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Gaddis" on cover (1), 1 copy Harvest Paper (1), 15 copies paperback (1), 4 copies hardcover (1), 1 copy paperback (1), Envelope to the Harvard Lampoon used as bookmark (1), inscribed William Gaddis 79 Horatio Street (1), signed "William Gaddis" (1), three orchestra tickets: Sat. 2/9/1957 (1), ALS Jack Fein (1), note by William Gaddis (1), Private Library of Orland E. Way (1), inscribed by MSD 4/27/1978 (1), inscribed to William Gaddis from Warren Kiefer (1), signed Harrison Kinney (1), plane ticket (1), inscribed Bullah Shah (1), Newspaper clipping inside front cover (1), inscribed by Martin S. Dworkin (1), imprinted "William Gaddis" and inscribed "William Gaddis Paris 1950" (1), Ida Williams 5/17/1895 (1), inscribed "From Gloria" (1), notes in front cover (1), inscribed "Douglass F. 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Wood; Nancy-Christmas; 1953 (1), William Gaddis 79 Horatio St. (1), 4th Shelf from Top Left I (1), enclosed drawing "To Willie and Judith Lv [?] 14 xi 75" (1), 2 copies paperback (1), Advanced Copy (1), 9 copies (1), 5 copies (1), paper (1), 1962 (1), 4 copies (1), signed by author (1), 23 copies (1), TLS (1), Signed (1), Inscribed by Author (1), notes (1), 17 copies (1), Souvenir Program (1), inscribed Robert Way (1), inscribed "William Gaddis 79 Horatio Street NYC" (1), 2 TLS and 2 newspaper clippings (1), inscribed "William Gaddis 79 Horatio St NYC" (1), Inscribed "William Gaddis Harvard College" (1), John Woodburn (1), Signed "William Gaddis" (1), Book in pieces; missing front cover; it is in French (1), Inscribed "William Gaddis" (1), sheet of paper entitled "The Beginning of a Speech: a Shell" (1), 1976 clipping (1), 22 of 1500 signed (1), inscribed "Edith C. 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Joined: Jan 21, 2012

Real Name: William Gaddis
About My Library: Library being compiled initially from the 1,243 volumes itemized in Washington University's, The William Gaddis Papers.

William Gaddis links worth exploring

The Gaddis Annotations
The Paris Review interview
Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-Read Books by Jonathan Franzen (a con article).
William Gaddis: The Last Protestant by John Lingan

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About Me: William Gaddis (1922-1998) published his first novel, The Recognitions, in 1955, a behemoth of a debut at almost 1000 pages that he'd begun in 1947. When the novel fell largely on deaf and especially dumb critical ears, Gaddis, who'd envisioned a similar blockbuster reception for it that would've allowed him to write full time as was awarded Ralph Ellison with his first novel, Invisible Man, instead worked as a speechwriter and documentary filmmaker for various companies, including Pfizer International, Eastman Kodak, and IBM, to support his family.

After publishing The Recognitions, Gaddis labored for two decades in obscurity in the business world, observing corporate and capitalist shenanigans up close. What he witnessed, combined with his deep and abiding disappointment over the apathetic response critics gave his first novel (now considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century), further fueled his artistic ambitions and motivated him to write his scathing, National Book Award winning follow up, JR (1975), that skewered capitalism like few novels ever have, before or since, with its unrelenting dialogue. Critics were initially mixed in their reviews of JR; nevertheless, Gaddis finally enjoyed some positive appraisals of his work he arguably should've enjoyed twenty years previously for The Recognitions -- a novel soon rediscovered and given the proper recognition it had long deserved in what was the then lingering afterglow of JRs success. (Watch a young man discuss JR here.)

Gaddis would publish two more novels over the next twenty years, 1985s Carpenter's Gothic, his most accessible novel to date and a PEN/Faulkner Award nominee (watch Malcolm Bradbury's interview with William Gaddis in 1986 here); and A Frolic of His Own (1994), his second novel to win the National Book Award, a tome in which Gaddis mocked the legal world and the United State's obsessively litigious culture in the same manner -- with pure non stop spot on barrages of dialogue -- that he levied at U.S. capitalism run amok in JR.

Agapē Agape, an early work left unfinished in the 1950s, was resurrected by Gaddis forty years later following the success of A Frolic of His Own, and became his final novel, completed only weeks before he died. It was published posthumously in 2002, along with The Rush for 2nd Place: Essays & Occasional Writings.

In 2012, the Dalkey Archive reissued Gaddis' first two novels handsomely bound. Buy them. Help keep William Gaddis in print.

The Letters of William Gaddis, edited by the postmodern critic par excellence (and all-things-William Gaddis-expert), Steven Moore, also arrived courtesy of Dalkey Archive in 2013.
Location: New York