Carpenter's Gothic is the title of the third novel by 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 compassionate, understanding but haunted visitor who appears to stand in for the author. The book is notable mainly for its unrestrained contempt for its characters, and for its strict fugue-like nature, as each character pursues his own themes in conversation and in action, without reference to anything said or done by the others.
