William!Gaddis's 'Carpenter's Gothic', or inheritance in question

Starting from the headline "Heiress slain in swank suburb" which heralds the death of Liz Booth in Carpenter's Gothic, this paper proposes to examine some of the developments of the theme of inheritance in the novel, and its links with the more specifically American theme of usurpation or misappropriation of legacy. The question of inheritance actually plays within the text, through the recourse to an intertextuality the evanescence of which is analyzed. Unlike Gaddis' other novels, Carpenter's Gothic is enclosed in its own metafictional dimension which it nevertheless transcends by exhibiting it on a parodic mode. This allow the novel to foreground the invention of its language as the consummate art of using up the scraps.