Carpenter's Gothic

Carpenter's Gothic
First edition cover
AuthorWilliam Gaddis
PublisherViking
Publication date
1985

Carpenter's Gothic is the title of the third novel by American writer William Gaddis, published in 1985 by Viking. The title connotes a "Gothic" tale of haunted isolation, in a milieu stripped of all pretensions.

Gaddis's second-shortest novel, Carpenter's Gothic relates the words and occasional actions, in one house, of an ex-soldier, Confederate apologist, and pathological liar; his neglected and ineffectual wife; and a visitor with a mysterious past who resembles in many ways Gaddis himself. The book is notable mainly for its strict fugue-like nature, as each character pursues his own themes in conversation and in action, often without reference to anything said or done by the others.