"William Gaddis was born in New York City in 1922. His earlier and only other published work, The Recognitions, appeared in 1955." That is the complete biographical note on the jacket of Gaddis's second novel, J R (1975), and about all he would have the reader know about his life. "I have generally shied from parading personal details," Gaddis has said, "partly for their being just that, partly from the sense that one thing said leaves others equally significant unsaid, and the sense in those lines to the effect that we are never as unlike others as we can be unlike ourselves." Wyatt Gwyon, the hero of The Recognitions, says, "What's an artist, but the dregs of his work? The human shambles that follows it around." Gaddis has followed this credo by remaining almost as private as Thomas Pynchon and more so than the reclusive J. D. Salinger.

Gaddis was educated...