4.0
The Recognitions
By William Gaddis & William H. Gass &Publisher Description
A postmodern masterpiece about fraud and forgery by one of the most distinctive, accomplished novelists of the last century.
The Recognitions is a sweeping depiction of a world in which everything that anyone recognizes as beautiful or true or good emerges as anything but: our world. The book is a masquerade, moving from New England to New York to Madrid, from the art world to the underworld, but it centers on the story of Wyatt Gwyon, the son of a New England minister, who forsakes religion to devote himself to painting, only to despair of his inspiration. In expiation, he will paint nothing but flawless copies of his revered old masters—copies, however, that find their way into the hands of a sinister financial wizard by the name of Recktall Brown, who of course sells them as the real thing.
Dismissed uncomprehendingly by reviewers on publication in 1955 and ignored by the literary world for decades after, The Recognitions is now established as one of the great American novels, immensely ambitious and entirely unique, a book of wild, Boschian inspiration and outrageous comedy that is also profoundly serious and sad.
The Recognitions is a sweeping depiction of a world in which everything that anyone recognizes as beautiful or true or good emerges as anything but: our world. The book is a masquerade, moving from New England to New York to Madrid, from the art world to the underworld, but it centers on the story of Wyatt Gwyon, the son of a New England minister, who forsakes religion to devote himself to painting, only to despair of his inspiration. In expiation, he will paint nothing but flawless copies of his revered old masters—copies, however, that find their way into the hands of a sinister financial wizard by the name of Recktall Brown, who of course sells them as the real thing.
Dismissed uncomprehendingly by reviewers on publication in 1955 and ignored by the literary world for decades after, The Recognitions is now established as one of the great American novels, immensely ambitious and entirely unique, a book of wild, Boschian inspiration and outrageous comedy that is also profoundly serious and sad.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities11 Reviews
4.0
Pgriffy
Created 3 months agoShare
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Joseph McIlduff
Created 5 months agoShare
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Kristina Cato
Created 5 months agoShare
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Feck Speiderbeck
Created 12 months agoShare
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“I've been chipping away at this thing for months, and all I have to say at the moment is that Wyatt Gwyon is one of the greatest characters in the written word.
"We live in a world where first-hand experience is daily more difficult to reach, and if you reach it through your work, perhaps you are not fortunate the way most people would be fortunate." (p. 951)”
Philip Harrell
Created about 1 year agoShare
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About William Gaddis
A 1982 MacArthur Fellow and two-time winner of the National Book Award, William Gaddis (1922-1998) was the author of five novels: The Recognitions, J R, Carpenter's Gothic, A Frolic of His Own, and, published posthumously, Agapē Agape.
Tom McCarthy is the author of four novels—Remainder, Men in Space, C, and Satin Island—and several works of criticism, including Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017), a collection of essays published by New York Review Books. In 2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction by Yale University. He lives in Berlin.
William H. Gass (1924-2017) was a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and professor of philosophy. NYRB Classics reissued his book-length essay On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry and his short-story collection In the Heart of the Heart of the Country in 2014.
Tom McCarthy is the author of four novels—Remainder, Men in Space, C, and Satin Island—and several works of criticism, including Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017), a collection of essays published by New York Review Books. In 2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction by Yale University. He lives in Berlin.
William H. Gass (1924-2017) was a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and professor of philosophy. NYRB Classics reissued his book-length essay On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry and his short-story collection In the Heart of the Heart of the Country in 2014.
Other books by William Gaddis
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