The Letters of William Gaddis Revised Edition

A revelatory collection of correspondence by the lauded author of titanic American classics such as The Recognitions and J R, shedding light on his staunchly private life.

UPDATED WITH OVER TWO DOZEN NEW LETTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a revelation. Beginning in 1930 when Gaddis was at boarding school and ending in September 1998, a few months before his death, these letters function as a kind of autobiography, and also reveal the extent to which he drew upon events in his life for his fiction. Here we see him forging his first novel, The Recognitions (1955), while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award–winning J R (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter’s Gothic (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to produce A Frolic of His Own (1994). Resuming his lifelong obsession with mechanization and the arts, he finishes a last novel, Agapē Agape (published in 2002), as he lies dying.

This newly revised edition includes clarifying notes by Gaddis scholar Steven Moore, as well as an afterword by the author’s daughter, Sarah 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 (both published by NYRB Classics), Carpenter's Gothic, A Frolic of His Own, and, published posthumously, Agapē Agape.
 
Steven Moore is the author of the two-volume survey The Novel: An Alternative History, and has written and edited several books on the works of William Gaddis. He served as the managing editor of Dalkey Archive Press and the Review of Contemporary Fiction from 1988 to 1996. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.