Recognitions - Hardcover
A great masterpiece by William Gaddis, with a new introduction by William H. Gass.The book Jonathan Franzen dubbed the ur-text of postwar ï¬ ction and the ï¬ rst 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.
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About the Author:
William Gaddis (1922-98) stands among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. The winner of two National Book Awards (for "J R" [1976] and "A Frolic of His Own" [1995]), he wrote five novels during his lifetime, including "Carpenter's Gothic "(1985), "Agap? Agape" (published posthumously in 2002), and his early masterpiece "The Recognitions" (1955). He is loved and admired for his stylistic innovations, his unforgettable characters, his pervasive humor, and the breadth of his intellect and vision.
Review:
"The novel is like a huge landscape painting of modern New York, peopled with hundreds of doomed but energetic little figures, executed on wood panels by Brueghel or Bosch, and looking incongruously ancient beneath layers of yellowed lacquer. Even the blue skies in the book (the phrase "Another blue day" recurs as a despair-inducing leitmotiv) glow like oil-paint skies in an art museum..." (Jonathan Franzen, The New Yorker)
"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)
"[The Recognitions] seems as relevant as ever. For who would dare say that we no longer live in a world in which people 'exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender?' The problem of authenticity in all its forms is always with us, and in reading this extraordinary book we are constantly freed into recognitions ― re-cognitions ― of many aspects, of the problem, which have deteriorated into non-cognitions in our mass media age. William Gaddis detects forgery at all levels, but in doing so he has forged a classic." (Tony Tanner, The New York Times)
"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)
"[The Recognitions] seems as relevant as ever. For who would dare say that we no longer live in a world in which people 'exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender?' The problem of authenticity in all its forms is always with us, and in reading this extraordinary book we are constantly freed into recognitions ― re-cognitions ― of many aspects, of the problem, which have deteriorated into non-cognitions in our mass media age. William Gaddis detects forgery at all levels, but in doing so he has forged a classic." (Tony Tanner, The New York Times)
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- PublisherHarcourt
- Publication date1955
- ISBN 10 0151759715
- ISBN 13 9780151759712
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages956
- Rating
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The Recognitions
Published by
Harcourt, Brace & Co.
(1955)
ISBN 10: 0151759715
ISBN 13: 9780151759712
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Hardcover
First Edition
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. Stated First Edition. Bound in publisher's black cloth. Hardcover. No dust jacket. Shelf wear. Front gutter repaired with tape. 956 p., 22 cm. "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." - New York Review Books. Seller Inventory # 2105060107
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