bA postmodern masterpiece about fraud and forgery by one of the most venerated novelists of the last century.b piThe Recognitionsi is a sweeping depiction of a world in which everything that anyone recognizes as beautiful or true or good emerges as anything but our world. The book is a masquerade, moving from New England to New York to Madrid, from the art world to the underworld, but it centers on the story of Wyatt Gwyon, the son of a New England pastor, who forsakes religion to devote himself to painting, only to despair of his inspiration. In expiation, he will paint nothing but flawless copies of revered old masters--copies, however, that find their way into the hands of a sinister financial wizard by the name of Recktall Brown, who sells them as the real thing. Gwyon's story is only one of many that fill the pages of a novel that is as monstrously populated as the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Throughout, William Gaddis's characters preen and scheme and party and toil, pursuing