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Title: JR (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by William Gaddis, Frederick Karl ISBN: 0-14-018707-3 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.46 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great American novel
Comment: Gaddis' 'JR' has my nomination for the best American novel of the last half of the 20th century. It is also one of the two or three funniest American novels I can remember reading, right up there with 'Lolita'. It is composed entirely in dialogue, without any breaks at all, and it is sometimes difficult to tell who is talking, but once into the rhythm of the talk, it becomes clearer. It also helps to have an MBA or some business background, as the business deals it describes, to hilarious effect, are sometimes very intricate. It is the story of an 11-year old school kid wheeler-dealer who builds a gigantic paper empire 'bubble' from some army surplus items ordered from a comic book. He manages to involve various adults, including his teacher, in his capitalist schemes. It is a savage and entirely prescient view of America, foreseeing much of the present stock market madness (and it fact its comic hyperbole does not seem so wild now in light of our own real world stock market 'irrational exuberence'). It is unequalled as a depiction of the warping influences in people's lives caused by the capitalist ethic, where serious artists are devalued by the dictates of the market. If you enjoy Pynchon, Barth, or Joseph McElroy (another undeservedly unknown American writer) you will like Gaddis. This is a book to come back to again---read it now before our stock market bubble bursts!
Rating: 5
Summary: The I on the Dollar Bill
Comment: A masterful foray into what makes American great (and grate), by a novelist who has amply earned his stripes as an underappreciated, even obscure presence in American literature. People often give up on "JR"--both letters capital--because this horrifyingly funny book requires that you spend time learning how to read it, all in the name of intensifying your reading experience. Most of "JR" is dialogue; there are no chapter or section breaks to speak of; speakers are only rarely identified. Still, the book sings, and the overall power of its chorus obscures the fact that you don't always know who the soloists are. In simple terms, it is a book about counterfeiting that pretends to be a host of other things--as of course it should. And Enormous and complex pleasures await readers new to Gaddis. Readers wanting more information about this wonderful novelist would be well-advised to investigate Steven Moore's book on Gaddis for Twayne Publishers, entitled simply "William Gaddis." Moore makes Gaddis's plenty seem manageable, and he writes extraordinarily beautiful criticism. While I cannot speak to this novel's greatness, and wouldn't want to, I can say that of the hundreds of novels I have read down the years, this is my favorite, as well as the second-funniest book to which I have been privy.
Rating: 4
Summary: Masterpiece? Don't think in those terms
Comment: I'd suggest to anyone reading this "because its a masterpiece", to get over it. That's no reason to read, or worse, recommend a book. Read it because you want to try out Gaddis' style which is quite a change from the norm.
The reviewer who equated it to listening to the radio is pretty close, in my opinion, although I feel its more like listening to other people talking on the train (or perhaps watching a Robert Altman movie with a blindfold on) in that conversations can be broken off just when you think they are getting interesting.
Reading Gaddis can be like watching television, with someone else holding the remote. If you can't watch movies that way, you'll hate this book.
If you haven't read any Gaddis, read "A Frolic of His Own" first - I was astonished at the way he managed to manipulate my impressions of people solely on the way he let me hear them talk, and then as time went on, I discovered that I actually quite liked those despicable characters after all - and the beating the legal profession gets is far easier to understand (and sympathise with) than the capitalists in JR.
If you find Frolic heavy going, you probably won't like JR. If you find JR heavy going, don't touch The Recognitions. The only reason I bothered with JR, after reading Recognitions, was because I had read Frolic first.
Don't read JR because you're expecting a savage attack on capitalism, although it is that. Don't read it because you want to see how schools are becoming profit-centers first, and educators second, although it shows that. Don't read it because someone said its a picture of an America that was (is?), although perhaps it is.
Read it because its a good book. Difficult to read, sure, especially for the TV Guide generation, but worth it in the end, and very funny especially to those of us with a cynical bent.
"... because even if we can't um, if we can't rise to his level, no at least we can, we can drag him down to ours ..."
-- Bast, on humanizing Mozart (I think it was, anyway ;-)
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Title: The Recognitions (Twentieth-Century Classics) by William Gaddis, William H. Gass ISBN: 0140187081 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1993 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Agape Agape by William Gaddis, Joseph Tabbi ISBN: 0670031313 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis ISBN: 0141182229 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis ISBN: 0684800527 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: February, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Infinite Jest: A Novel by David Foster Wallace ISBN: 0316921173 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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