William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) was an American novelist.
[
]
The first and longest of his five novels, ''
The Recognitions'', was named one of
TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005
and two others, ''
J R'' and ''
A Frolic of His Own'', won the annual U.S.
National Book Award for Fiction
The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987 the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but ...
.
[
National Book Foundation: Awards]
"National Book Award Winners: 1950–2009"
Retrieved March 28, 2012.
A collection of his essays was published posthumously as ''
The Rush for Second Place'' (2002). ''The Letters of William Gaddis'' was published by
Dalkey Archive Press in February 2013.
A
MacArthur Fellow, Gaddis is widely considered one of the first and most important American
postmodern writers.
["William Gaddis: A Portfolio," ''Conjunctions'' 41 (2003), 373–415.]
Life and career
Gaddis was born in New York City to William Thomas Gaddis, who worked "on
Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for ...
and in politics", and Edith (Charles) Gaddis, who worked her way up from being secretary to the president of the New York Steam Corporation to an executive position as its chief purchasing agent. When he was three, his parents separated and Gaddis was subsequently raised by his mother in
Massapequa,
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18 ...
. At age 5 he was sent to Merricourt Boarding School in
Berlin, Connecticut
Berlin ( ) is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 20,175 at the 2020 census. It was incorporated in 1785. The geographic center of Connecticut is located in the town. Berlin is residential and industrial, ...
. He continued in private school until the eighth grade, after which he returned to Long Island to receive his diploma at Farmingdale High School in 1941. He entered Harvard in 1941 where he was a member of the ''
Harvard Lampoon
''The Harvard Lampoon'' is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Overview
The ''Harvard Lampoon'' publication was founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates ...
'' (where he eventually served as President), but was asked to leave in 1944 due to an altercation with police.
[ He worked as a fact checker for '']The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' for little over a year (late February 1945 until late April 1946), then spent five years traveling in Mexico, Central America, Spain, France, England, and North Africa, returning to the United States in 1951.
His first novel, ''The Recognitions'', appeared in 1955. A lengthy, complex, and allusive work, it had to wait to find its audience. Newspaper reviewers considered it overly intellectual, overwritten, and disgusting. (The book was defended by Jack Green in a series of broadsheets blasting the critics; the series was collected later under the title '' Fire the Bastards!'')["Fire The Bastards!: The Great Defender of William Gaddis"]
Mark O'Connell. ''The New Yorker'', February 20, 2012.
Gaddis then turned to public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. ...
work and the making of documentary films to support himself and his family. In this role he worked for Pfizer
Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfize ...
, Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
, IBM, and the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...
, among others. He also received a National Institute of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
grant, a Rockefeller grant Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to:
People with the name Rockefeller ...
, and two National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
grants, all of which helped him write his second novel. In 1975 he published '' J R'',
told almost entirely in unattributed dialogue. Its eponymous protagonist, an 11-year-old, learns enough about the stock market from a class field trip to build a financial empire of his own. Critical opinion had caught up with him, and the book won the National Book Award for Fiction
The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987 the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but ...
.["National Book Awards – 1976"]
National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...
. Retrieved March 28, 2012.
(With essay by Chad Post from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
'' Carpenter's Gothic'' (1985) offered a shorter and more accessible picture of Gaddis's sardonic worldview. Instead of struggling against misanthropy (as in ''The Recognitions'') or reluctantly giving ground to it (as in ''J R''), ''Carpenter's Gothic'' wallows in it. The continual litigation that was a theme in that book becomes the central theme and plot device in '' A Frolic of His Own'' (1994)—which earned him his second National Book Award["National Book Awards – 1994"]
National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...
. Retrieved March 28, 2012.
(With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Gaddis died at home in East Hampton, New York
The Town of East Hampton is located in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, at the eastern end of the South Shore of Long Island. It is the easternmost town in the state of New York. At the time of the 2020 United States census, it had a tot ...
, of prostate cancer on December 16, 1998,[ but not before creating his final work, '']Agapē Agape
''Agapē Agape'' is a novel by William Gaddis. Published posthumously in 2002 by Viking with an afterword by Joseph Tabbi, ''Agapē Agape'' was Gaddis' fifth and final novel. It was published in Great Britain with the contents of '' The Rush for ...
'' (the first word of the title is the Greek '' agapē'', meaning divine, unconditional love), which was published in 2002, a novella in the form of the last words of a character similar but not identical to his creator. '' The Rush for Second Place'', published at the same time, collected most of Gaddis's previously published nonfiction.
Family life
In May 1955 Gaddis eloped with Patsy Thompson Black (1928–2000), a model and actress who had come to New York from North Carolina to break into theater. They had two children: Sarah (b. September 1955)—who wrote a novel, ''Swallow Hard'' (1991), inspired by her relationship with her father—and Matthew (b. January 1958). Their marriage ended in divorce in 1965. In 1968 Gaddis married Judith Thompson (b. 1940), a journalist and later an antiques dealer. They separated in 1978, and the following year he reunited with Muriel Murphy Oxenberg (1926–2008), whom he had first met in 1953. They lived together until around the time when ''A Frolic of His Own'' was published (1994), which is dedicated to her. Gaddis lived alone for the remainder of his life.
Legacy and influence
Among fans of post-modern fiction, Gaddis is often acknowledged as being one of the greatest of American post-war novelists. A critic who early on appreciated his work and recognized its value is Steven Moore: in 1982 he published ''A Reader's Guide to William Gaddis's "The Recognitions"'' and in 1989 a monograph on Gaddis in the Twayne series. Gaddis's influence is vast (although frequently subterranean): for example, postmodern authors such as Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
seem to have been influenced by Gaddis (indeed, upon publication of '' V.'', Pynchon was actually speculated to have been a pen name for Gaddis due to the similarity of styles and the dearth of information about the two authors; the Wanda Tinasky
Wanda Tinasky, ostensibly a bag lady living under a bridge in the Mendocino County area of Northern California, was the pseudonymous author of a series of playful, comic, and erudite letters sent to the '' Mendocino Commentary'' and the ''Anders ...
letters also claimed that Gaddis, Pynchon, and Jack Green were the same person), as well as authors such as Joseph McElroy, William Gass
William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...
, David Markson
David Merrill Markson (December 20, 1927 – June 4, 2010)The_Egyptian_Book_of_the_Dead.html" ;"title="'The Egyptian Book of the Dead">'The Egyptian Book of the Dead'' (p. 147)
* "A kind of verbal fugue" (p. 170)
* "A classic traged ...
, and David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...
, who have all stated their admiration for Gaddis in general and ''The Recognitions'' in particular.
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Earl Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel ''The Corrections'', a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Pri ...
, who in an essay in ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' called Gaddis "an old literary hero of mine", dubbed him 'Mr. Difficult', stating that "by a comfortable margin, the most difficult book I ever voluntarily read in its entirety was Gaddis' nine-hundred-and-fifty-six-page first novel, ''The Recognitions''."["Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-Read Books"]
Jonathan Franzen. ''The New Yorker'', September 30, 2002. Transcribed by adilegian.com Franzen continued: "In the four decades following the publication of ''The Recognitions'', Gaddis's work grew angrier and angrier. It's a signature paradox of literary postmodernism: the writer whose least angry work was written first."
Characters in fiction based on Gaddis include "Harry Lees" in Chandler Brossard's 1952 novel ''Who Walk in Darkness'', "Harold Sand" in Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian an ...
's autobiographical 1958 novella '' The Subterraneans'' and possibly "Bill Gray" in Don DeLillo's 1991 novel ''Mao II
''Mao II'', published in 1991, is Don DeLillo's tenth novel. The book tells the story of a novelist, struggling to finish a novel, who travels to Lebanon to assist a writer being held hostage. The title is derived from a series of Andy Warhol silk ...
''. (DeLillo was a friend of Gaddis.) The characters "Richard Whitehurst" in Kurt Wenzel's ''Lit Life: A Novel'' (2001) and "Joshua Gel" in Stephen Dixon's ''I: A Novel'' (2002) likely are based on Gaddis. Authors clearly influenced by Gaddis include Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Earl Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel ''The Corrections'', a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Pri ...
('' The Corrections''), David Markson
David Merrill Markson (December 20, 1927 – June 4, 2010)The_Egyptian_Book_of_the_Dead.html" ;"title="'The Egyptian Book of the Dead">'The Egyptian Book of the Dead'' (p. 147)
* "A kind of verbal fugue" (p. 170)
* "A classic traged ...
(''Epitaph for a Tramp''), Joseph McElroy ('' A Smuggler's Bible'') and Stanley Elkin (''The Magic Kingdom'').
His life and work are the subject of a comprehensive website
The Gaddis Annotations
which has been noted in at least one academic journal as a superior example of scholarship using new media
New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...
resources. Gaddis's papers are collected at Washington University in St. Louis. The first book-length biography, Joseph Tabbi's ''Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis,'' was published by Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism ...
in May 2015.
His works have been translated into a number of foreign languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
Awards and honors
Beside the awards for particular works, Gaddis has received three other awards and honors:
*The MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...
’s "Genius Award" (1982);
*Election to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headq ...
(1989);
*The Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement (1993).
Works
Fiction
*'' The Recognitions'' (1955)
*'' J R'' (1975)
*'' Carpenter's Gothic'' (1985)
*'' A Frolic of His Own'' (1994)
*''Agapē Agape
''Agapē Agape'' is a novel by William Gaddis. Published posthumously in 2002 by Viking with an afterword by Joseph Tabbi, ''Agapē Agape'' was Gaddis' fifth and final novel. It was published in Great Britain with the contents of '' The Rush for ...
'' (completed 1998, published 2002)
Non-fiction
*'' The Rush for Second Place'' (collection, published 2002)
See also
* List of novelists from the United States
References
External links
The Gaddis Annotations
a comprehensive scholarly site
*
at Washington University in St. Louis
at The Modern Word
*
*
William Gaddis
at Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...
Authorities, with 15 catalog records
Further reading
* Alberts, Crystal, Christopher Leise, and Birger Vanwesenbeeck, eds. ''William Gaddis, "The Last of Something.”'' Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009.
* Bloom, Harold, ed. ''William Gaddis.'' Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004.
* Brunel, Jean-Louis, and Michel Gresset, eds. ''William Gaddis. Profils americaines'' 6 (Autumn 1994).
* Comnes, Gregory. ''The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Novels of William Gaddis.'' Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.
* Félix, Brigitte, ed. ''Reading William Gaddis: A Collective Volume of Essays on William Gaddis's Novels, from “J R” to “Agapē Agape.”'' Orléans: Presses Universitaires d'Orléans, 2007.
* Green, Jack. ''Fire the Bastards!'' 1962. Rpt. with an introduction by Steven Moore. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1992.
* Johnston, John. ''Carnival of Repetition: Gaddis’s “The Recognitions” and Postmodern Theory.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
* Knight, Christopher J. ''Hints and Guesses: William Gaddis’s Fiction of Longing.'' Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
* Kuehl, John, and Steven Moore, eds. ''In Recognition of William Gaddis.'' Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984.
* Moody, Rick, ed. “William Gaddis: A Portfolio,” ''Conjunctions'' 41 (2003): 373–415.
* Moore, Steven. ''A Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions.”'' Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Expanded edition o
The Gaddis Annotations
* ———. ''William Gaddis.'' New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
* O’Brien, John, ed. William Gaddis / Nicholas Mosley Number. ''Review of Contemporary Fiction'' 2.2. (Summer 1982): 4–56.
* Tabbi, Joseph. ''Nobody Grew but the Business: The Life and Work of William Gaddis.'' Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015.
* ———, and Rone Shavers, eds. ''Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System.'' Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, 2007.
* Wolfe, Peter. ''A Vision of His Own: The Mind and Art of William Gaddis.'' Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1997.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaddis, William
1922 births
1998 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American male novelists
Bard College faculty
Deaths from prostate cancer
The Harvard Lampoon alumni
MacArthur Fellows
National Book Award winners
People from East Hampton (town), New York
People from New York City
People from Massapequa, New York
Postmodern writers
Writers from New York City
Place of death missing
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners
Novelists from New York (state)
Farmingdale High School alumni
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
20th-century American male writers