William Gaddis - The Recognitions

Rooted within us, basic laws, forgotten gladly, as an undesirable appointment made under embarrassing pressures, are a difficult work to find. The painter, speaking without tongue, is quite absurdly mad in his attempt to do so, yet he is inescapably bound toward this.

To recognize, hot to establish but to intervene. A remarkable illusion?

Painting, a sign whose reality is actually, I, never to be abandoned, a painting is myself, ever attentive to me, mimicking what I never changed, modified, or compromised. Whether I, myself, am object or image, they at once, are both, real or fancied, they are both, concrete or abstract, they are both, exactly and in proportion to this disproportionate I, being knowingly or unknowingly neither one nor the other, yet to be capable of creating it, welded as one, perhaps not even welded but actually from the beginning one, am also both and what I must, without changing, modifying, or compromising, be.

The painter concerned for his mortal safety, indifferent because he fears to scrutinize, paradoxically sacrifices that very safety, for he will not be allowed to escape painting.

He will make paintings or they will revolt and make him, unhappy being in the grasp of them. He compulsively must, then, live them cold as they are, static, perversely with warmth and movement he cannot know but feel painfully, a bird with broken eggs inside.

On the other hand, a no-painter — resourceful as he may be, cannot paint. He cannot say, well, "I did not get the job but I shall say I got it anyhow" — by this distortion of fact he deludes, not himself, but other persons, until, that moment arrives to receive the reimbursement. With nothing of value to show the fact will disappear. There is no fact but value.

The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being reserved for others, not knowing, but who must somehow, at any sacrifice be made to know, then punished for the sight of this knowledge, by aiding it on its journey from brain to brain.

It does not seem unreasonable that we invent colors, lines, shapes, capable of being, representative of existence, therefore it is not unreasonable that they, in turn, later, invent us, our ideas, directions, motivations, with great audacity, since we, ourselves having them upon our walls. What rude guests they prove to be, indeed: although paintings differ from life by energy a painter can never be a substitute for his paintings, so complete so independent as reality are they. Imagine the pleasure they enjoy at this.

They by conversion into an idea of the person, do, instantaneously destroy him. A tragic gesture that actually leads to tragedy but diabolically exists only in an absence of tragedy, nevertheless procreating it, however, they are unreasonably enough, insufficient, because they are not made of ideas, they are made of paint, all else is really us.

Paintings are metaphors for reality, but instead of being an aid to realization obscure the reality which is far more profound. The only way to circumvent painting is by absolute death.

— Close your eyes for the next sixty seconds and try to walk around the room. .

The man behind the bar reached up and turned it off.

— I got a friend he's got a glass eye with the American flag on it, said the man on the outside.

The man behind the bar poured whisky until it ran over his fingers. — This'll put lead in your pencil. He pushed it in a wet trail across the bar. — Now if you got somebody to write to you're all set.

— Here's Rose.

At the far end of the bar Otto stepped aside for the dumpy woman who came in the door. Her nose was red, so were her eyes.

— What's the matter, Rose? Cold enough for you?

Otto joined the cold coin on the bar with a warm one from his pocket, signaled with his empty beer glass, and put it back down beside the newspaper, folded there on the bar across one of the girls in the vice probe, whose dark glasses he had been staring at.

To his left, the mirror and the window conjoined at such an angle that vehicles on the street outside appeared to come into one another head-on. A bus telescoped and disappeared. He with- drew his bloodshot eyes and turned them straight before him; but he did not see his face for the sign franks and kraut 20cent was pasted on the mirror just above his collar. Below, where his hands met sensitively on the empty beer glass, twitching somewhat, touching at the fingertips, frankfurters turned on hot rollers, slowly, receding and coming forward, passing each other forward and back with dull nudges like fat jointless fingers in meditation. He withdrew his left hand back into the loose sling.

— Here, pussy pussy pussy, said the dumpy woman.

— We got three of them.

— I lost mine, said the dumpy woman. — I raised him from this big. He had blood in his kidney.

— Human beings has to go too.

— I lost two husbands that way. Overnight.

Otto signaled with his empty glass. Then a tall blonde, in a fur cape, wearing dark glasses, walked to meet herself in the glass. Otto turned and looked out the window. He could not see her. He looked in the mirrored pillar behind him, and saw her coat-sleeve disappear. He looked before him, and saw her merge into herself. He looked out of the window again, and saw a man in a Santa Claus suit.

— Could I have a beer here? he said. He waited. Then he put down his empty glass and walked toward the back, taking out his wallet.

In the telephone booth a moment later he sat with the receiver to his ear, listening to a clock ticking in the Sun Style Film office. Finally a voice came through.

— Hello? Otto said, and named the man and himself in introductory greeting. — I'm sorry I've been so long calling you, but I… Yes, but. . What? No, about Central America. You remember, I… When can we get together for a… No, it was Peru and northern Bolivia, you remember. . Yes, I… What? But I… you. . Well that bastard, he repeated to himself, leaning back against the wall of the booth. — "We have nothing to discuss." Well that bastard. That bastard. Then the sling gave way.

He came out with his wrist pressed against his wallet. He had forty-one dollars. — And why I gave a five-dollar bill to that Harlem nigger yesterday, to keep an eye out for that damn dispatch case. Damn it. That black bastard too.

The dumpy woman was drinking a manhattan. — I can feel it down to my toes, she said. Her stockings sagged over her broken shoe backs.

— Who you saving the cherry for, Rose?

The man behind the bar turned the radio on again, and left it while it warmed to strains of Mozart. Otto's glass was still empty, but he stood there as though unable to call and command, staring at the man's striped necktie, the signal of another final club which had not invited him to join.

— What's the matter, Rose? You blushing?

Otto waited a moment longer. Mozart continued, rising and gathering to exquisite pauses: and each of these apertures was obligingly filled by a saxophone. Otto picked up the two cold coins, and left the newspaper on the bar. Mozart measured a subtle withdrawal; and a voice from the saxophone world heralded,

— Here's an oldie, friends, Rudy Vallee singing, Love Made a

Gypsy Out of Me.

— Hey Jack, you want your newspaper? the man behind the bar called after him.

— Never mind, Otto answered over his shoulder. — It's yesterday's.

The tropic breeze ruffled Otto's linen, boarding that banana boat, then standing on deck gazing out over the Caribbean, a whisky-soda in his free left hand, skin warm with memory of the sun: so he stood, serene and unapproachable, in the memory of the unsteady figure appearing now (wearing a new green muffler which enhanced the yellowness of his skin), an old friend whom Otto only now fully appreciated, and would like to see again. He passed the steamed windows lowering a handkerchief, where two black rings witnessed what desperate barriers are the fine hairs of the nostrils, and pulling open the door of the Viareggio, interrupted this with his entrance: