JR

1st, a below reviewer says it's all dialogue, which is almost true but not quite. there are sections of exposition, description, but because of the way it's all written, you could be halfway through one of these sections before realizing that the dialogue stopped and this isn't someone speaking anymore. that aside, this book is just amazing, and it's oddly accessible once you get going. kind of like shakespeare or milton. you have to get used to the use of the language. but Gaddis's ear for dialogue, especially that of JR, the little kid all the action ("action" not really being the right word) revolves around, is so good, so funny, so good at creating memorable lines and ideas...it just can't be beat. i could go on and on, but why? just read it. (on this note, this is one of those books that is aided by a reading guide, and there is an excellent one available free [by Steven Moore] at the Gaddis website, williamgaddis.org.)

On a school excursion to New York, a small group of eleven year old children are introduced to the American way of life. A hurried business man, constantly on the phone or bothered by his secretary, gives a hasty explanation of the stock market, and what it means to 'purchase a piece of America'. The children are suitably awed, especially when their excursion moves from theory to practise with the purchase of one stock from a communal kitty. One child, JR, is particularly enamoured with the whole process. He asks complicated questions about futures, buybacks, depreciations, interest, tax write-offs and more, flustering and intriguing the man in charge of the tour around the company. JR is so curious, in fact, that upon arriving home, he begins to study and plan ways to make his piece of America work for him. He meets up with Edward Bast, a struggling composer, and they strike a deal. JR will be the thinking man of the operation, Bast - as an adult - will be the face of the company. Soon, Bast is traveling back and forth from paper mill to Indian reserve to banquet to meeting room as JR creates an empire from 'worthless' stock and inventory obtained through mail order and telephone deals. JR is written almost entirely in dialogue. People speak, radios chatter, conversations begin and end and trail off, some in the main focus of the novel, such as Rhoda and Bast's discussions in the increasingly cluttered apartment he lives in, some off to the side, little snippets finding their way into the book, shedding light on minor characters or putting a different perspective on what is currently happening. Gaddis, as always, writes flawless dialogue that in no way reads like the 'perfect' diction of most novels, instead having trailing sentences, unfinished words and thoughts, and poor punctuation. When speaking, a character is almost never identified, but through Gaddis' grasp of speech, it is generally pretty easy to tell who is who and what is going on. There are large paragraphs of description scattered about, but these generally serve as bookends to conversations between characters. The novel JR is an extremely interesting look at the world of finance. Seen through the eyes of the oblivious musician Bast, we are horrified as JR's empire grows and grows, always obeying the law, always being correct and accurate, but at the same time, perverting the true spirit of business and money. Perhaps because he is eleven, JR is unable to see the companies he buys, sells, underwrites and reconstructs as actual tangible realities, the employees are little more than vast bottomless money pits in terms of salaries to him, and nothing is sacred. He has no understanding of the realities of what he is accomplishing, all he is concerned with is, 'If you are going to play, play to win.'

I have long been struck by the irony that the most avid readers of literary novels seem to have been virtually ignored by American publishers who cater to the mainstream. Sad to say but American publishing's mindless fixation with mediocre mainstream fiction has had an obliterating effect on American literary culture. So God Bless Penguin for having the good sense to bring to light, even belatedly, this breakthrough literary novel by a supremely gifted writer. I haven't read a more challenging novel by such a first-rate mind in ages. The style of the novel is based upon stream-of-voice: it's akin to walking down 5th Avenue and overhearing parts of conversations of passersby. The net effect is that the reader is compelled to become engaged by virtue of the context, style and story line of unidentified speakers until their voices become familiar. Until the reader succeeds in identifying the voices, the novel seems absurdly abstract. Like many great 20th century novels JR does appear incomprehensible at the outset until the reader discovers a roadmap to navigate this vast stream of voices. If life is order disguised as chaos, then JR is the very height of verisimilitude as there is a reality inherent in this novel that is breakthrough by virute of its style and intricately woven in its storyline. This stream-of-voice in a sense captures the fine art of the ancient oral tradition of story-telling starting with Homer. Jose Saramago in Blindness experimented in a similar way in his novel of discovery and so does Joyce in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. JR is an important novel by a relatively obscure literary novelist worthy of the small but devoted readership of which it has become my privilege to join. In fact, I have just begun to read The Recognitions. If you are a serious reader of literary novels, then you owe it to yourself to read Gaddis. His novels are a national treasure: one only hopes that some day soon the nation will properly recognize it.

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!

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.