4.0
The Recognitions
ByPublisher 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 communitiesThe Recognitions Reviews
4.0
“Despite its length, The Recognitions is a novel I wanted to reread the moment I finished it. Its atmosphere is exactly what I crave as a reader—the kind of book you don’t so much “get through” as submit yourself to. It’s meant to be experienced, to wash over you, and then to linger, asking you to sit with it and let it ferment. Full comprehension isn’t a prerequisite for meaning here; the power of the novel lies in its immersion rather than its clarity.
Wyatt, Otto, Stanley, and the constellation of other characters feel less like individuals than variations of the same restless human condition—each of them circling questions of authenticity, belief, and selfhood. In that sense, they are all of us, wandering through our thoughts and convictions, trying (and often failing) to recognize what is real. An astonishing novel—one that expands your sense of what fiction can do, and what a book can be.”
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.
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