The Recognitions
by William Gaddis · first published 1955
11mentions
3recommended by
10HN commenters
2015–2026first – last mentioned
30% recommend70% neutral
Obsessed with seventeenth-century Flemish masterpieces, Wyatt Gwyon forges original artwork amazingly faithful to the spirit and techniques of the time.
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I discovered Gaddis at an impressionable age and his books, especially The Recognitions, had a massive influence on me. What I took away was basically a spiritual critique of capitalist modernity and nostalgia for the pace, longtermism, and religious meaning of the middle ages (while recognising…
on “William Gaddis: Below Deck on the Ship of Fools” ↗…Karamazov, or Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky Madame Bovary by Flaubert, or Bel-Ami by Maupassant The Book of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen The Corrections by Franzen Recognitions by Gaddis Foster by Claire Keegan (short but incredible) (That's a personal list, and by no means exhaustive, just some recommendations.)
on “Ask HN: Books that helped you become a better person?” ↗You might like William Gaddis. The Recognitions and JR are dense and very complex novels with brilliant formal invention and prescient looks at finance, art, and skepticism bleeding into a postmodern mindset. The sheer amount of cultural references…
on “Pynchon in Public Day” ↗Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Lawrence Sterne The Recognitions by William Gaddis
on “Can reading make you happier? (2015)” ↗…actually said by someone lesser known. One example, widely misattributed to Leonardo da Vinci: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. (Those words were written by William Gaddis, in his novel The Recognitions.)
on “Falsely Attributed: Famous quotes and the people who didn’t say them” ↗“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” — Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo didn't say that—it was William Gaddis in his massive novel about art forgery called The Recognitions, sometimes thought of as the first postmodern novel. In Leonardo's time "sophistication", had the concept existed, would have seemed like an obviously bad thing. I believe it was Steve Jobs who popularized…
on “Simplicity and collaboration” ↗The Recognitions (William Gaddis)was one of the assigned readings in my honors English 1A class at UCLA in 1957; another was Generation of Vipers (Philip Wyle). We read three or four other books but I only remember Gaddis…
on “Unrecognizable: William Gaddis’s American Pessimism” ↗…fiction writing is great art, and great art may take some work on the part of the reader to properly appreciate. In this light, he talks about reading and appreciating Gaddis's impenetrable first novel, The Recognitions, which was "great art" but also a commercial flop. This failure forced Gaddis to take a 20-year hiatus before returning with a second novel, which was even more impenetrable, but which, thanks to some…
on “Mr. Difficult: William Gaddis and the Problem of Hard-to-Read Books (2002)” ↗i'm currently reading The Recognitions by William Gaddis -- it's a lot to get through but it might change your mind on this point (not that it's for the better!).
on “Books by People – Defending Organic Literature in an AI World” ↗William Gaddis published his first novel (Recognitions) with 33, his next (JR) with 53, his third (Carpenter's Gothic) with 63, his fourth (A Frolic of His Own) with 72, and his fifth and last (Agapē Agape) with 80. That's it. He was one of the world best…
on “35 Over 35” ↗>> William Gaddis in his The Recognitions presents a society of forgery, misattribution, and counterfeiting in which enormous ingenuity is expended in the service of inauthenticity. The protagonist, Wyatt Gwyon, produces forged Flemish paintings…
on “What Makes Humans Stupid” ↗