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Unlike William Gaddis's other novels, The Recognitions defines writing in ontological terms as the account of an encounter with substance or being qua being. However, this definition is misleading, as substance turns out to be a fiction produced by purely textual means, like the uncanny apparitions described in ghost stories. Thus, Gaddis only refers to metaphysics in order to challenge its applicability to writing, and the explicit allusions to the question of being eventually suggest that the text belongs in a realm of pure possibility of which being itself is but one actualization among many.