The book Jonathan Franzen dubbed the "ur-text of postwar fiction" and the "first great cultural critique, which, even if Heller and Pynchon hadn't read it while composing Catch-22 and V, managed to anticipate the spirit of both" The Recognitions is a masterwork about art and forgery, and the increasingly thin line between the counterfeit and the fake. Gaddis anticipates by almost half a century the crisis of reality that we currently face, where the real and the virtual are combining in alarming ways, and the sources of legitimacy and power are often obscure to us.

The Recognitions

GADDIS, William

Literature & Fiction

Penguin??Books

ABSURDLY LOGICAL,MERCILESSLY REAL,GATHERING ITS OWN TUMULTOUS MOMENTUM FOR THE ULTIMATE BRUSH WITH COMMODITY TRADING JR CAPTURES THE READER IN THE CACOPHONY OF VOICES THAT REVOLES AROUND THIS YOUNG CAPTIVE OF HIS OWN MYTHS. THE DISTURBING CLARITY WITH WHICH THIS FINISHED WRITER CAPTURES THE WAYS IN WHICH WE DEAL,DISSEMBLE,STUMBLE THROUGH OUR WORDS - THROUGH OUR LIVES - WHILE THE REAL PLANS ARE BEING MADE ELSEWHERE MAKES JR THE EXTRAORDI NARY NOVEL THAT IT IS.

Humor & Satire

This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission. At the still center of the breakneck action--revealed in Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialoge—is Paul's wife, Liz, and over it all looms the shadowy figure of McCandless, a geologist from whom Paul and Liz rent their house. As Paul mishandles the situation, his wife takes the geologist to her bed and a fire and aborted assassination occur; Ude issues a call to arms as harrowing as any Jeremiad--and Armageddon comes rapidly closer. Displaying Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialogue, and his startling treatments of violence and sexuality, Carpenter's Gothic "shows again that Gaddis is among the first rank of contemp

Carpenter's Gothic

Literary

JR (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

United States

Penguin Classics

A great masterpiece by William Gaddis, with a new introduction by William H. Gass.The book Jonathan Franzen dubbed the âur-text of postwar ï¬ctionâ and the âï¬rst great cultural critique, which, even if Heller and Pynchon hadnât read it while composing Catch-22 and V., managed to anticipate the spirit of bothââThe Recognitions is a masterwork about art and forgery, and the increasingly thin line between the counterfeit and the fake. Gaddis anticipates by almost half a century the crisis of reality that we currently face, where the real and the virtual are combining in alarming ways, and the sources of legitimacy and power are often obscure to us.

The Recognitions (Penguin Classics)

A Frolic of His Own

Spine creased, page edges tanned. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

A Frolic Of His Own

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Outdoor Cooking

SIMON AND SCHUSTER

This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission. At the still center of the breakneck action--revealed in Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialoge—is Paul's wife, Liz, and over it all looms the shadowy figure of McCandless, a geologist from whom Paul and Liz rent their house. As Paul mishandles the situation, his wife takes the geologist to her bed and a fire and aborted assassination occur; Ude issues a call to arms as harrowing as any Jeremiad--and Armageddon comes rapidly closer. Displaying Gaddis's inimitable virtuoso dialogue, and his startling treatments of violence and sexuality, Carpenter's Gothic "shows again that Gaddis is among the first rank of contemporary American writers" (Malcolm Bradbury, The Washington Post Book World).

Carpenter's Gothic (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Penguin Publishing Group

William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts, Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.

Agape Agape (Penguin Classics)

JONATHAN CAPE.

Recognitions

Avon/Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GADDIS, William. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by GADDIS, William