Speaking of one of his paintings, Wyatt says, "There isn't any single perspective, like the camera eye, the one we all look through now and call it realism, there . . . . I take five or six or ten." TheRecognitions was written within the same multifaceted aesthetic. It contains a virtual encyclopedia within its pages, including references to mythology, witchcraft, anthropology, alchemy, and art history; has several narrators; is written in several styles and in several languages; and spans three decades and three continents. The Recognitions is several novels in one: a how-to book on art forgery, a sweeping social satire, a pilgrim's progress, a bildungsroman, and a roman a clef. Add to all this Gaddis's cryptic stage directions and dialogue, searing language and black humor, and it is not difficult to understand why a reader might emerge baffled, if not overwhelmed, and certainly intimidated.