William Gaddis, contemporary literature, analysis Gaddis, The Recognitions

Reader's Guide to William Gaddis's the Recognitions

Moore, Steven

Literature & Fiction

University Of Nebraska Press

In 1989, Steven Moore published the first scholarly study of all three of William Gaddis's novels and since then it has been generally regarded as the best book on this difficult but major writer's work. This revised and expanded edition includes new chapters on the novels Gaddis published after 1989, the National Book Award-winning A Frolic of His Own and the posthumous novella Agape Agape, along with updated introductory and concluding chapters.  This introduction offers a clear discussion of all five of Gaddis's novels, providing essential biographical information, two chapters each on his most significant novels, The Recognitions and J R, and a chapter each devoted to his later three novels. A concluding chapter locates his place in American literature and notes his influence on younger writers. Each chapter focuses on the main themes of each novel and discusses the literary techniques Gaddis deployed to dramatize those themes. Since Gaddis is an erudite, allusive novelist, Moore clarifies his references and explains how they enhance his themes.

William Gaddis (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

History & Criticism

Twayne

The war in Afghanistan creates an urgency for telling stories―between soldiers, as they hand off missions to each other, and between soldiers and civilians, trying to explain what is going on―while also denying a lot of the context that is important for the telling of that story. The landscape is so mountainous and isolating that one incident or anecdote might not fit into a bigger picture beyond itself. A patrol may have no effect on the one that comes next. The war has ground itself into such a stasis that it is hard to see movement or plot. Yet we’re there. We have to say something. We have to be accountable, even though the circumstances complicate the ability to talk about it while simultaneously creating a constant yearning to do so. The Longer We Were There follows a part-time soldier’s experience over seven years in the Iowa Army National Guard. He enlists at seventeen into the infantry, then bounces between college classes, army training, disaster relief, civilian jobs, a deployment in Afghanistan―first on the Afghan-Pakistani border, then into a remote valley in the Hindu Kush Mountains―and finally comes home. His stories are about having one foot on each side of the civilian-military divide, the difficulty of describing one side to those on the other, and how, as a consequence of this difficulty, that divide gets replicated within the self.

The Longer We Were There: A Memoir of a Part-Time Soldier (The Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction Ser.)

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

University of Georgia Press

Vampire in Verse: An Anthology

Dracula Pr

A comprehensive history—and controversial reappraisal—of the world's most popular and innovative literary form.

The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600

Continuum

Bloomsbury Academic

As a soldier and civilian, Steven Moore has traveled from the American Midwest to Afghanistan and beyond. In those travels, he's seen what place can mean, specifically rural places, and how it follows us, changes us. What Moore has to say about rural places speaks to anyone who has driven a lonely road at night, with nothing but darkness as a cushion between them and the emptiness that surrounds. Place and how we define it--and how it defines us--is a through line throughout the collection of eleven essays. Moore writes about where we come from and the disconnection we often feel between each other: between veterans and nonveterans, between people of different political beliefs, between regions, between eras. These pieces build into a contemplative whole, one that is a powerful meditation on why where we come from means something and how we'll always bring where we are with us, no matter where we go.

The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country

Essays & Correspondence

The University of North Carolina Press

Glorious Incorporated: The Joshua Chronicles

Xlibris, Corp.

In the ongoing war between good and evil, many battles are fought on many fronts. Leaders emerge from the unlikeliest circumstances to tip the balance of power. The power of good embodied in Jonah International, a powerful corporate entity whose only interest is in ensuring mankind's power of choice and thwarting evil at every turn. The world is falling under an influence of darkness and is in desperate need of a defender to lead them into the light. The leaders at Jonah believe that the answers lie in Joshua Arden, a young man with a hard life whose destiny could change the face of humanity and faith forever. The choice to accept this responsibility is his own. How will he choose? SM

"Steven Moore['s] criticism is a model of clarity and intelligent advocacy." ― Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker"Steven Moore attained literary stardom when he helped rescue William Gaddis' The Recognitions from obscurity. His fame was guaranteed in literary heaven when he helped David Foster Wallace edit Infinite Jest. Now, in My Back Pages (Zerogram Press), he has gathered his book reviews and essays that take us from the Beats and the Fifties to practically yesterday or even tomorrow." ― Michael Silverblatt, Bookworm, 89.9 FM, KCRW"[Moore] may be our country's best claim to that old-fashioned creature, 'a man of letters,' as it is hard to imagine anyone, certainly not in the academy, who has read more widely or who could speak, if modestly, about fiction with more easy confidence, precision, and wit. . . . My Back Pages makes for joyful reading, . . . With its heft and encyclopedic range, the collection might be imagined on a scholar's shelf, and the essays will certainly be valuable to academics, but the reviews have the pleasure of love notes; they are steady reminders to us all of the necessary joy of good books." ― Julian Anderson, Fiction Writers Review"Zerogram Press deserves plaudits for bringing out a major work of criticism. . . . Steven Moore [has] read more fiction than anyone alive and writes about even the most demanding works with infectious zest." ― Michael Dirda, The Washington Post"One of Moore's best qualities as an explicator is in communicating complex or complicated material in the clearest possible terms, and with humour when possible. . . . Steven Moore has been at the vanguard of criticism and publication of outliers and explorers whose artistic visions reinvigorate the capacious form of the novel and the short story, and we are in his debt." ― Jeff Bursey, Numéro Cinq*Before he embarked on his massive history of the novel, Steven Moore was best known as a tireless promoter of innovative fiction, mostly by way of hundreds of book reviews published from the late 1970s onward. Virtually all have been gathered for this collection, which offers a panoramic view of modern fiction, ranging from well-known authors like Barth and Pynchon to lesser-known but deserving ones, many published by small presses. Moore also reviews dozens of critical studies of this fiction, and takes some side trips into rock music and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.The second half of the book reprints Moore's best essays. Several deal with novelist William Gaddis ― on whom Moore is considered the leading authority ― and other writers associated with him (Chandler Brossard, Alan Ansen, David Markson, Sheri Martinelli), all of which have been updated for this collection. Others champion such writers as Alexander Theroux, Brigid Brophy, Edward Dahlberg, Carole Maso, W. M. Spackman, and Rikki Ducornet. Two essays deal with the late David Foster Wallace, whom Moore knew, and others treat such matters as book reviewing, postmodernism, the Beat movement, maximalism, gay literature, punctuation, nympholepsy, and the history of the novel.Steven Moore (PhD Rutgers, 1988) is the author and editor of several books on William Gaddis, as well as of The Novel: An Alternative History (2010, 2013). From 1988 to 1996 he was managing editor of the Review of Contemporary Fiction/Dalkey Archive Press.

My Back Pages: Reviews and Essays

Zerogram Press

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

Books by Moore, Steven

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

Reader's Guide to William Gaddis's the Recognitions

William Gaddis (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

The Longer We Were There: A Memoir of a Part-Time Soldier (The Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction Ser.)

Vampire in Verse: An Anthology

The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600

The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600

The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country

Glorious Incorporated: The Joshua Chronicles

Glorious Incorporated: The Joshua Chronicles

My Back Pages: Reviews and Essays