
“Another Damned, Thick Book”
On January 4, 1955, William Gaddis sent physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer a letter and a copy of The Recognitions, his 956-page first novel, which would officially be published in March of that year. “You must receive mail of all sorts,” Gaddis wrote, “crank notes and fan letters of every description, but few I should think of half a million words.” Oppenheimer, who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb as director of the laboratories at Los Alamos, New Mexico, had delivered a speech for Columbia University’s bicentennial. The address, called “Prospects in the Arts and Sciences,” describes how