December 2022 marked William Gaddis’s (1922-1998) centenary. Reputed during his lifetime for being—in his characters’ words—“difficult as I can make it,” or writing “for a very small audience,” the years since his death have nonetheless seen his work republished in increasingly wide-reaching editions and discussed in numerous online reading groups, with his unpublished archive increasingly studied and brought to public attention.

The present edited collection of academic essays seeks contributions that will challenge, update, expand, or surpass the extant understandings of Gaddis’s work, clarifying what it can offer readers more than a century after his birth.

A special Gaddis Centenary issue of electronic book review (which has started to go online at https://electronicbookreview.com/gathering/william-gaddis-at-his-centenary/ ) focused on expanding our knowledge of the first hundred years of Gaddis, his life, and his work. But what difference will this new knowledge make to readers interpretingGaddis’s works today? What will Gaddis mean beyond his centenary?

A substantial and growing body of scholarship and criticism has addressed Gaddis’s writing and its significance: enough to constitute a canon. But that existing canon has its limitations, which the centenary provides a distinct opportunity to overcome. The bulk of Gaddis Studies, for example, has addressed his first two longest novels: The Recognitions (1955) and J R (1975). Much was driven into a mode of advocacy by the need to overcome his reputation for “difficulty” and obscurity: to persuade that he was worth not only studying, but reading. And the scholarship has always been constrained by the literary-theoretical trends and axioms of its time; many currently active theoretical movements have had little impact on Gaddis Studies, because they did not exist when Gaddis Studies began.

Our project, then, aims to bring together papers that—whatever their method—question, revise, expand, or go beyond these existing commonplaces, habits, and assumptions of the Gaddis Studies canon.

A non-exhaustive list of suitable approaches for submissions might include:

- More attention to Gaddis’s lesser-studied works: Carpenter’s Gothic, Agapē Agape, his nonfiction, or his unpublished writings.

- Fresh illumination of Gaddis’s work through previously un-applied theoretical frameworks.

- New understandings of Gaddis’s place in literary, cultural, and intellectual history and genealogies, from his influences to his legacies.

- Revisions of old understanding in the light of newly uncovered material.

- Examinations of Gaddis’ interest and relevance for wider audiences he has not previously reached, and his fiction’s distinctive relevance for life and culture in the 2020s and beyond.

- Corrections or refinements of old assumptions.

Whatever the approach, we seek submissions that can distinguish themselves beyond the understandings achieved by our forerunners in the first century of Gaddis Studies, and open up new possibilities for the second.

New Faces of William Gaddis will be coedited by Crystal Alberts, Ali Chetwynd, and Michael Sanders.

300-word proposals for academic arguments of around 6500 words (up to 8000 for submissions that address multiple works) should be sent to gaddis2ndcentury@gmail.com by April 15th, 2024. Completed contributions for accepted proposals will then be expected by September 30th, 2024.