r/Gaddis • u/sufferinfromsuccess1 • Sep 06 '26
Question What does this passage from The Recognitions mean?
“Before their displacement from nature, baffled by the grandeur of their own culture which they could not define, and so believed did not exist, these transatlantic visitors had learned to admire in this neatly parceled definition of civilization the tyrannous pretension of many founded upon the rebellious efforts of a few, the ostentation of thousands presumed upon the strength of a dozen who had from time to time risen against this vain complacence with the past to which they were soon to contribute, giving, with their harried deaths, grounds for vanity of language, which they had perfected; supercilious posturing of intellect, which they had suffered to understand and deliver, in defiance; insolent arbitration of taste, grown from the efforts of those condemned as having none; contempt for others flourishing from seedlings which they had planted in the rain of contempt for themselves; dogmata of excellence founded upon insulting challenges wrought in impossible hope, and then grasped, for granted, from their hands fallen clenching it as dogma.”
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u/Tactical_Schmactical Sep 06 '26
Some of these TR passages, you can really tell he was taking the piss out of himself when he had Jack Gibbs reading sections of his history in JR. I'm rereading TR right now and this type of writing is cracking me up, to know how he skewered it, later.
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u/jdawgweav Sep 08 '26
Jack Gibbs reading out of his book to whasthername, "Sounds complicated." "Complicated as I can make it."
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u/skizelo Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Is this one of the bits about how much he hates france and the french?
e: I've got to say, I'm chuffed with my recall. Yes, this is about the American expat/tourist scene in France. The yanks, unable to comprehend the expansive splendour of true American culture (ranches, things like that), go to pay homage to the tiny and stifled society of the fucking French. French culture, as we all know, is a few thousand assholes being snobby and protective of the things set up by a few hundred assholes murdering each other.
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u/AntimimeticA J R Sep 06 '26
To be Very reductive about it, it's a passage about how whole mass cultures of people give themselves credit for embodying a certain kind of "culturedness" that they only have access to as a comfortable group because of the actual pioneering, individual, scorned work of a very few genuine earlier innovators who had nothing in common with the people who later get the cultural-capital benefit of their innovations.