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Over and under the ground he hurried toward the place where he lived. No fragment of time nor space anywhere was wasted, every instant and every cubic centimeter crowded crushing outward upon the next with the concentrated activity of a continent spending itself upon a rock island, made a world to itself where no present existed. Each minute and each cubic inch was hurled against that which would follow, measured in terms of it, dictating a future as inevitable as the past, coined upon eight million counterfeits who moved with the plumbing weight of lead coated with the frenzied hope of quicksilver, protecting at every pass the cherished falsity of their milled edges against the threat of hardness in their neighbors as they rung together, fallen from the Hand they feared but could no longer name, upon the pitiless table stretching all about them, tumbling there in all the desperate variety of which counterfeit is capable, from the perfect alloy recast under weight to the thudding heaviness of lead, and the thinly coated brittle terror of glass.
The Recognitions is the debut novel by William Gaddis, published in 1955.
The novel centers on Wyatt Gwyon, the son of a New England minister, who forsakes religion to devote his life to becoming a painter. When this fails, he committed to painting flawless copies of his revered old masters, which were then sold as the real thing.
The novel was dismissed uncomprehendingly by critics upon publication but has since, especially after the publication of his National Book Award-winning second novel JR, gained popularity and is regarded as one of the finest American novels of the 20th century.
The novel contains the following tropes:
- Doorstopper: For a first novel, it stood at 956 pages.
- El Spanish "-o": Otto loses the manuscript to his play while vacationing in Mexico. In desperation, he asks the locals if they've seen his "playa", which only baffles them wondering why this man is having so much trouble finding the beach.
