William Gaddis, "The Last of Something"

Crystal Alberts is an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota. She serves as the technical editor for the NEH–funded Elizabeth Barrett Browning Project and is a research associate for the Electronic Literature Organization. Christopher Leise is an assistant professor of English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Birger Vanwesenbeeck is an English professor at SUNY Fredonia in Fredonia, New York.

“This solid collection adds to the growing debate on Gaddis’s literary heritage...recommended”—Choice; “an enjoyable and essential book for Gaddis scholars”—Tate Publishing; “a significant contribution to Gaddis scholarship, the articulate and erudite essays in this collection chart the ways in which Gaddis’s novel systems engage with diverse disciplines, including religion, art, politics, philosophy, economics, geography, language, and literature. Taken as a whole, this anthology increases our understanding of the myriad traditions from which Gaddis’s fictions emerge and encourages readers to seriously consider the formidable influence of Gaddis’s innovative art.”—Trey Strecker, Ball State University

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments     Introduction      1. Mapping William Gaddis: The Man, The Recognitions, and His Time(CRYSTAL ALBERTS)      2. The Kvetch, the Rant, and the Bitch(WILLIAM H. GASS)      3. The Power of Babel: Art, Entropy, and Aporia in the Novels(CHRISTOPHER LEISE)      4. Trying to Make Negative Things Do the Work of Positive Ones: Gaddis and Apophaticism(CHRISTOPHER J. KNIGHT)      5. Failing Criticism: The Recognitions(JOSEPH CONWAY)      6. Agape Agape: The Last Christian Novel(s)(BIRGER VANWESENBEECK)      7. “A disciplined nostalgia”: Gaddis and the Modern Art Object(LISA SIRAGANIAN)      8. The Recognitions and Carpenter’s Gothic: Gaddis’s Anti-Pauline Novels(JOHN SOUTTER)      9. This Little Prodigy Went to Market: The Education of(TIM CONLEY)      10. Fields Ripe for Harvest: Carpenter’s Gothic, Africa, and Avatars of Biopolitical Control(MATHIEU DUPLAY)      11. After Gaddis: Data Storage and the Novel(STEPHEN J. BURN)      Chapter Notes      Bibliography      About the Contributors      Index