| Abstracts
of papers presented at |
|
Steven
Moore |
Review of the circumstances under which The
Recognitions first appeared,
both
the market conditions for new works of fiction like his and the larger
literary culture prevalent in the U.S. in 1955, all of which made it
difficult for a novel like his to win approval. Both market and cultural
conditions have improved since then, which makes it easier for
unconventional novels like his to get noticed, and which contributes
to
continued interest in Gaddis's first novel and makes feasible conferences
like this one. |
|
Sascha Pöhlmann |
This paper presents a parallel reading of The Recognitions and Joyce's Finnegans Wake in the light of questions of artistic representation, surface, and originality, touching on Pynchon, Borges, and Wilde as well. As well as a challenge to the concept of authenticity, it is also an attempt to reclaim Joyce for Gaddis studies in a way that goes beyond the well-known fallacy of positing a hierarchic "influence." After initial caveats concerning such comparisons, a main character from The Recognitions and from Finnegans Wake, Wyatt Gywon and Shem, are linked and shown to be "original forgers" who deal with problems of authenticity in their own ways. While neither text truly fits the category of postmodernism, Wyatt and Shem both have traits of postmodern artists addressing issues of surface and essence in art. Both The Recognitions and Finnegans Wake force their readers to question concepts of authenticity and intertextuality in different but related ways. |
John Soutter Gaddis scholar UK/Switzerland The Recognitions and Carpenter's Gothic: Gaddis's Anti-Pauline Novels |
Gaddis's major preoccupation in his novels is fictions that are assumed as reality . His major influence from his first novel, The Recognitions (1955) and onwards, is Hans Vaihinger's The Philosophy of ‘As if': A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind. Vaihinger investigates how the original teachings of a founder of a religion – in this case, one Jesus Christ – are transformed by his disciples into a dogma: ‘the “as-if” ' function of a hypothetical fiction becomes, in Gaddis's words, ‘a “that” and “because” '. Furthermore, this message is made corrupt and inimical to reality by the impractical accretions that are imposed upon it. These accretions originate from another follower of Christ's teachings, who, moreover, never met Christ – Saint Paul . Paul's second-hand testament of Christ is prioritized over any first-hand version of him, thereby setting the example within a modern day secular society in which people suppress their own first-hand experience in order to conform more easily to the demands put on them by other people. A gap appears within Christ's message of love, charity or agape that when applied within the actual world turns the results of this agape into incredulity leaving the world in a state that is disjointed or agape . That which ought to foster cohesion and concern for oneself as much as for others is actually a man-made system that turns against humanity. We, thereby, lose sight of the original design and intentions of the system to which we have enslaved ourselves by an act of faith. Nonetheless, we delude ourselves with all kinds of improbable abstract notions to justify our eventually unjustifiable beliefs – one major one in Gaddis being the actual rather than the hypothetical existence of God – that we are still directly on course for the best of all possible worlds within the actual world that is forever crashing about our ears. |
Anja Zeidler graduate student, University of Hamburg Germany J R: Opéra comique |
Music plays a prominent role in William Gaddis's work. It appears
as explicit and implicit intermedial references in all his novels,
with the exception of Carpenter's Gothic , but even there its
absence is significant. The posthumously published Agape Agape is
a veritable homage to music and the work most obviously characterized
by a musicalized form. In my paper I focus on J R , Gaddis's first novel for voices only, its vocal form naturally pushing it towards the musical. J R demonstrates the functions music takes within Gaddis's work. Although imitation of speech does not necessarily lead to musicalization of fiction, it does so in J R . By explicit and implicit references, voices in J R are characterized in musical terms. I will give examples of this and demonstrate the novel's tendency to connect the women to voice and singing and the men to rhythm and dancing. On the whole I read J R as dialogue opera, and more specifically as opéra comique . The satiric impulse behind this particular operatic genre, its eclecticism, and its essential feature, the "vaudeville" with its comments on contemporary political, artistic, and societal events, makes it a valid model for J R . Within the novel, the operatic genre is self-referentially thematized by a play-within-the-play operetta in the opéra comique invented by one of the main characters, Jack Gibbs. The Gibbs operetta is a kind of "Twilight of Men" and through the title Jack Gibbs gives it ("Our Dear Departed Member") and its musical allusions, it is understood as a travesty of Richard Wagner's Twilight of the Gods . Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle functions as a major subtext throughout J R , reduced to The Rhinegold as a direct reference within the novel, which is quite appropriate for a novel about money. I will show that Wagner's opera is used in two different ways: as an instrument of satire, and as an example of the depreciation and destruction of complex art by ignorance and stupidity. The competition between the voice of music and the voice of money -- the latter emerging victorious -- is seen in the fate of both Bach's and Mozart's music. I will also discuss that although the evil music of money is not an invention of the contemporary world, J R does nevertheless hint at a dichotomy between a world now gone where music was an activity, its voice clearly audible, and the contemporary world of constant passive exposure to music, its voice going unheard. Metaphor for the decline from active play to passive consumption, for the mechanization of the arts, and for the coup de grace to artistic complexity is the player piano. Gaddis treated the subject of the player piano from the beginning of his writing career, coming back to it in his last work Agapé Agape . This metaphor is also an element of J R . |