William Gaddis's mammoth 1955 first novel is a sprawling investigation of authenticity, forgery, and what it means to make something genuine in a world saturated with imitation. At its center is Wyatt Gwyon, the son of a New England minister, who abandons the ministry to become a painter, then abandons original painting to forge old masters under the patronage of the sinister art dealer Recktall Brown. Around Wyatt, Gaddis assembles a vast cast of poseurs, plagiarists, counterfeiters, and confidence men moving through Greenwich Village bohemia, transatlantic art markets, and Madrid monasteries. The novel weaves together theology, alchemy, comparative religion, and art history with a virtuoso ear for overheard dialogue, much of it untagged and unattributed in ways that make the reader piece together who is speaking. Largely ignored or panned on publication, The Recognitions was rediscovered in the 1960s and eventually recognized as a founding work of American postmodernism, a major influence on Pynchon, DeLillo, and David Foster Wallace. Gaddis would go on to win two National Book Awards. The book demands patience—it is nearly a thousand pages and famously rewards readers who treat its difficulty as part of its meaning—but few American novels have taken the question of how to live truthfully amid pervasive fraud so seriously.