At Harvard, he earned a reputation as a humorist, but left in 1945 without a degree. For two years, he was a checker of facts for articles at the
New Yorker. He then spent five years traveling in Panama and other Central American countries, Mexico, the Caribbean, Spain, North Africa, and Paris, returning to New York in 1951. It was during this time that he wrote
The Recognitions. "One aspect of this novel," Gaddis says, "was begun in 1947, in Mexico City, to be temporarily abandoned for another version that winter in Panama.
The Recognitions, with its expanding prospects, was finally begun at the beginning in Madrid in 1948, put aside for almost a year in Paris, reconsidered and reworked again in Spain, finished after another year in America, in 1953, and cut and revised through still another winter."
Since then Gaddis has made his living as a free lance, writing speeches for corporate executives and scripts for industrial films, doing public relations for a drug company, and briefly writing for magazines and teaching, including summer writing workshops. He received a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant in 1963 and, to aid him in completing J R, he received a Rockefeller grant and two National Endowment for the Arts grants (1966, 1974).
