Scan barcode
A review by zach_collins
J R by William Gaddis
5.0
Holy crap, why haven't I read this sooner? People have recommended Pynchon and Roth and DeLillo but I had to stumble over Gaddis by chance. So thankful I found J R, easily the best novel I've read this year.
First blush, this novel looks like a beast; seven hundred pages, mostly unattributed dialogue (no quotation marks, mind you), and scene after exhaustive scene of stock market manipulations. However, after only a few pages, a rhythm is found and soon whole pages are whipping by. Gaddis, Mr. Difficult? Franzen couldn't be more wrong. Intelligent, breathtaking, hysterical, but never difficult.
That unattributed dialogue might scare some away, but each character has such a clear voice it takes little effort to identify each speaker. Occasionally, a whole gaggle of people carry on several conversations at once, mixing in with TV and radio programs, slowly devolving into a massive mess. Then the fun starts. Entropy is the buzz word for these sections. Finance, education, art, even romance, blur and eventually fall away, first bleeding into each other then simply bleeding out.
Considering the absurdity of the plot (eleven-year old entrepreneur building an empire of paper worth millions), the characters are surprisingly heart wrenching. Laugh-out-loud funny, more often than not, but each meticulously crafted dream that crumbled away left a tangible sense of loss on each affected character.
I needed a good laugh, and thankfully I found plenty of guffaws between the covers, but I was amazed by how authentically human the whole experience was. Picking up The Recognitions in the near future.
First blush, this novel looks like a beast; seven hundred pages, mostly unattributed dialogue (no quotation marks, mind you), and scene after exhaustive scene of stock market manipulations. However, after only a few pages, a rhythm is found and soon whole pages are whipping by. Gaddis, Mr. Difficult? Franzen couldn't be more wrong. Intelligent, breathtaking, hysterical, but never difficult.
That unattributed dialogue might scare some away, but each character has such a clear voice it takes little effort to identify each speaker. Occasionally, a whole gaggle of people carry on several conversations at once, mixing in with TV and radio programs, slowly devolving into a massive mess. Then the fun starts. Entropy is the buzz word for these sections. Finance, education, art, even romance, blur and eventually fall away, first bleeding into each other then simply bleeding out.
Considering the absurdity of the plot (eleven-year old entrepreneur building an empire of paper worth millions), the characters are surprisingly heart wrenching. Laugh-out-loud funny, more often than not, but each meticulously crafted dream that crumbled away left a tangible sense of loss on each affected character.
I needed a good laugh, and thankfully I found plenty of guffaws between the covers, but I was amazed by how authentically human the whole experience was. Picking up The Recognitions in the near future.