The Recognitions comes to Deseret Book (expanded)

In The Recognitions by William Gaddis, a gifted artist is recruited by an unscrupulous art dealer to paint forgeries in the style of old Flemish Renaissance masters, and then pass them off as "lost" originals to wealthy art patrons.

But, the protagonist is such a dedicated artist, that his "forgeries" are actually as passionate, detailed, nuanced, and in many ways "authentic" as the old masters whose style he is imitating. He doesn't "copy" them so much as paint with their same feeling of religious devotion.

When I recently read this portion of The Recognitions, I was reminded of a recent conversation with a friend, who told me of this new promotion at Deseret Book wherein they are selling reproductions of 1830 Book of Mormons specially constructed to look 180 years old--they are bound in leather chemically treated to look well-worn, certain pages are strategically "water-damaged" and torn, or made to look like the original scriptures of Porter Rockwell, etc, etc.

These are not mere 1830 facsimiles (I admittedly own one of those), no, these are custom built to appear as authentic, 1830 editions that have survived the ages as a family heirloom. Retail price: $500-$1,600.

I wondered aloud to my friend who this product's intended market is. "Wealthy Mormons who wish to appear extra spiritual to their friends," he quipped. "Yeah, you see why I have a problem with it!" I quipped back.

And now that I'm reading The Recognitions, I've been able to localize further what my problem is--for Gaddis's title is a direct allusion to The Clementine Recognitions, a first-century Christian text by St. Clement. Like St. Clement's Recognitions, I've found that Gaddis's is as concerned with religious--specifically Christian--authenticity and forgery, as he is with artistic.

That is, what does it mean to be authentically devotional, whether in religion or art (and for Gaddis's protagonist, these are the same thing), as opposed to plagiarizing this devotion to impress others?

When I visited Deseret Book's flagship store and checked out for myself these faux-1830 editions, I was suitably impressed with the sheer craftsmanship that went into each replica. Nonetheless, these acts of religious and artistic devotion are being produced, a la The Recognitions, in the interest of forgery and in-authenticity, for a faux-religious and faux-artistic sensibility.

For if we truly valued art and beauty for its own sake (and not for how cultured it makes us appear), then Gaddis's artist could produce his paintings and sign them by his own name; and if we were truly committed to our faith, than those $700 would be going to the sick and afflicted, the poor and widowed and orphaned, and our LDS artists could at last commit to making original art on their own terms.

But then, the text of these "authentic replicas" is still that of the Book of Mormon--the text is the same that was translated from plates of Reformed Egyptian in 1829, written in the melancholic prose of Israeli refugees during the Diaspora. The whole foundation and self-proclaimed "keystone" of the LDS religion is this Book of Mormon text contained within these expert forgeries--the text remains true, in ever words, even as the medium is forged.

This theme of truth contained within forgery is one that might have appealed to Gaddis himself, inasmuch as The Recognitions is his long-form meditation on the complex conflation of truth and counterfeit. In a sense, really, LDS-affiliated Deseret Book may be the proper place to see Gaddis's meditation in action, given the tensions already extant within the Book of Mormon between copy and original.

For example, in the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ appears to these Israeli refugees in Pre-Colombian America...and quotes Isaiah and Malachi. That is, God quotes his own messengers quoting him, complicating the very nature of authorship itself. Similarly, Wyatt in The Recognitions paints Van Eyck from the same stance of devotion as Van Eyck, even as he forges him--and here I use "forgery" in its double-sense, both to "imitate" and to "create."

Joseph Smith adds another layer--an uneducated neophyte transmits a text into a new language; yet as every translator knows, every translation (which we can call a trans-linguistic imitation) is also a creation, for the writer must render the intent of the original text into a unique set of differing parameters. We as Mormons believe Joseph Smith was inspired of God to perform this transmission, but how much of this transmission was filtered through Joseph Smith's own artistic sensibilities? For that matter, how much did (the real) Van Eyck and (the fictional) Wyatt filter their own transmissions of divine inspiration? For that matter, how much did Gaddis filter these divine inspirations as he wrote about masterful forgeries of Flemish devotional art in his first novel?

These questions have been on my mind as I have been most recently re-reading my own facsimile of an 1830 Book of Mormon--this astoundingly complex text nonetheless betray Joseph Smith's own lack of education, as he consistently confuses "was" and "were" (a mistake that I, as an English instructor, I am grateful was corrected in later editions). Joseph Smith wasn't just a transmitter--he was an interpreter--as was Isaiah, as was Malachi, as was Van Eyck, Wyatt, and Gaddis himself. God himself, far from being the mere initial transmitter, is Himself participatory in this process, as demonstrated by the moment in the Book of Mormon when Christ interprets Isaiah interpreting Him. In other words, this interpretive process is reflexive and reciprocal, and provides another layer of ambiguity between the mutual meanings of "forgery" at play in The Recognitions. (It is in this regard that the fact that the prophet's surname is "Smith" becomes interesting, inasmuch as a "Smith" works at a forge).

I initially thought the premise of The Recognitions to be fanciful, until I began to see it among those professing my same faith--and likewise, how in turn the Book of Mormon has enriched my understanding of Gaddis. It had been my most recent Recognition.

In Which the Satirical Becomes Nigh Indistiguishible From the Sincere

So a friend of mine burned me a copy of "The Book of Mormon Musical" soundtrack, and finally, out of sheer morbid curiosity, I gave it a cursory listen.

It was of course a quite satirical, ironic, and sarcastic portrayal of LDS adherents, doctrines and beliefs. I was expecting that. But, what caught me off guard was how...similar, how familiar it sounded, how close it was, in musical style and even content, to all that "LDS music" Deseret Book pushes onto undiscerning Sunday School Teachers and Seminary instructors.

Seriously, "I Believe," for example, would not sound out-of-place on, say, "Saturday's Warrior" or "My Turn on Earth." In fact, reword a couple of of the more irreverent verses (and not even that many), and suddenly it's not entirely clear that these are supposed to be laugh lines. It could have easily fit on some lame EFY CD--and a song sung by mock-missionaries in jest would've been sung by real missionaries in earnest. I bet I could whistle it around BYU and no one know I'm being sarcastic. Some girl might even ask me if it's by Michael McLane.

Also, I've read that "The Book of Mormon" is not just a send-up of Mormonism but also of Broadway in general, but here again I had the same reaction--a few slightly-less-ironic lyric changes, and suddenly the songs sound like a straight-faced Broadway show-stoppers, something on par with "The Sound of Music" or "Wicked," and not a farce.

Frankly, for however much the audience was laughing at the Mormon lines (I YouTubed "I Believe" and heard their reactions), I wonder how much the joke is on the audience itself--on the tools who pay up into the hundreds to hear songs so formulaic, so contrived, that even the foul-mouthed hacks behind "South Park" could not only easily ape its style, but sweep the Tonys with it. The audience may have gone to see the Mormons mocked, but failed to catch the prank on themselves--the Emperor wears no clothes.

It makes me wonder who the joke here is really on--for when satirical expressions of faith or art become near indistinguishable from the sincere, well then, what does it even mean to be sincere any more?

In Which It Appears That It Is Still Possible To Approach Edgar Allen Poe With Fresh Eyes

Oh, Utah schools, I don't know about you.

See, I was teaching Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" to some college freshman the other day (I posit that the story is structured like an argumentative essay--he's convincing the reader he's "dreadfully nervous" as opposed to "mad"--I don't say his argument succeeds), when one of my students--a product of Utah schools--declared how much she loved that story.

But not because she loved Poe already, you see--she had actually never even heard of Poe. After class, she even told me how she'd googled this Poe guy, since she enjoyed the story so much, read some more of his stuff, learned how he innovated the genre of short story, even read this cool poem of his called "The Raven!" She was just so stoked to learn about this awesome, brand-new writer she'd never even heard of, called Edgar Allen Poe!

So on one hand, it was delightful to see someone encounter Edgar Allen Poe with utterly fresh eyes--to realize that that's still even possible--and to see that she still thoroughly enjoyed him, even without all the cultural/historical hype that surrounds him. I'll confess it encouraging to see a student so fall for a great writer based on his own merits, and not merely because she'd been culturally trained to.

But on the other hand: Really, Utah schools? Really? A students graduates from your system, and has no idea who Edgar Allen Poe is? Do you have any excuse for that oversight? Dare I ask her if she knows who Bill Shakespeare is?

This is only one example, Utah schools; I have many others.

Acceptably Pretentious Literature

Literature isn't like music, I've realized--rattling off a bunch of writers no one's ever heard of will not cause people to ooh and aah at your insider knowledge of the underground. Just try and rattle off your favorite small-press heroes--your David Markson's, Gary Lutz's, Gordon Lish's, etc--and you'll get a bunch of blank stares from people wondering why you don't read real literature--that is, books they can also prattle about pretentiously.

The tragically hip wish to associate with reading that's "edgy," but still popular, it seems.

But there's little refuge in the "classics," either--name all the Dickens, Shakespeare, Twain and so forth you've read, and folks assume you're just regurgitating all your reading from High School, and question if you've read anything since.

Same thing with all that "ethnic" lit--your Richard Wrights and Toni Morrisons, etc--it is generally assumed you read these more out of multi-cultural duty than love, sadly.

Even the longer classic stuff they didn't make you read--your Tolstoys and Hugos, Goethes, Melvilles and Cervantes--make you appear more as a stodgy, stuffy, hopelessly-out-of-date throw-back, as opposed to some cutting-edge intellectual. Not hip at all.

You'd think the 20th century would thus be safer ground, but really it's even dicier--I've learned the hard way that even if you sincerely and honestly love, say, James Joyce, that any attempt to share that love with others will come across as sheer pseudo-intellectual posturing.

"You can't even understand it!" they decry (as though either Modernism or Reality is supposed to be understandable), "You're just too afraid to come off as ignorant to admit that this is nonsense!" I guess they've been burned by the Emperor's New Clothes before, and the burnt child fears the fire (I've found that the humble and kind, that is, those who don't have ego-problems or chase fads, are the only ones actually cool with my love of Joyce).

Mentioning Faulkner (especially The Sound and the Fury) will provoke actual hostility among those infuriated by books that challenge, not flatter, their intellectual self-image; likewise, Pynchon, Gaddis, Wallace, and anything by Beckett that isn't Waiting for Godot will similarly get you pigeon-holed as a pretentious, condescending, elitist, and an all-around self-important douche-bag who surely must not enjoy reading (I suspect they project themselves more than anything).

It should just go without saying that no American reads poetry anymore, either.

Yes, I'm afraid the only valid reason to read any of the preceding writings is because you sincerely love reading them, not because they'll impress anybody.

I have thus here compiled a brief list of Acceptably Pretentious Literature, books guaranteed to make you look cool and "intelligent" at parties, but are not so inaccessible that you actually have to work very hard to read them. (Please note, I'm not knocking any of these books, I've read and enjoyed and recommended them all--but this isn't a list for people who love reading, it's for people who wish to appear well-read):

• Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
  
• Catcher in the Rye By J.D. Salinger
• Unbearable Lightness of Being By Milan Kundera
• The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
  
• A Room of One's Own By Virginia Woolf
  
• Slaughter-House Five and/or Cat's Cradle By Kurt Vonnegut
  
• Waiting for Godot By Samuel Beckett
  
• Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte
  
• Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
  
• House of Leaves By Mark Danielewski (Even this is pushing the outer-limits of acceptability).
  
• White Noise By Don DeLillo
  
• One Hundred Years of Solitude By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoyevski (No conversation about Nietzsche is complete without it).
  
• Hero With a Thousand Faces By Joseph Campbell (No conversation about Star Wars is complete without it).
  
• Tao te Ching By Lao Tzu (Only 81 pages! You can read it in an afternoon!)
• The Prince By Machiavelli (Also short!)
• Man's Search for Meaning By Victor Frankle
  
• Dante's Inferno (Just be careful not to read Purgatorio or Paradiso, as well)
• The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexsandre Dumas (The abridged version is acceptable, and now you can complain about the movie as a bonus!)
  
• Anything by Malcolm Gladwell (Business majors love him because he blows their minds with ideas that are first-semester to other majors!)
  

Again, I must emphasize that, with the exception of Gladwell, these are all worthy classics that everyone should read just for the sake of expanding your mind and broadening your horizons. All I'm saying is that these are the only books I've encountered thus far that you can safely discuss at parties. What else would you add to this list?