This is precisely the write-up i have been wanting about The Recognitions, thank you. This has me extremely excited to start it. I listened to Gass introduce Gaddis at some event and (if i remember correctly) he talked of the fun of Gaddis’ writing. To have it all laid out here like this (especially the weekend at bernie’s style scene) is encouraging. I just checked out Maladror from your mention of it: it looks awesome, added to my list.

I want to recommend you another author: Evan Dara. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of them but they are an anonymous author whose work gets compared to Gaddis. William T Vollmann judged and awarded their first novel The Lost Scrapbook. That book is fucking amazing. It’s almost all monologue, and anecdote. It’s like tuning through a radio. Pretty brilliant stuff.