William Gaddis at his Centenary

December 2022 was William Gaddis’s centenary year, marked that October by an archival exhibition and academic conference at Washington University St Louis, whose Olin Library special collections hold his archive. December 2023 then marked 25 years since Gaddis’s death. Over the past decade, he has been published, reprinted, translated, namechecked, served by globally public discussion forums, at a greater rate than ever during his lifetime. This special issue of electronic book review brings together work on Gaddis at this distinctive time in his reception.

This gathering focuses particularly on contributions that expand our knowledge of Gaddis. The 2010s saw the publication of his Letters and biography, as well as a number of academic studies rooted in his archival material. By airing historical and biographical material that would otherwise have been inaccessible without a visit to Gaddis’s archive in St Louis, such publications provide a solid foundation for more interpretive or theoretical studies, as well as providing important contextual framing for anyone looking to read Gaddis’s work in full relation to its culture and history. Our contributors provide more than 275,000 further words of Gaddis scholarship and discussion, expanding our knowledge of him through a variety of genres from academic recontextualization, to memoir, anecdote, group discussion, archival excavation, and more. What we have compiled rounds out the informational breakthroughs of the 2010s, and will hopefully help provide a solid foundation for the next century of reading, understanding, teaching, and studying Gaddis and his works.

Without further preamble, we invite our readers to dive into the assembled special issue through the table of contents with links below, beginning with our fuller introduction to the project. Following that introduction, the special issue is divided into five sections: a set of projections for future Gaddis study; a collection of peer-reviewed academic articles that provide new contexts and frameworks for reading Gaddis’s fictions; a series of roundtable discussions of Gaddis’s relevance in various fields; a pair of guides to Gaddis’s unpublished creative work; and some shorter expansions of biographical and historical information. So much material have we compiled that it will be released in batches throughout the first half of 2024. We hope that the fuller knowledge it makes possible will prompt our readers to further reading, investigation, study, and discussion of the Gaddis oeuvre, onward toward his second centenary.

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“William Gaddis at his Centenary”: Contents

1: Introduction

• Ali Chetwynd – “Gaddis-knowledge After the ‘Very Small Audience’ Era: Introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Gaddis at his Centenary’”

2: Futures for Gaddis Studies’

• Steven Moore – “New Directions in Gaddis Scholarship”
• Various Authors – “Futures of Gaddis Studies: Visions for the Next 100 Years’”

3: Gaddis in Context: Peer-reviewed articles

• Benjamin Bergholtz – “‘Trouble with the Connections’: J R and the ‘End of History’”
• Jack Williams – “‘A Long and Uninterrupted Decline’: Accumulation, Empire, and Built Environments in William Gaddis’s The Recognitions”
• Elliot Yates – “Gaddis at Textron: From Fruits of Diversification to Financialization”
• David Ting – “Indeterminacy as Invention: How William Gaddis Met Physicists, Cybernetics, and Mephistopheles on the Way to Agapē Agape”
• John Soutter – “Vaihinger’s Not So Fleeting Presence: Gaddis, Ballard, and Delillo”
• Rochelle Gold – “Pre-Written Business Correspondences and Computer Therapists: William Gaddis’s J R, ELIZA, and Literacies in Conflict”
• Lisa Siraganian – “William Gaddis’s Frolics in Corporate Law”
• Jeffrey Severs – “Faire Exchange No Robbery: Critiques of Anthologies and Contracts in an Unpublished Gaddis Play”

4: Gaddis Centenary Roundtables

• Stef Aerts, David Bird, Ali Chetwynd, Edward Holland, Thomas Verstraeten, & Tim Youd – “Gaddis Centenary Roundtable: Artists in Non-Literary Media Influenced by Gaddis”
• Marie Fahd, Sergey Karpov, Yoshihiko Kihara, Max Nestelieiev, Francine Ozaki, & Mariano Peyrou – “Gaddis Centenary Roundtable: Translating Gaddis”
• Danielle Dutton, Edwin Frank, & Martin Riker – “Gaddis Centenary Roundtable: Publishing in the Innovative Tradition: A Conversation”
• Jeff Bursey, Ali Chetwynd, Victoria Harding, Chad Post, Edwin Turner, & Chris Via – “Gaddis Centenary Roundtable: Para-Academic Venues for Discussing Gaddis and other Innovative Fiction”
• Jeff Jackson, Rone Shavers, & Jacob Singer – “Gaddis Centenary Roundtable: Teaching Gaddis Today”

5: Unpublished Gaddis: Archive Guides

• Ali Chetwynd & Joel Minor – “William Gaddis’s Unpublished Stories and Novel-Prototypes: An Archival Guide”
• Ali Chetwynd – “William Gaddis’s Unpublished Screenplays, Stage-Drama Scripts, Prospectuses for Film & TV, and Poetry: An Archival Guide”

6: Histories, Memoirs, Manifestos

• Kate Michelson Goldkamp – “Juvenilia in the William Gaddis Papers”
• Ted Morrissey –  ““Honored by the Error”: The Literary Friendship of Gaddis and Gass”
• Jon Fain – “A Student with Mr Gaddis”
• Alan Bigelow – “Gaddis’s Broken Doorknob”
• Paul Ingendaay – “‘The Most Curious Career’: William Gaddis in Germany”
• Mark Madigan – “William Gaddis at St Michael’s College: Memoir and Photograph”
• Scott Zieher – “Reflections on and Appreciation of A Pile Fabric Primer”
• Jacob Singer and Rick Moody – “An Interview with Rick Moody”
• Lalita Kashoba Mohan – “Why We Shouldn’t Abandon Postmodern Approaches to William Gaddis: J R, American Antihero Traditions, and His Indian Inheritors”
• Cole Fishman – “William Gaddis as Philosopher: Kierkegaard, Style, and the Spirit of Hegel”
• Francine Fabiana Ozaki – “Originality, Authenticity, Translation, Forgery: Why Translators and Translation Theorists Should Read The Recognitions”
• More coming soon