Losing Friends Influencing No One Issue #5: Reading The Recognitions - Chapter 3: The Vagrant Spectre
Handel, in the original German
(Faust and Mephistopheles, Simm 1899)
Note on the text: This reading of The Recognitions will be using the 2020 New York Review Classics (NYRB) edition of the text. All page number references will refer to this edition. The recommended way to approach this blog is to read the chapter yourself, first, and then come back and read this. Of course you may read it however you like, but I will be starting with a synopsis which will inevitably contain spoilers. This is not intended as a replacement for Steven Moore’s (brilliant) annotations, but as another tool to help unlock this difficult book, and to further add to the discussion of William Gaddis’s work. For specific references, please consult https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/I1anno1.shtml
Synopsis:
Wyatt is living in New York with his partner, Esther, whom he marries at the start of the chapter. He has given up the pursuit of painting as a career, instead becoming a draughtsman for an architectural firm. The paintings he produced in Paris are destroyed in a warehouse fire. He doesn’t seem to care very much. All that remains is the unfinished painting of his mother, which produces great tension between Wyatt and Esther. Esther, a socialite in the New York’s cultural circles, struggles to reconcile Wyatt’s cultural literacy and talent with his inability to conform to such a culture. He is haunted by strange dreams and devotes himself to working in the evening again, further alienating himself from his wife. The couple meet the young Harvard graduate, Otto, an amateur playwright who, despite his pretensions, is earnestly fascinated by Wyatt. Otto is the novel’s secondary protagonist and in this chapter he begins an affair with Esther and a passionate over identification with the main character of his own play (sections of which overlap with our own narrative). In a scene directly evoking the meeting between Faust and Mephistopheles, Wyatt encounters the business man, Recktall Brown and agrees to forge paintings for him. In this process, Wyatt loses his name and is only referred to indirectly while he remains under Brown’s thrall.
Major Characters:
Wyatt
Esther
Otto
Recktall Brown
Minor Characters:
Benny
Anselm
Don/Don’s Wife
Analysis:
I talk often in my analysis of, The Recognitions, about the triangular form relationships take in the novel. The reader of this third chapter should not be surprised to find that this is again what my interest is drawn towards, and, what I believe is the most useful of method of understanding the chapter’s functions. The introduction of Esther, and Otto, into Wyatt’s orbit creates a series of reflections, refractions, and conflicts which will propel the novel forward for, at least, the rest of the volume, if not the whole novel.
Before entering into this new triangulation, it is important to understand that this does not entirely remove what we have previously discussed about the relationship between Wyatt, Gwyon, and Camilla. In fact, I believe this next formation interlocks (through Wyatt’s position in both) with what has been established prior and is directly informed by it. Imagine, if you will, two triangles which share a single point, this point is Wyatt.
Wyatt - Esther
‘A year later, they had been married for almost a year; which was unlike Wyatt. He had become increasingly reluctant wherever decisions were concerned; and the more he knew, the less inclined to commit himself […] the more he refused to commit himself, the more submerged, and the more insistent from those depths became the necessity to do so: a a plight which has formed the cornerstone for whole schools of psychology’ (81)
The relationship, officially designated a marriage, between Wyatt and Esther is not the type of romance one might expect. It’s not any obvious type of romance at all. The quote chosen to introduce this section elucidates, I think, Wyatt’s perspective on the whole affair. Marriage, the social and economic binding of oneself to another, is ‘unlike Wyatt’. Prior to Esther, there is no indication that Wyatt has any interest in romantic or sexual relationships. The only women outside of his familial unit he interacts with are Janet (his family’s kitchen girl in Chapter 1) and Christiane (his model in Chapter 2), both of these women are depicted as having sexual encounters in their respective chapters but neither of those is with Wyatt. If there is a sexual component to the relationship between Esther and Wyatt, it isn’t present in this chapter, in fact, it feels a monumental moment of intimate connection when Wyatt rests his arm on Esther’s shoulder. The question, is how much of an active participant Wyatt actually is in the marriage. Even a struggling reader, lightly skimming the text, would find it hard to avoid noticing that Wyatt’s inactivity is a source of serious conflict.
Wyatt is a drowning man when forced to confront the normal social expectations of the 20th century. He is expected to be married, so he does so without much resistance. He does so to Esther because she makes the choice for him. In the waking hours of the day, the marriage is something which merely happens around Wyatt. Wyatt and Esther speak, they go to parties, they read together, and they eat together, but they don’t communicate with one another:
‘their ideas and opinions seemed to meet only in passing, each bound in an opposite direction, neither stopping to do more than honor the polite pause of recognition.’ (86)
Notice again we have an instance of contrary motion. Both participants are ‘bound in an opposite direction’. If you recall, In the issue covering the first chapter, much thought was given to the way in which Wyatt and his father, Gwyon, respond to the death of Camilla by moving in contrary motion, Gwyon into the past, and Wyatt into the future. This isn’t quite what is occurring here. Esther is not retreating into the past per se. In the marriage of Wyatt and Esther it is more a question of the social and the individual. Esther, is wanting to move in these erudite, New York, socialite circles. She aspires to be the most interesting woman in the room, to have the most interesting husband in the room, to be taken seriously for the art she produces, and to be seen as all this by her husband. There is, as will become clear soon, a competitive streak to Esther’s relationship with others. Wyatt seemingly desires to go through the motions of reading, drafting, and restoring, without much interference from the outside world. He wants to shrink away in his study until he fades out of sight and mind. The return of this motif, of a personal relationship from which Wyatt moves in the opposite direction, identifies Esther with Gwyon (and not to Camilla, whom Esther identifies herself in conflict with). Yet, the twist Gaddis pulls here is Esther is almost to Wyatt as Wyatt is to Gwyon in the first chapter. She is the person watching the other attempt to retreat and fade away, only, unlike Wyatt, she is actually pushing against this separation. From Wyatt’s perspective, however, this is futile and only grows more futile the more people she introduces him to and the more she tries to reveal what she believes is the genuine Wyatt within his isolationist exterior. Only in the night, when he’s awoken from his sleep by nightmares, does he offer Esther any genuine insight into his own fragile nature (the dream of the burning hair). Arguably, as the chapter ends with the loss of Wyatt’s name and his further descent into eerie isolation, this marks an irreconcilable rupture in the relationship between Esther and Wyatt from which greater conflict will flow.
Esther - Wyatt
‘She had the sense that he did not exist; or, to re-examine him, sitting there looking in another direction, in terms of substance and accident, substance the imperceptible underlying reality, accident the properties inherent in the substance which are perceived by the senses: the substance is transformed by consecration, but the accidents remain what they were. The consecration has apparently taken place not, as she thought, through her, but somewhere beyond her; and here she sits attending the accidents.’ (95)
Esther, conversely, has some obvious deep affection, possibly love, for Wyatt. It is an affection drawn out of Wyatt’s intellect, vast cultural literacy, and, perhaps most importantly, his talent. She is also driven by this recurring imaginary impulse that it is the privilege of a woman to ‘redeem’ a man. Especially after a man has been thoroughly ‘damned’. Unfortunately, for Esther (and possibly Wyatt), her timing is poor. The Wyatt she marries, though strange and sometimes misanthropic, is not the Wyatt who is damned. The Wyatt who is damned and in need of redemption comes at the end of the chapter, after she has begun her separate affairs with Otto and with the man in marketing.
Her conflict with Wyatt, which manifests in the observation which introduces this section, emerges from Wyatt’s absence. Not, as in the case of Camilla, a physical absence, but his emotional absence. She is left, and she senses this, the physical remnants of some genuine Wyatt which lay beyond her grasp. Rather astutely, Esther makes a link between Wyatt’s condition and Camilla, or, at least, the painting of Camilla which hangs unfinished on the wall.
‘He can’t paint me, because of her we can’t travel, to Spain because she’s there. […] At night, night after night he works in there […] He’s in there, night after night. That music, night after night. […] And to hear him, Damn you! damn you! Oh, talking to himself.’ (129)
The obvious reaction is to read this as a mother-lover conflict, that Esther is jealous of the place Wyatt gives his dead mother, a place which she believes should be for her. While this may be one level of the operation, underneath all of that is a recognition at what this absence is really doing to Wyatt and what overcoming the influence of the unfinished painting might do for Wyatt. Esther imagines, somewhat naively, that this situation will resolve itself if she demands it - or if Wyatt travels to Spain - but this isn’t ever going to be the case. Esther believes it is the loss of Camilla which she should be redeeming Wyatt from, but, the reality is much more complex and it is this what drives the two apart. Wyatt views art as the ultimate redemption, but art has been corrupted and rotted by sentimentality, and through the refusal to allow certain aspects of suffering to remain private. It can be inferred throughout the chapter that Wyatt resents Esther as a part of this system, especially with the way in which he avoids commenting on, in any substantive sense, her novel, and the way he refuses to let her elaborate on what her friend thought of the Picasso. This is the part of Wyatt which Esther is unable to reconcile with and morph into the ideal socialite husband she desires. While a lot of Wyatt’s erratic behaviour can be traced to the unresolved issue of his mother’s non-presence in his life, it is perhaps a misreading on Esther’s part to understand just how this is bleeding into every aspect of his life and that his redemption must come from some source beyond the mere physical presence of a replacement figure. One of the more moving passages in the chapter speaks to this more decisively than any analysis:
‘get rid of her. - Rid of her? […] - Then there might be room for me. […] - But you’re here […] You’re so much here’ (90)
Esther - Otto
‘With his ability and your ambition […] I’d have quite a remarkable man.’ (137)
Esther becomes attached to Otto initially as a means of getting to Wyatt. She seeks to use Otto, whom Wyatt has a small liking for, to see if Wyatt will open up and reveal something about how he genuinely feels deep down. Otto is fresh out of Harvard, new to New York, and working on a play of his own. Esther admits in private that she finds Otto pretentious but in a manner that is mostly sweet and harmless. He is young and he is simple, but with dreams of complexity. Part of what makes Otto such an interesting character to devote as much of the novel to as Gaddis does, is because he provides such a contrast to Wyatt. While Wyatt may be a muttering mess with an absent mother about to make a deal with a Faustian pact, but there’s a quiet confidence to his knowledge base. Wyatt, although never trying to impress anyone, is never afraid to embarrass someone by showing that he knows more than they. Otto, alternatively, has no such confidence. He speaks in false starts and half baked ideas. The much bolder, more self-assured protagonist of Otto’s play is starting to overtake Otto’s real life. He is not the ideal of pure masculinity, nor an intellect like the one possessed by Wyatt. So what about Otto attracts Esther?
The short and sweet of it is that he is redeemable. While he is young and nebbish, he has the quality that Esther can mould, the quality that is denied to her by Wyatt. The contrast between Wyatt as the ‘talent’ and Otto the ‘ambition’ does reveal a contempt for Otto. The specificity of the comparison seems to imply that Otto is without talent and Wyatt is without ambition. This leads the reader to consider a value judgement between the two. Which is it better to have, talent with no ambition, or ambition without the talent to make anything out of it. We will see this conflict play out as the novel continues. It is possible to make a claim that, in pursuing an affair with Otto, Esther is attempting to constitute a complete ideal husband out of the two men. Otto is the man she can take out, who will fit in with her society friends. Otto is the man who will engage her in sentimental conversation about their respective literary pursuits. Wyatt, on the other hand, is the serious intellectual that fascinates her and frustrates her, the one who can discuss art, history, philosophy, and religion, on a level that no one else around her can do.
This is essential in understanding the relationship between Otto and Esther. Otto is always seen by Esther through Wyatt. Even while the two of them are engaging in a romantic affair, the conversation is always on Wyatt. Wyatt is the mediating factor between Esther and Otto, he is the figure Esther is trying to reach and Otto is the prism through she is attempting to manipulate into giving her a new perspective. It is telling that once Wyatt goes completely off the radar, Esther pivots to an affair with someone else entirely.
Otto - Wyatt
‘The original! Good God, how can anyone clinging to such foolishness keep any hope in his head? […] A boy, brittle as a preconception, I suppose I ought to thank him, I ought to thank him for getting me out of that damned feeling that. ’ (137)
It is too painfully obvious and shallow to suggest that the relationship between Otto and Wyatt is one of a master and an apprentice. It is clear that Otto would like to view his situation that way. Wyatt as the master artist, the master thinker, bestowing his knowledge onto the neophyte, Otto. Wyatt doesn’t seem to care about Otto beyond a polite enjoyment of his naivety.
What Otto does do for Wyatt, is provide a kind of sounding board to run with whatever loose thoughts that pass through his head. When he has these kinds of rambling discussions with Esther, Wyatt receives pushback - punishment for his outsiderisms. With Otto, he has someone he can overwhelm and who can ‘get him out of that damned feeling’ (often with his foolish attempts to keep up with the conversation). I don’t believe that Wyatt has what he would consider a friendship with Otto. I don’t think Wyatt has traditional relationships at all. But the two, in sharing a proximity, reveal Wyatt to be unreachable on any terms but his own. Notice how Gaddis describes the atmosphere when the two go out walking with one another.
‘They walked on in silence, but any silence was a difficult state for Otto, most especially in the company of another person it seemed an unnatural presence which must be assailed and broken into pieces, or at least shaken until it rattled.’ (135)
It is as though Wyatt, through the mere act of his own unreachability reflects all of Otto’s anxieties back towards him. The silence which Wyatt leaves Otto with is one without praise and without recognition. It is one which leaves Otto dangling in a middle space where he has no idea what Wyatt makes of him. It is this non-recognition in return from Wyatt that continues his fascination with Wyatt, the same fascination which affects Esther too.
In some sense, Esther and Otto are both driven to Wyatt by exactly the same thing. The fact that here, a figure so mysterious and brilliant, returns their gaze with such indifference. Both of them would like a piece of Wyatt, but he lets neither of them truly in to have it. Yet, Wyatt does get something out of his relationship with both of them, and this is a tether to the present. They are here and they exist, and even in their naivety or stupidity or vanity, he finds in them something which, at least in short bursts, allow him to pull himself out of the overwhelming depths he finds himself submerged within.
I hope this exploration of the third chapter of The Recognitions has helped to improve your understanding of how the relationships are functioning at this point in the novel. The bonus essay which will accompany this issue will focus in on a more specific instance within the chapter. If you have made it this far, thank you for reading and I hope you will remember to like and subscribe and join us next time for a look at the fourth chapter.
Ryan Sweeney (@thecautiouscrip/insta: teawithzizek)