitimate question would be if the 2 books are overdisciplined, ulysses by its analogies to homer & vico, the recognitions by its intricate network of cross references      bachs music gives many a proof that art can easily carry a formal burden (eg canons) that      to the inquiring mind       seems obviously insupportable      in writing too, the lively existence of joyces great novel answers the theoretical question       & in the recognitions the complex framework of reference & crossreference doesnt interfere at all with the life, vividness of the characters & events, but magnifies them, gives them added colors & "timegrowth" i open the recognitions at random       its p593, well into esther's darwinian party       the "scent of lavender" has a long history in the book, eg used for forgery by both wyatt & sinisterra      when its esthers sister rose who mentions the poem "A magnet hung in a hard- ware shop" it takes on mysterious connotations      irony, actually its a silly song from gilbert & sullivan       the music (too loud), voices (like waves), benny (moving to desperation), esthers kitten (moving thru various themes of mistreatment to its death), the little girl from down- stairs (collecting sleeping pills a few at a time for her mothers suicide)       are all brought back over & over, in separated snatches at the party till their development is done      making new echoes at each rereading       lines 17-21 ("cigarette somewhere"—see p639 line 30) & 23-25 ("he" is the trees of home author, not wyatt) are 2 of many episodes in the book where someone says whats exactly in key with feelings your hiding, you answer & it turns out thats not what was meant       "best sellers" has a number of crossreferences & "My husband says he stole the plot from the Flying Dutchman, whoever that is" is one of dozens of such items of "forged culture"—& the dutchman, in or out of wagners opera, appears on other pp      "Some faggot writes them for me"—see p314 line 23 for the crossreference. & so it goes, not a phrase without a definite purpose or purposes no one who knows the recognitions at all would say its undisciplined. thats like saying dostoyevskys characters "lack intensity" or strind- bergs a dream play is "sordid realism"      14 of 55 reviewers did say it! for just one cliche reason: a "long 1st novel" must by definition be "undisciplined" & "sprawling": But the main fault of the novel is a complete lack of discipline. (kirkus) judgment and discipline, but these are qualities which he plainly lacks. (hill) "chaos novel" (powell) It is a sprawled giant of a book, with little plot but a great deal to say. (demarest) The book has the formless disjointed quality of a nightmare. (parke) to date the one valid criticism of Wolfe is his lack of discipline. In comparison with Gaddis, Wolfe wore a literary strait-jacket. (simak) formlessness...an uncontrolled exhibition1 ...Like a poem it coheres only in spirit (rugoff      my ellipses) & bradley ("sprawling" "undisciplined and baffling prose"), burnette ("undisciplined and pretentious" "sprawling prose"), klein ("sprawling"), mcalister ("the writing is undisciplined"), o'hearn ("undisciplined and unfulfilled"), stocking ("vast, sprawling")2 the cliche is so tempting that when mccarthy wrote: tightly knit despite seeming nebulousness [sic] his headlineman, skimming thru the review as careless as the critics skimmed thru the recognitions, read it the way it should be: Brilliant Flashes Illumine Sprawling, Inchoate Novel this cliche about this book is such a dead giveaway of not having really read it that their bosses must FIRE bradley demarest mcalister o'hearn parke rugoff simak & stocking, to mention only those not already axed 1not "superbly disciplined" like the waste land (Back) 2of course the prose in the recognitions is no less disciplined than the form are critics disciplined?       eg, of 38 quotes of ten words or more from the recognitions they misquoted 25       of 21 critics making such quotes 18 got at least one wrong      (original reviews only) most misquotes were careless but involved at most meddling with commas & capitals       but give an american lesion prize to livingston for censoring out the terrible words "damn it" & "Chrahst"       & coldwell for changing "unchristian" to "un-Christian" a misrepresentation prize to boss smith for making gaddis an ungrammarian:

the recognitions, p946	as quoted by smith (my italics)
Any city that calls herself modern anticipates all her children's needs, even to erecting something high for them to jump from	Any city which calls itself modern anticipates all her children's needs, even to erecting something high for them to jump from

a quotesmanship award to the new yorker hack for quoting p50 lines 9-15 out of context & without explaining the crossreferences, thus fraudulently giving the impression that all of the recognitions is esoteric, incomprehensible & just "words, words, words"       & to bass who quotes a 5-line list of books from p23 & says "lists like the following for page after page after page after page"      its a lie, no such list is more than a few lines long (Back)