Последние издания книг Уильяма Гэддиса

«Распознавания» (1955) — шедевр Уильяма Гэддиса, который входит в современный канон американской литературы XX века и уже более полувека переосмысляется как произведение в уникальной позиции между модернизмом и постмодернизмом. Роман, усвоивший в себе лучшие художественные приемы и той и другой эпох. Эта двойственность — ключ к роману-маскараду, и одновременно его проклятие. В трех частях романа (по количеству створок триптиха Иеронима Босха) рассказана история Уайатта Гвайна, сына кальвинистского священника из Новой Англии, талантливого художника, заключившего фаустовскую сделку — подделывать полотна старых мастеров для нью-йоркского…

«Плотницкая готика» (1985) — третий, камерный роман-фуга американского писателя Уильяма Гэддиса (1922–1998). В названии этого компактного, по меркам предыдущих работ автора, романа отражено название архитектурной моды, распространенной на Юге Америки — деревянной «подделки» викторианских каменных особняков. Действие «Плотницкой готики» почти целиком происходит внутри такого дома, но, как отметила в своей проницательной рецензии Синтия Озик — «Гэддис подобен потопу»; писатель, работая в искусственно ограниченном пространстве, компенсирует недостаток художественной территории виртуозным владением всеми нюансами и регистрами английского языка,…

A postmodern masterpiece about fraud and forgery by one of the most venerated novelists of the last century.

The Recognitions is a sweeping depiction of a world in which everything that anyone recognizes as beautiful or true or good emerges as anything but: our world. The book is a masquerade, moving from New England to New York to Madrid, from the art world to the underworld, but it centers on the story of Wyatt Gwyon, son of a New England pastor, who forsakes religion to devote himself to painting, only to despair of his inspiration. In expiation, he will paint nothing but flawless copies of his revered old masters--copies, however, that find their way into the hands of a sinister financial wizard by the name of Recktall Brown, who of course sells them as the real thing. Gwyon's story is only one of many that fill the pages of a novel that is as monstrously populated as paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Throughout, Gaddis's characters preen and scheme and party and toil, pursuing salvation through the debasement of desire.

Dismissed uncomprehendingly by the critics on publication in 1955 and ignored by the literary world for decades after, The Recognitions has gone on to establish itself as one of the great American novels, immensely ambitious and entirely unique, a book of freakish strangeness and outrageous comedy that is also profoundly serious and sad.

Останній твір одного з перших американських постмодерністів, «Містера Складного» (Дж. Франзен), культового автора для багатьох поколінь письменників. Повість у формі пристрасного передсмертного монологу митця, що безнадійно прагне завершити свою книгу про історію механічного піаніно, болісно згадуючи пережити та прочитане.

Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis (1922-98) 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 are all the more valuable because Gaddis was not an autobiographical writer. 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 indite A Frolic of His Own (1994), which earned him another NBA. Returning to a topic he first wrote about in the 1940s, he finishes his last novel Agape Agape as he lay dying.

A great masterpiece by William Gaddis, with a new introduction by Rick Moody.
Winner of the 1976 National Book Award, J R is a biting satire about the many ways in which capitalism twists the American spirit into something dangerous, yet pervasive and unassailable. At the center of the novel is a hilarious eleven year old—J R—who with boyish enthusiasm turns a few basic lessons in capitalist principles, coupled with a young boy’s lack of conscience, into a massive and exploitative paper empire. The result is one of the funniest and most disturbing stories ever told about the corruption of the American dream.

The word agape comes from the Greek and refers to a love that is spiritual in nature. The unnamed narrator of William Gaddis's last, powerfully memorable novel lies dying in bed, as its author did, gaping in wonder and amazement at our lost capacity for sacred passion. As he looks back over his life, raging and obsessing, he thoughts range widely, from the history of the piano, to the role of the artist, to our declining values. Innovative and troubling, Agape Agape is a brilliant, all-too-brief, testament to its dazzling author, now firmly established as one of the twentieth century's great novelists.

William Gaddis published only four novels during his lifetime, but with those works he earned himself a reputation as one of America's greatest novelists. Less well known is Gaddis's body of excellent critical writings. Here is a wide range of his original essays, some published for the first time They include: 'Stop Player. Joke No. 4', Gaddis's first national publication and the basis for his projected history of the player piano; the title essay about missed opportunities in America during the past fifty years; and 'Old Foes with New Faces', an examination of the relationship between the writer and the problem of religion. This diverse collection displays the power of an autonomous literary intelligence in an age increasingly dominated by political and religious conservatism.

This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission. At the still center of the breakneck action is Paul's wife, Liz, and over it all looms the shadowy figure of McCandless, a geologist from whom Paul and Liz rent their house. As Paul mishandles the situation, his wife takes the geologist to her bed and a fire and aborted…

A dazzling fourth novel by the author of The Recognitions, Carpenter's Gothic, and JR uses his considerable powers of observation and satirical sensibilities to take on the American legal system. Reprint. 30, 000 first printing.

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity trading when the drop in pork belly futures masks the crumbling of our own, J R captures the reader in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths -- voices that dominate the book, talking to each other, at each other, into phones, on intercoms, from TV screens and radios -- a vast mosaic of sound that sweeps the reader into the relentless "real time" of spoken words in a way unprecedented in modern fiction. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we…

Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate 'originals' - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize. Contemporary life collapses the distinction between the 'real' and the 'virtual' world, and Gaddis' novel pre-empts our common obsessions by almost half a century. This novel tackles the blurring of perceptual boundaries, The Matrix and Bladerunner pale in comparison to this epic novel.