Carpenter's Gothic (1985) is the third, chamber-fugue novel by American writer William Gaddis (1922–1998). The title of this compact novel, by the standards of the author's previous works, refers to an architectural fashion common in the American South—wooden "imitations" of Victorian stone mansions. The action of Carpenter's Gothic takes place almost entirely within such a house, but, as Cynthia Ozick noted in her insightful review, "Gaddis is like a deluge." Working within an artificially limited space, the writer compensates for the lack of artistic scope with a virtuoso command of all the nuances and registers of the English language, satire, and tension created by the near-constant dialogue of people unable to resist their own egotism and the simulacra of the world around them.

In 1986, Carpenter's Gothic was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Recognitions was named one of Time Magazine's 100 best novels. The novels J. R. and His Fun were awarded the National Book Award. In 1982, Gaddis received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, and in 1989 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.