#the recognitions

We are excited to welcome William Gaddis to the NYRB Classics catalog in October. These two masterworks of contemporary American literature are massive in size and scope, interrogating authenticity, capitalism, and American identity.

William Gaddis, The Recognitions

As monstrously populated as the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, The Recognitions is nearly impossible to describe—but at its center are Wyatt Gwyon, a painter who can only copy the old masters, and Recktall Brown, a sinister huckster who finds and sells off his copies as originals. Gaddis’s strange cast of characters lose their minds and change their names, cementing the sense of a world where reality no longer has any meaning at all.

William Gaddis, J R

J R is another impossibly abundant deep dive into a world of fraudsters and finance—this time written almost entirely in dialogue. J R, an enterprising middle schooler, builds a corporate empire on the backs of little more than junk-mail get-rich-quick schemes and the school payphone. Soon enough everyone from Wall Street to Washington is entangled, in a biting satire of American capitalism.