I have a favorite passage from The Recognitions
To wit, this one, though I'm also partial to that one description of the dude's face. You know the one. About Benny, pp 600–2—the sameparty, actually. (Or perhaps the bit where Esme, amid squalor and possibly in love, puts on Camilla's earrings.) And I seem to be capable of blathering on about em dashes and their multifarious ways of combination. Sadly, I do not have byline-granting powers, nor do I even know any Jersey girls outfitted with the requisite pedal pushers and lollipops*, neither in the wilds of Brooklyn nor anywhere else.
While it's doubtless a shame to be mired and immured in an odious scene, perhaps the burden could have been somewhat eased had the author taken to heart that old Pythagorean catechism, which she could have read in Gaddis' last work: Pleasure is in all circumstances bad; for we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished
(25–6, though the last bit recurs passim)—the Pythagoreans no doubt thinking that "here" would be "this world", but maybe willing to accept NYU or NYC as suitable microcosmoi.
I have to assume that the actual Gaddis content of this party and walk thereto was actually smaller than Jessica makes it out to be; it's not uncommon for something like that, which seems unlikely and notable to someone who already feels on the outside, to be made into an emblem and have its frequency correspondingly overestimated. (Or maybe Gaddis is acting metonymically for general snootiness.) But if the strategic conversation among literary frenemies at a rich guy's house in a hip part of town really did concern itself with The Recognitions—well, that would be a little too too, wouldn't it?
* In the original of "Heartattack and Vine", Tom Waits says "suckin' on a soda-pop"; John Hammond emends to "lollipop" in his generally superior cover. I observe: it is happy that "lollipop" and "lolita" begin with more or less the same phonemes, in the same order.
Comments
on 2008-07-18 11:06:13.0, Paul Gowder commented:
Oh Ben. Please don't say "too too." It burns. It burns.
and, further, on 2008-07-18 14:30:56.0, Amber commented:
Oh, Wolfson.
and, further, on 2008-07-18 14:32:32.0, ben wolfson commented:
Oh, Amber!
and, further, on 2008-07-18 15:36:10.0, Amber commented:
Is it a little warm in here?
and, further, on 2008-07-18 16:58:56.0, bitchphd commented:
"sucking" and "sodapop" also begin with the same sounds, you know.
and, further, on 2008-07-18 17:01:01.0, ben wolfson commented:
That may be so, but I still think that "lollipop" is superior to "soda-pop" in the song.