The shelf containing book-length critical writing on William Gaddis’ novels is short, but growing. A more comprehensive and exhaustive bibliography of the critical literature can be found at the Gaddis Annotations Web site here, but below is a selection of a few books and essay collections more or less readily available.

Newcomers to Gaddis’ novels will find the Moore 1989 monograph for Twayne an excellent start (apart from the work itself), even if it was published before A Frolic of His Own and Agape Agape were issued — though Jack Green’s churlish Fire the Bastards! is not to be missed either. Coming soon will be a collection of letters from the Dalkey Archive Press and a biography of the writer by Joseph Tabbi.

Alberts, Crystal, Christopher Leise, and Birger Vanwesenbeeck, eds. William Gaddis, “The Last of Something.” Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. A useful review of this collection can be found at the Quarterly Conversation Web site here.

Green, Jack. Fire the Bastards! Introduction by Steven Moore. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2012. This vituperative examination of the initial critical response to The Recognitions is in itself something of a Swiftian masterpiece; it can also be found online here.

Kuehl, John, and Steven Moore, eds. In Recognition of William Gaddis. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984.

Knight, Christopher J. Hints & Guesses: William Gaddis’s Fiction of Longing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Moore, Steven. A Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s The Recognitions. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Out-of-print, but an updated and revised version can be found online here.

Moore, Steven. William Gaddis. New York: Twayne, 1989. This important volume is also out-of-print, but through the generosity of Moore the Gaddis Annotations Web site makes the full text of the book available here.

Tabbi, Joseph, and Rone Shavers, eds. Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007.

Wolfe, Peter. A Vision of His Own: The Mind and Art of William Gaddis. Madison & Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.