William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— No, a play I've just finished. I've called it "The Vanity of Time."

— Corny, Hannah commented. — What a lousy party.

— It's from a sermon.

— Peanut butter, for Christ sake. Fifty million pounds of food a day eaten in New York, and what do I get? Peanut butter.

— Do you like the painting? Stanley asked her.

— The composition's good. Max is good with composition, he's successful with it, but he still works like painting was having an orgasm, he has to learn that it isn't just having the experience that counts, it's knowing how to handle the experience. what the hell are you smoking? she coughed, looking at the cigarette in Otto's brown hand.

Stanley turned and asked timidly, — And, Anselm? what are you doing now?

— I keep myself busy sawing toilet seats in half for half-assed critics, Anselm said without turning to him, without taking his eyes from the tall figure stooped in the green wool shirt.

Otto cleared his throat. — That ahm girl on the couch, she. do you know her? Anselm looked at him for the first time, and he added — I mean, and cleared his throat.

— That's Phryne. Anselm watched the lack of response on Otto's face. — Phryne. Don't you know Phryne, for Christ sake? I thought I just heard you talking about Praxiteles.

— Well yes I was but, I mean when Cicero says that Praxiteles, that all Praxiteles has to do is remove the excess marble, to reach the real form that was there all the time underneath, I mean inside.

— And he reached Phryne. Haven't you ever seen it?

— Seen what.

— Praxiteles' statue of Phryne. Who the hell do you think was hiding inside his block of stone but a high-class whore. They've got it in the Vatican with the rest of the high-class whores. I just wanted to be Eve before the Fall, Anselm mimicked in a whimper, — for Christ sake.

Stanley was staring fixedly at the floor.

Anselm wiped his mouth. — Look at Agnes, he said, — with all the little faggots around her. Christ. He looked vaguely in that direction for a moment, then returned to Stanley. — When are you going to Italy? he demanded, and as quickly turned on Otto, who drew up his cigarette like a smoking weapon of defense, but Anselm merely said, — There's this broken-down old church where he wants to play the organ, something he wrote he wants to play on their organ. "Seated one day at the organ," hey Stanley? How does it go, "weary and ill at ease"? And your fingers running idly over the. hey! He was gone, after someone with a bottle. — Give me some beer.

Somewhere a sober voice said, — I suppose you might call me a positive negativist. Elsewhere, — Of course he'll never write another book, his bookshelves are crammed with books in different jackets and every one of them inside is that book of his. From a conversasation on the excellent abstract composition in isolated fragments of Constable, rose Adeline's voice, — like the solids in Oochello. Above them all the Worker's Soul hung silent, refusing comment; though the red lead recalled bridges built by horny hands, sexually unlike any that fluttered glasses beneath it now, the spots of rust a heavy male back straining between girders, generically different from any weaving here. For all its spatters of brightness, that canvas looked very tired, hanging foreign and forlorn over the sad garden. There, Anselm paused with a glass in one hand, treating his chin with a piece of (No. 1/2) sandpaper in the other.

Stanley turned to Hannah and asked with solicitude, — But what about your painting?

— They took it Monday.

— Took it? Otto repeated. — I rented a Modigliani last month, I couldn't pay another month rent on it so they took it back. I can't live without that painting. I don't have any place to hang it, but I can't live without it, it was more beautiful than my mother. But what do they care? All they want is their lousy twenty dollars.

— But that much money, you could buy a good print, Otto commenced, — a Picasso.

— Picasso, he paints like he spits.

— Well, of course. Otto said uncomfortably, — and the… I mean, if a painter is only after a um immediate effects.

— Some of them have set out to kill art, Stanley said quietly looking at the floor. — And some of them are so excited about discovering new mediums and new forms, he went on, looking up, between the two people he was talking to, — that they never have time to work in one that's already established.

— Yes, and when they haven't studied their materials…

— Or they don't care, they just don't care. They don't. They accept history and they. they thumb their noses at it.

— While you sit around and try to write music like Gabrieli.

— If a painter knows his materials and respects them.

— Oh Christ, what are you talking about? Hannah broke in. — The kind of crap you buy now in tubes, how do you know what you get?

— Well of course, Otto agreed, moving his moist hand in the sling, — one can get more ink powder in a tube of cheap indigo than there is indigo, or no madder at all in rose madder, but.

— All right, what do you blame the painter for, if a system of enterprise like this one screws him up?

— Well you… I mean.

— You can buy as good colors today as have ever been made, Stanley said, — but there's a sort of a satisfaction grinding your own colors isn't there, here where everything you pick up is ready-made, everything's automatic. Where Henry James says, "to work successfully beneath a few grave, rigid laws. "

— Oh, stuff Henry James. Hannah commenced, and coughed. Otto had lit another cigarette. He turned upon her seriously unattractive face as though to accuse her of having made it so on purpose.

— Of course, when Vainiger says… he began, but she turned and set off toward a plate of crackers.

— Are you a painter? Stanley asked Otto.

— Me? Oh no, I just, I'm a writer, a playwright, I just finished a play.

— I thought from the way you talked maybe you were.

— A playwright?

— A painter.

— Well I, no, in fact I would have thought that vou. And, but w.hat does Hannah do?

— She really doesn't do so very much, Stanley admitted.

A face lowered behind them, to contribute, — Hannah knows The Sound and the Fury by heart.

— The sound and the fury? Otto turned.

— The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner's novel, haven't you ever read it?

— Of course I've read it, Otto said without an instant's hesitation.

— Hannah knows it by heart.

— She paints some, Stanley said in a vindicatory tone.

— Paints! Did you see the abstract she did for the Army Air Force? the face persisted. — For a psychological test, they used it to pick out the queers, if you were queer the painting didn't look like anything, if you weren't it looked like a snatch.

— A what?

— What's the matter, you queer?

— She painted still lifes, Stanley interposed helpfully.

— It took her so long the fruit got rotten.

— But Cezanne.

— Now she paints landscapes but she has to put telephone poles in all of them to get perspective. Linear perspective.

— How does she get on without working?

— She says work is death.

— People give her money?

— Work is death. She's too strong to ask for charity. When she really needs something, that's different, we all helped her when she got her front teeth knocked out. The ones she has now are made of cellophane. She washes and does all her laundry in a subway ladies' washroom.

— She's very. she has such integrity of purpose, Stanley said weakly.

— Purpose? Otto repeated. — What purpose.

— Just. purpose, Stanley said looking after their nameless companion. — I ought to leave, he added, shifting nervously, gazing toward that full-blown flower whose fey petals curled and yellowed round its white spore-bearing carpel, Agnes Deigh. She was reciting a limerick about Titian which ended, — climbed up the ladder and had 'er, to rhyme with rose madder.