RaveThe ObserverThe Recognitions is a book that is constantly slipping away from the reader, requiring a level of attention and commitment rare for the novel in the present day. The book, dense with references to religion, mythology and art, is populated by a host of characters who oscillate between fact and fiction ... For advocates, the book retains its initial charge ... Despite its contemporality, The Recognitions remains in the literary imagination as a book that is difficult to read, mostly due to its length (the new edition clocks in at 945 pages). Even though Moore’s exhaustive annotations of the book’s weaving references and storylines, first published in 1982 and now fully available online, make it more accessible than ever, it remains a cult item ... It may be that after 65 years, the world has finally, for better or worse, caught up to Gaddis’s vision in The Recognitions.
César Aira, Trans. by Chris Andrews
PositiveHyperallergic...Aira’s books are ... idiosyncratic...feverishly pleasurable and smirkingly funny. His stories begin with a simple premise and stretch to wild extremes ... Birthday settles itself somewhere more firmly as a memoir. Or so it seems, because it’s hard to tell with Aira. He has a tendency to string a reader along in one direction and then turn them around quickly, mixing details from his life into his fiction and vice versa. What you think you’re reading is often something else, and the difference is beside the point ... Aira hits a...melancholic note at the end of Birthday. After twisting and turning around the meaning behind his own writing, he realizes that the thing itself will never go away, both a blessing and a curse.
