Brilliant, terrific. A must for Gaddis fans, and any writers of criticism (including all you Amazon hacks)!

And after reading this book that's as much as I dare say.

It's good finally to see William Gaddis's "ocassional" writings collected into one volume. For years, the only thing available was the super-rare and thus ridiculously expensive pirate edition, "The Uncollected Works of William Gaddis" published by the so-called Black Moon Press, whoever and wherever they were or weren't. While that underground classic might have had the drop on this legit book, "The Rush For Second Place" is more complete and up to date. Good stuff!

If you have actually seen this book in the material world, please contact me: John Soutter

Make no mistake: "Agape Agape" is not the mammoth achievement of prior Gaddis novels. However, it still is a worthwhile read brimming with ideas on every page.

A man is dying and from his bed he struggles to put his papers in order, to try to give shape to his last book. His mind races with all manner of thought mainly about society: the mechanization of the arts, society's dumbing down, player pianos, the Pulitzer Prize, school violence. All these thought threads come together in one overarching theme, and Gaddis's genius is not only in the ideas put forth but in his prose style: a style of fits and starts, sentences that run on incessantly, others that end abruptly to go on to the next thought. It is the perfect representation on paper of the thought processes of a dying intellectual man.

Admirers of both Gaddis's work as well as the work of Thomas Bernhard will gain much from this slim volume. Joseph Tabbi's afterword at the end puts this novella in context when viewed against Gaddis's entire ouevre.

Readers new to Gaddis might start with this one or "A Frolic of His Own."

Either way, treat yourself to this little book, one that deserves to be read more than once, one that deserves to be admired, one written by a largely overlooked American giant.

I have seldom if ever revised my opinion of an author based on a posthumous work-until now. I confess to having found the late William Gaddis' other (and in some circles, classic) novels (J.R., Frolic of His Own, The Recognitions, and Carpenter's Gothic) theoretically interesting and probably brilliant, but always far too long, very self-indulgent, difficult for its own sake and almost unreadable-in other words, they bored me, what I could get through of them.
This prejudice of mine is coupled with a general dislike for posthumous works in general-the kind where a Major Author left a work unfinished at death, and which is years after released and edited with an introduction or forward by some noted Scholar: ("This really IS a great book, all of Fitzgerald's/Hemingway's/Duras'/McGowin's major Themes are here," etc., etc.). Well, they very seldom are great works, and just as the act of Revision seems contrived to some (your Kerouac wannabes, perhaps), I, conversely, find the act of posthumous publication to itself be contrived-again, in general. Glenn Gould, the great pianist, once expressed his intense dislike of "live" recordings being released on record labels with the surrounding hoopla, and said he planned to do a "fake" live album, recorded in the studio, complete with mistakes and overdubbed with audience coughing, etc. Sony of course wouldn't go for it, but I've often wanted to write a "fake" posthumous novel, the Final (unfinished) Work of a Great American Novelist-I'll make it about 100 de-contextualized pages, with 200 pages of forwards, introductions, afterwards, and footnotes. Now that Dave Eggars is a Publisher, he should get in touch.
But in the case of Agape Agape, the Afterward is totally superfluous. The book was finished when Gaddis died, and I don't need to have that explained to me, nor do I care what Joseph Tabbi et. al. Think of it in the overall context of Gaddis' other novels or what it started out as or what Gaddis wanted it to achieve. It's 125 pages, and all of a piece, without section or chapter breaks, the perfect length for what is the most cohesive and affecting book the man ever wrote-the free-associations of a dying narrator who's afraid his lifelong goal to write the definitive history of the player piano will never come to fruition. Into this frenetic and breathless narrative, then, is woven...everything. What begins with the narrator's opinions concerning several aspects of the History and Future of Technology becomes a fictional autobiography the likes of which has rarely been achieved, cemented by the character's grasp of mortality and humanity, and by Gaddis' seamless and masterful narrative drive. He is ON.
This is a one or two-sitting book, and the reader will come away from it reeling. It's too brief for me to go into specifics, for the specifics are the book, the book is the plot-but if you've never read Gaddis, START HERE. And if you need to picture a Literary Precedent, think of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, perhaps, or of the best shorter work by Camus or John Hawkes-but only think. Because this book suceeds where Gaddis' other novels drag in that it also makes you feel.

William Gaddis' Agape Agape is a brilliant, philisophical rumination on the nature of contemporary society and its relationship to art and the artist. It's not really a novel, but rather a 100 page diatribe of a dying man trying to get his affairs in order before the end. He is in a bed somewhere, spilling water, bleeding slightly on his notes, his books. He talks to us about everything from the mundane (the blood) to the deeply philisophical (Plato and many, many others). I read this one one sitting in about an hour because it's that compelling and enjoyable. The conversation seamlessly moves from real estate matters to artistic matters. His commentary will make you chuckle, will make you shake your head in agreement. This is an interesting work and if you are looking from a step up from your average novel. Enjoy.

"The Recognitions" is the most important book of the past 100 years. William Gaddis was America's Joyce, America's Dickens. And too few people know who he is (or was, now). If you've never read him, do, and start here: "The Recognitions" is a big, beautiful, sprawling, hilarious, crazed trip through the world of counterfeiters (this word has myriad meanings in this novel) and groupies. Read it, if only to see how great America's literary tradition could have been if a few more writers had one-quarter Gaddis' courage.

When asked to explain The Recognitions, to cover all its unforgettable characters, exceptional dialogue, or breathtaking prose, you find yourself at a loss for words... Why this novel so unread is beyond me. Its big, yes, but goes by quickly; it has loads of references, yes, but who cares: if you get them, fine, if you don't, don't sweat it--they're not integral to the story. I think the biggest misconception is that the book is difficult. It is not. Not like Ulysses, or Gravity's Rainbow (must reads, too!)... it's simply a beautiful book full of characters you'll never forget. And it's hilarious to boot. Do yourself a favour and read it!

Shall I sing the love song of Otto & Esme?

Gaddis' Recognitions is a stunningly huge book, and if you have any appreciation at all for the likes of Thomas Pychon (ditto David Wallace and Kurt Vonnegut), you definitely should check this one out. It kicked off the whole mess. It's a postmodern headscratcher supreme.

The main character of the book, Wyatt Gwyon, drops out of the priesthood and eventually becomes an art forger, a practice that seems at odds with the pious life. But by the time the book is done, using the forgery of art as a symbol for all the world's forgeries and half-truths, the concepts of authorship, originality, faith, and reality itself all come into question.

The second plot, concerning a playwright named Otto, focuses on the act of artistic creation, the corruption of the publishing world, the parties and thoughts of so-called "intellectuals," and the basic moral poverty in America today.

In still another plot line, Stanley, the organ player, religious as any saint in the Bible (a slightly shorter book) is used to challenge notions of faith in every context - political, social, and religious.

Weaving these far-flung plots together is a difficult job, but Gaddis pulls it off with an effort that threatens to break through the pages. At times labored and over-dense, the book still comes off as a success. While balancing such a full plate research finds its way in, research on our collective past: Flemish art, Mithraism, early Catholicism, philosophy, protestantism, myth and folklore, stigmatics, ad absurdum, but it's also absolutely mind-boggling to behold.

This book is difficult, as complicated as any I've ever read, but the effort, though it requires an extraordinary one sometimes, pays off. If you read to rest your eyes don't let the sun set on you here; if not, challenge yourself!

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 ;-)

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.

After having read A Frolic of His Own, this one came as a real disappointment. Sure he skewers American culture but doesn't he take his potshots at some easy targets? The typical Gaddis dialogue is used to very little purpose here and I don't think the characters are at all as well developed as in Frolic. Maybe this book isn't long enough. Frolic, JR and Recognitions are all epics. It seems like he tossed this one of in a week or so to fulfill a contract. It's a good book but Gaddis can do this in his sleep.

Read A Frolic of His Own instead. There he turns the legal profession inside out rather than scoring easy points against obvious targets like Southern preachers and big corporations.

Gathering storm..Unfolds like a stage play on the floor boards of one rented house....any reader who gives this book a chance will be borne along ever faster and further by the magnificent, ranting dialogue which seems to reach from these rented rooms into every nefarious corner of American mischief; a sinister bible act of the Pat Robertson ilk with an African ministry(the entire rape of Africa is rendered in one amazing four or five page salvo), the unscrupulous wife-bullying moron who decides to act as his P.T.Barnum, and a host of other characters who fall into those two GADDIS categories(not mutually exclusive) of grotesque and disposessed. What a book!Gives evil many faces."As funny as hell"

Is there a bigger literary crime than the fact that so few read William Gaddis? Before his death in December '98, he may have been the best living American Author. Think of a slghtly more serious, but equally wicked Thomas Pynchon. Carpenter's Gothic is a tense, dense, explosive, beautiful, hilarious, acerbic and taut work of genius. Gaddis' ear for dialogue is frightening. He has few equals. His prose is Faulkner, Hawthorne, Joyce, Beckett - and nasty. Great satire here, targets being American everything, especially fundamentalist religion, foreign policy, and the media... This is easily his most accessible novel. WARNING: not for sensitive Christians!

I'm writing this review not as a general reader who likes everything from Umberto Eco (the sublime) to Douglas Adams (the ridiculous), but as someone with a particular interest in copyright to others with a similar interest (assuming you are not already a Gaddis fan). For such a reader, Gaddis's book is an incredible journey through the world of law in general, and copyright law in particular. A lawyer with any perspective ought to love this. Some of the materials are taken almost verbatim from actual cases, but with just enough twists to make it sometimes hilarious. I too noticed what I thought was a flaw in the analysis between federal and state law, but it turns out later that the purported flaw was intentional and plays an important part in the development of the plot!

The book is certainly not an easy read (with no quotation marks, and everyone annoyingly interrupting each other and not finishing sentences), and it takes 50-100 pages to learn how to read the book without getting too bogged down. But this is ultimately a brilliant work, and I recommend that any lawyer or professor or student interested in the field will ultimately get a lot out of it.

-Edward Samuels, author of The Illustrated Story of Copyright

This book, like Gaddis' other masterpiece, JR, made me repeatedly laugh out loud. While Gaddis is brilliant and innovative, the really important thing is that his best novels -- of which this is one -- are great fun to read. As for the reviewers who complain "why doesn't he use quotation marks?"; the answer is because the book wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable. Enjoying Gaddis comes from going with the frenetic flow of his rhythms. The reviewer who finds it "annoying" that characters keep interrupting each other is, with all due respect, missing the point. What's brilliant, and fun, about Gaddis, is the way the cumulative effect of those interruptions mirrors the sensation of certain real-life conversations. If you read a transcription of a spirited debate at a family dinner, or a tense business meeting, or whatever, you won't find many complete sentences. What you'll find is a collection of false starts, interruptions, and apparent non-sequiturs that resemble Gaddis' prose. In my experience, Gaddis's books are the type to which you need to surrender your consciousness and detachment to really enjoy them. To a certain extent, we've all been taught that to be truly intelligent or sophisticated readers, we need to hold part of our mind back to remain "critical" and to analyze the author's technique, and our own reactions, as we read. But if you read Gaddis while carefully searching for his "tricks" or "methods" and trying to discern the key to his authorial voice, you're doing yourself a disservice. It's all about immersion. If you just go with the flow, I don't think it's nearly as "difficult" as many people suggest, and it's as rewarding as reading can be.

William Gaddis writes like no other author, and his work is refreshing to read in a market that is simply clotted with bad and substandard writers that somehow manage to get published. He is truly original.
The book follows a motley cast of characters, none of them really likeable, but unswervingly human (and might I say American) if a tad over the top in obsessive behavior. But literature should stretch the human condition a bit to make characters interesting, especially when the goal is satire. The main character, Oscar Crease, is involved in a few lawsuits, the main one being a dispute over a play he wrote that may or may not have been stolen for a big budget Hollywood film.
I am truly not worthy to try to discuss the myriad facets of law, philosophy, literary value, and general twists the book takes, but I will say on finishing this novel I was consistently amazed at how Gaddis fills the characters with depth and turns the story in new ways.
If you haven't gleaned it already from the other reviews, Gaddis writes in a style that is almost all dialogue. Whatever is not dialogue turns into a kind of stream of consciousness prose that takes us from one scene into another, and really doesn't do more to describe action than what the dialogue already does. There are no quotation marks, no "he said's" or "she said's", and no identification of characters except occasional name dropping--you have to know who is speaking through the mannerism and word choice. And really, it only takes about 20 pages to get into the swing of things, and when you start reading it as though you were in the middle of the conversation the book really flows.
Also, Gaddis throws in some legal briefs, a couple of acts of a play, and a deposition--but don't be scared off by the legal jargon and change of style, because when you stick with it you realize in the middle of these events you are getting a glimpse into the ridiculousness of the whole issue and you can see the true humor of the situations.
Highly recommended if you like some originality and unique qualities to your literature. Plus it's just genuinely interesting and funny.