{"product_id":"9781564788375","title":"The Letters of William Gaddis","description":"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 \u003ci\u003eThe Recognitions\u003c\/i\u003e (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 \u003ci\u003eJ R\u003c\/i\u003e (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with \u003ci\u003eCarpenter's Gothic\u003c\/i\u003e (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to indite \u003ci\u003eA Frolic of His Own\u003c\/i\u003e (1994), which earned him another NBA. Returning to a topic he first wrote about in the 1940s, he finishes his last novel \u003ci\u003eAgape Agape\u003c\/i\u003e as he lay dying.","brand":"Deep Vellum Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47149935034608,"sku":"9781564788375","price":34.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781564788375_p0.jpg?v=1763787411","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781564788375","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}