William Gaddis's Novels Reading Order

William Gaddis's The Recognitions (1955) is the great American novel of forgery and authenticity — a 956-page postmodern epic about Wyatt Gwyon, a failed theologian who becomes a forger of Flemish masters, set in a chaotic world of artists, con men, and spiritual seekers in New York, Spain, and Central America. Published when Gaddis was thirty-two to near-complete critical silence and widespread incomprehension, it spent decades underground before being recognized as the founding text of postmodern American fiction alongside Pynchon's early work. The novel is organized around the theme of recognition in every sense: artistic recognition, theological recognition, self-recognition, the recognition of fakes. Gaddis published only four novels in his lifetime; JR (1975), his second, won the National Book Award and is equally demanding; A Frolic of His Own (1994) won a second National Book Award. There is no direct sequel to The Recognitions, but JR can be read as a companion in its satirical treatment of American commercial culture against the novel's artistic world.