Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“I remember the bookstore, long gone now, on Forty-Second Street. I stood in the narrow aisle reading the first paragraph of The Recognitions. It was a revelation, a piece of writing with the beauty and texture of a Shakespearean monologue — or, maybe more apt, a work of Renaissance art impossibly transformed from image to words. And they were the words of a contemporary American. This, to me, was the wonder of it.” Don DeLillo
Review
“Valued by many serious readers as the secret masterpiece of our time.” Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
Review
“The Recognitions is a warning above all else — a plea, like ‘The Waste Land,’ for Western society to recognize its mythic origins before art expires.” John Lingan, The Quarterly Conversation
Review
“The Recognitions is always spoken of as the most-overlooked important work of the last several literary generations... Through the famous obscurity of The Recognitions, Mr. Gaddis has become famous for not being famous enough.” Cynthia Ozick
About the Author
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.