A Frolic of His Own

by William Gaddis

A satirically jaundiced view of modern law and justice chronicles the fortunes of Oscar Crease, a middle-aged college instructor and playwright, as he sues a Hollywood producer for pirating a play.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, American, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Classics

514 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

William Gaddis was the author of five novels. He was born in New York December 29, 1922. The circumstances why he left Harvard in his senior year are mysterious. He worked for The New Yorker for a spell in the 1950s, and absorbed experiences at the bohemian parties and happenings, to be later used as material in The Recognitions. Travel provided further resources of experience in Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Spain and Africa and, perhaps strangest to imagine of him, he was employed for a few years in public relations for a pharmaceutical corporation.

The number of printed interviews with Gaddis can be counted on one hand: he wondered why anyone should expect an author to be at all interesting, after having very likely projected the best of themselves in their work. He has been frequently compared with Joyce, Nabokov, and especially Pynchon.

Gaddis’s first novel, The Recognitions (1955) is a 956-page saga of forgery, pretension, and desires misguided and inexpressible. Critical response to the book ranged from cool to hostile, but in most cases (as Jack Green took pains to show in his book of rebuke, Fire the Bastards!). Reviewers were ill-prepared to deal with the challenge, and evidently many who began to read The Recognitions did not finish. The novel’s sometimes great leaps in time and location and the breadth and arcane pedigree of allusions are, it turns out, fairly mild complications for the reader when compared with what would become the writer’s trademark: the unrestrained confusion of detached and fragmentary dialogue.

Gaddis’s second book, JR (1975) won the National Book Award. It was only a 726 pages long driven by dialogue. The chaos of the unceasing deluge of talk of JR drove critics to declare the text “unreadable”. Reading Gaddis is by no means easy, but it is a more lacerating and artfully sustained attack on capitalism than JR, and The Recognitions.

Carpenter's Gothic (1985) offered a shorter and more accessible picture of Gaddis's sardonic worldview. The continual litigation that was a theme in that book becomes the central theme and plot device in A Frolic of His Own (1994)—which earned him his second National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. There are even two Japanese cars called the Isuyu and the Sosumi.

His final work was the novella Agapē Agape which was published in 2002. Gaddis died at home in East Hampton, New York, of prostate cancer on December 16th, 1998.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Towards the end of the novel, Christina (one of the clearest ripostes to the contention that Gaddis’ oeuvre lacks strong, admirable female characters), states in one short line a summation of the core of every one of Gaddis' books. They are:

“about failing at something worth doing because there was nothing worse for a man than failing at something that wasn’t worth doing in the first place simply because that’s where the money was, it was always the money…”

Wyatt in The Recognitions, Edward Bast and Jack Gibbs in JR, Mr. McCandless in the Gothic, and Oscar (and perhaps, even sadder, Harry) in the Frolic. The great conflict inherent in the Capitalist system between Art and Money. It is the great theme of the modern age, and Gaddis is its greatest dissector.

His works are vital, both in the sense of being full of life, and being essential for any literate, concerned, modern Human Being.

And now, in homage, and in support, and in response to Mr Franzen who said of this wonderful book that it is "repetitive, incoherent, and insanely boring" (to which I say - pot - kettle - black):

___________________________________________

  W Gaddis
Defendant
05 October 2013 

IN THE HIGH COURT OF FICTION
GOODREADS DIVISION

B E T W E E N : -


JONATHAN FRANZEN

  Claimant

And

WILLIAM GADDIS (ex-corpus and ex-vivo)

  Defendant

WITNESS STATEMENT OF JONATHAN MORTON


I Jonathan William Morton of this here corner of Goodreads say as follows: -


1. I make this witness statement in support of the Defendant's application for summary judgment against the Claimant on the issues of liability in respect of alleged breaches of contract and for an order for directions for damages to be assessed against him. The facts and matters set out in this statement are within my own knowledge unless otherwise stated, and I believe them to be true. Where I refer to information supplied by others, the source of the information is identified; facts and matters derived from other sources are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

2. I am a reader of the Defendant's Novels and have read the entirety of his fictional output as published during his lifetime (the "Works"). I have read, and subsequently been informed in detail about, the Claimants claims against the Defendant in respect of the Works. In particular I note that the Claimant claims the following:

2.1. that there exists at all times a binding contractual relationship between the creator of the Works (the "Author") and its readers (the "Reader");

2.2. that such a contractual relationship places certain obligations on the Author, most importantly an obligation to ensure that a certain level of enjoyment is experienced by the Reader during its consumption of the Works, and, furthermore, the Works do, at all material times, remain clear and readily comprehensible to the Reader; and

2.3. the Works repeatedly breach the obligations outlined in paragraph 2.2 above and that, accordingly, the Author should be held fully accountable and liable for such breaches.

3. I deny the truth, validity and applicability of the Claimant's claims, as detailed in Clause 2 above. The reasons for such a submission are as follows:

3.1. In respect of the Claim made in Clause 2.1 above, it is denied that there exists, or has ever existed, any such contractual relationship between the Author and the Reader. The Author has illimitable freedom to create as he or she feels fit, and to structure the Works in whatever manner best serves his purpose. The Reader is similarly free to read in whatever manner he or she feels appropriate;

3.2. In respect of the Claim made in Clause 2.2 above, it is denied that any obligations are placed on the Author at any time in respect of the Reader's response to, or experience of, the Works. Accordingly, the Author does not have any responsibility should the Reader fail to gain pleasure from the Works;

3.3. Notwithstanding the above, and despite the fact that the Defendant refutes the Claimant's allegations in their entirety, as a Reader of the Works, I am well placed to respond to the Claim made in Clause 2.3 above. At no material time did I ever cease to receive enjoyment from the Works. Furthermore, at no material time did I find the Works impenetrable, confusing or otherwise deficient in the essentials of a great novel. I do not claim the Works are easily consumed, nor do I claim they are without complexity. However, it is clear that such alleged "difficulty" is, in fact, one of the main sources of enjoyment to be found in the Works, and indicative of the superiority and sophistication of the Works.

4. I believe that there is no real prospect of the Claimant proving that the Defendant has either responsibility or liability for its claim. There is also no other reason for the case to be disposed of at trial. Accordingly the Defendant respectfully asks for an order giving him judgment against the Claimant with damages to be assessed.

I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

Signed
J Morton
Dated 05 October 2013

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

J. Franzen says about A Frolic of His Own that “its only aesthetic weakness, really, is that much of it is repetitive, incoherent, and insanely boring.” Repetitive? No but listen there are about 600 pages here of unstylised dialogue where the protagonists use the same phrases ad nauseam and run-on sentences like we do in life what else did you say, Franzen? Incoherent? No but listen there is a plot here, a satirical plot about lawsuits and an avaricious professor and listen did you remember to peel the potatoes? what was I saying about the incoherent plot? it might be incoherent but that doesn’t mean the legal satire isn’t in the best absurdist tradition because it is and although like Franzen I don’t see . . . hang on whose voice is transmitting now, is this Franzen speaking? How about insanely boring? No but listen you can’t have a near 600pp novel written almost entirely in dialogue no sprouts for me thanks I hate the things without a few lags . . . well the last 200 pages are sort of one long lag and the momentum of the first 400 with its whirling-dervish satire is cancelled and replaced with well incoherence is the word but listen Gaddis is a pioneer of the free-floating narratorless narrative no but there is a narrator, like a camera lens he pops up to narrate in unusual ways, as I said like a camera describing certain movements the characters are making mostly the protagonist groping his floozie . . . but I said I didn’t want sprouts weren’t you oh never mind I’ll take them anyway no but listen Franzen was wrong because this isn’t a waste of time it simply isn’t a particularly successful novel. Did he finish it? Who is he? Franzen? No, MJ. No. Bailed on p526. Wimp. At least Franzen a real man got to the end no thanks I don’t want anymore Gaddis I mean gravy, I said I don’t want anymore gravy.

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

юридичний роман про мову суду, законів і документів. про людину, яка подає в суд на себе, бо на нього наїхало власне авто. про єпископальну церкву (Episcopal), яка позивається до корпорації Pepsi-Cola (бо ж анаграма!). про судилище над сучасною сталевою скульптурою "Циклон 7", у якій застряг пес, де і загинув через удар блискавки. про те, що раніше гроші були барометром порядку, а тепер стали барометром безладу.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Justice? --You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

One of the greatest opening lines in the history of the novel.

Why does Gaddis choose such an easy target for his wit and satire, the law and its attendant system of legalism and legalese? To save the language. The language of the law is opaque to most of us not versed in it. But as with any technical and conventional language it is precise, addresses directly and clearly the phenomena, difficulties, concepts, REALITY which we encounter in our murky worlds and relations as human beings. And the language of law attends to itself as a language, how it expresses itself, covers itself and its reality. Gaddis found himself fascinated with legal language to the same high degree that readers of Proust are fascinated with Proust’s prose and Heidegger with the sayings of the pre-socratics, recovering what was covered over by an obscuring Latin; all three seeking to recover something which is passed over in our everyday bungling of our inept relationship with what we say and how we say it.

But what about the novel which Gaddis did not write, and the novel which perhaps only Gaddis could write, the kind of novel which will not be written in an age following the decline of the systems novel, the novel of industry; and if not the systems novel of our Gaddises and Pynchons, how about a revivification of that old-timey social realist novel ::

Health care? --You get health care in the next world, in this world you have health insurance.

I mean to say that beyond the congressional=military=industrial complex, what threatens internal USAian politics, society, economy, well=fare and well=being, is the obscene state of our heath care industry. There is a novel to be written here.

A patient in a hospital room with Television playing, nurse enters; nurse performs task; returns to nurses station, chats with coworker about weekend plans, answers phone; family enters to visit patient with flowers and kids in tow; there’s a doctor doing rounds with perhaps a few medical students, it’s a teaching hospital; a janitor mops the floor, another has his head in the ceiling; the patient perhaps has insurance, doesn’t have insurance; was injured, has a life-threatening disease or not; doctors have a morning conclave with cellophane-wrapped croissant ham sandwiches; an administrator makes rounds; some tech sysadmin person still trying to get the paperless transition papered over; nurses bitch about the scheduling; they wonder whether it’d be better to have union representation, or maybe they do and there’s a new contract to negotiate, possible picketing; meanwhile our administrator returns to her office to count more beans; it’s a for=profit hospital and there are a lot beans to count; or it’s a not-for-profit hospital and grants need writing but the pool of grant money is drying up for some reason or there’s a large donor who’s nervous about the recent Joint Commission report; or maybe it’s a religious institution and some recent laws passed about birth control have a few dogmatists nervous about funding; and then someone threatened the staff in the ER last night with what we thought was a gun, the police are still milling around collecting information and conducting five=minute interviews; which is all complicated enough but then there are a dozen or so insurance companies who have actuaries predicting the future of the population and its health and then some politicians who’d like to just get rid of the entire insurance scam and simply provide single-payer health care for all citizens and even some non-, with the backing of like 60% of the population in a democracy but this would shut down the insurance industry so we’ve got to save them too and the money they spend getting our people elected into various houses and offices; and there’s a farm bill which is making people sicker by selling them things made out of inedible No 2 field corn in the form of big macs but that’s a pretty lucrative sector of the economy so we can’t shut them down just spend more money on sick people is good for the economy; and as long as people are buying things poison doesn’t matter; but this isn’t what we see when we see the interior of a hospital on the television screen in the various hospital rooms which have the television on for the patient who is unfortunate enough to have to spend even a single hour in this dungeon...... It’s not like you can actually get any serious reading done or reviews written under these working conditions.

I don’t know. But it’s a novel that won’t get written because I’ve heard that Hystierical Realism is out and something called The New Sincerity (is that a threat?) is in; and what we want to read about is honesty and integrity and a good person and authentic experience and consciousness and first-personness ;; and but we lose when our writers of big square books are not bothering to pay attention and think through what are in fact incredibly large sectors of our lives. And instead of a Gaddis addressing the crisis of health care in the USofA we have little more than a Michael Moore with his Sicko!, and so I’m wondering why we don’t have our greatest fictional minds thinking about these things;

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps due to the very small number of novels Gaddis ever saw published in his life (but including the masterpiece that is Agapē Agape), he’s one of but a few authors that spring to mind that never dropped anything other than golden eggs. This is no exception. I believe it was Gass (could’ve been that dipshit that said WG’s first novel was the whateverwhateverblurb ‘hardest he’d ever read of his own volition’) (assuming, what, reading-at-gunpoint was/is a commonplace for him?) that noted that Gaddis was the inversion of the rule of mellowing with age. I don’t entirely agree, as, sure, everything from the ‘70s-on is just dripping with slimy fucks usually being struck down by some Hand of God with a pithy, money-forward quip slipping out with the life force, but there’s also a playfulness and attention to the purely dumb human animal that can’t be called anything less than affectionate. Bill is righteously pissed, but he’s bemused. Of course Gass knew him and read his books better than I, but I’ve always felt a loosening of the analogical death grip over the arch bridging the debut and this. Besides: you all remember how The Recognitions ends, right? Big ol’ fucking organ?

My point, assuming there is one, is that Gaddis’ anger with human greed, violence, racism, allthebigshit was not his idée fixe, rather, that those were the consequent results of what was: human stupidity and his total, stabbing here, endless fascination with it. You can’t read this and not read a man enraptured by the absurdity of Human Disposability. His, mine, yours, the royal ours. All of it. Bunch of dumb motherfuckers doing dumb shit while gassing the import into a dumb hole in the ground all the faster. That’s us. Own it, Gaddis urges in Frolic—at least there’s honesty there, and maybe the possibility of some sort of grace in the purity of the physical, temporal joys. His attention may be ostensibly focused on the law, but, as he points out, the law is precisely language. It is the finiteness of language in, theoretically, its purest iteration. So we’re given a book by an unparalleled master of language in which he skewers language—in, naturally, the perfectly original language only he could execute.

If that isn’t testimony and recommendation of my own allegiance to the Gaddis View as espoused herein, I don’t know what will be. Hey…what about…Maybe not one, no, but TWO brand new revolutionary oven mitts made of space age polymers included FREE with your order if you act now?

[Sentimental Surrealist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pynchon isn't the only preeminent postmodernist subjected to a (largely un-postmodern) "major work"/"minor work" dichotomy. If you believe the word on the street about Gaddis, the big ones are the Recognitions and JR, and the lesser ones are Carpenter's Gothic and this one, with this one getting a little more "major-Gaddis" cred because of its quasi-iconic first sentence. And if you look at my ratings, you might think that I'm on board that train as well; I do, after all, have this book rated a full star lower than either of Gaddis' first two, and I haven't even read Carpenter's Gothic yet.

And yet, I don't think it quite breaks down so simply, because A Frolic of His Own occupies a unique place in, and in many ways adds to, Gaddis' oeuvre. Like JR, Frolic is written mostly in dialog, which might be perceived as laziness until you consider the way Gaddis expands upon that dialog; he expands it out from characters talking to excerpts from scripts, courtroom records, newspaper articles and a legal decision, each serving their own purpose with regard to the novel's themes, each conversing with and building on each other. Formally, it's an advance over JR, and it's easy for me to read it as an attempt to push into new territory Gaddis might've gotten to if he'd lived to complete novel number five. Gaddis also juggles a number of moving parts by, paradoxically, not juggling them; his decision to let the plot pile like a Jenga structure made of kudzu is bold and beautiful.

Yet, for all the advancing Gaddis does - so much that it definitely qualifies as an important novel re his development as a novelist - it's a step back in one major way: characterization. Only Christina, the eternally and internally conflicted voice of reason, emerges as memorable in the same way as earlier Gaddis characters - Wyatt, Basil, Recktall and Stanley from the Recognitions, JR and Bast from JR. As it stands, Oscar Crease's monomania is funny to read about, as Gaddis remains a great comedian, but he never quite comes alive, even in the fractured postmodern character-deliberately-as-abstract way. So it's hard to really tell where to put A Frolic of His Own, beyond to say that the "major novel/minor novel" dynamic isn't what it looks like. Still worth your time, of course; Gaddis is Gaddis.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's so much to say about this... That is to say, I despair, in this format, of doing justice to the scope of this--probably Gaddis's weakest--novel justice. To get the review part out of the way: If he'd written only this I'd probably be hailing it as the greatest great American novel of all time. As is, it's the weakest of the author's first 4--I've yet to read Agape, Agape (but I snagged a used copy in San Francisco this summer so it won't be long now).

Specifically, A Frolic of His Own takes on justice and it's earthly version, the law. But, as usual for Gaddis, that's only a stepping stone into the massive labyrinth of being in and of the United States of America--what it means to be an individual living in and with that particular culture (or lack thereof) in the twentieth century. (Ostensibly set in the decade in which it was written, the 1980s, only a passing reference to the AIDS crises really dates it. Put it in your post-WWII catalogue and leave it at that.)

While our so-called minorities are represented here--a black lawyer and an undocumented Hispanic who works for a garage--the point of view is certainly white and Middle--or even upper--Class. And, yes, the portrait is one of a rickety, narcissistic male's hold on the auto-generated concepts of what those things mean. Which is brilliant. And which is also to say that the novel, like the truly great work of art that it is, is prescient and well informs how the U.S.A. has mutated in the three decades since the novel's publication into Trumpistan. (For, while our protagonists here are all childless, I can easily see an imaginary next generation of these people basking in the past to which Oscar, the protagonist, alternately clings and rages against as they shuffle off to menial jobs at Walmart and Home Depot, their legacy squandered, and looking for new immigrants and new minorities to blame for the culture of parasitism that their forefathers created, that culture having destroyed them all, both spiritually and materially.)

The core of the U.S. sickness, which I would call the flipside of the humanistic ideal; to wit: the narcissism of the pre-Baby Boom white American artists, professors, lawyers, and businessmen of the 1980s who deludedly believed that they belonged to the greatest generation of the greatest nation of the country with the greatest government in the greatest place ever in the history of humankind expands into themes of alcoholism, commercialism, phoniness in all business dealings (even Dale Carnegie gets an honorable mention), fiscal irresponsibility, the shabbiness of art and film as they were degraded into "popular culture" and "entertainment," an opportunistic sue-happy culture, a lack of ethics or loyalty, entitlement, American exceptionalism, religion as capitalist scam, casual misogyny, casual, entitled racism, etc. etc. So many beautifully intertwined and inter-related themes in such a beautifully composed fugue of humorous disgust and outrage. I loved it.

Certainly Gaddis was at the height of his powers as a composer of sentences, as comfortable with his very original style as he would ever be--formally Frolic is 95% the stilted, realistic-yet-mesmerizing logorrhoea of dialogue of JR and 5% the exquisitely lyric run-on prose of The Recognitions. yet I call A Frolic of His Own Gaddis's weakest novel. For, despite the stylistic acumen and the beautiful intertwining of themes, there's some small spark missing that glows so brightly in the three novels that preceded Frolic I can't quite put my finger on it here, but I felt its lack. So I'll just call it the fourth greatest great American novel and leave it at that.

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the two of his novels I have read, William Gaddis used a very unique style. It consists primarily of dialogue. There is no indication who is saying what. In fact, characters are not explicitly identified. There is no, Bob said, or Jane said. Sometimes in saying something a character will refer to another character by name; the person referenced might be the character being spoken to or it might be a character not currently present. Dialogue is not identified; it is often mixed with a description of what a character is doing. There are small details provided intermittently that define relationships between characters; you rarely come across these details when they would be conveniently helpful. Punctuation is spotty. Not often indicated are scene shifts, when a character is exiting a conversation, and when a new character enters a conversation. Conversations with three or more characters can be especially tricky. In an interview, which he rarely gave, Gaddis said that in several of his novels “there was the whole concept of authorial absence". His style accomplishes this.

Reading Gaddis might sound difficult, but it turns out not to be. Once you determine how the dialogue works and develop a feel for the flow, the reading process becomes relatively easy and quick. The first Gaddis novel I read, J R, was a satire on U.S. high finance. A Frolic of His Own is a satire of the legal profession and legal system in the U.S. The opening sentence says it all: "Justice? -- You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law." Gaddis describes American culture as well as any author I have read; while depicting its frequent crudeness, so that we want to laugh and cry, Gaddis celebrates it. His novels, now 30 to 40 years old, do not feel dated. And he does it all with satire, such that I spent much of the novel grinning.

I did not initially like any of the characters in A Frolic of His Own, but their appeal grew. They all have a bit of manic quality, which makes their conversations run forward like a speeding train, out of control, about to go off the rails. The characters regularly interrupt each other, which injects even more energy and urgency into the dialogue. While some of the legal situations and cases that are integral to the story are bizarre, they also feel like something you might read about in a newspaper tomorrow. For instance, the main character, Oscar, runs over himself while trying to hot-wire his own car and then attempts to sue the “owner” for damages. Perhaps the expression, only in America, might apply.

The intelligence Gaddis exhibits in his novels is incredible, and yet you don’t feel the author is trying to impress you in any way. The intelligence comes through in the author’s unique style as well as in the complexities of the story and its characters. Gaddis not only displayed extensive knowledge of the American legal system and the business of the law, the egos and the demands it places on those in the profession, but he also appeared to have a broad and deep understanding of the American Civil War, it’s military maneuvers and dominant figures; his knowledge culminates in vivid descriptions of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff and the Battle of Antietam.

Because of the unique style, I was not looking forward to reading either J R or A Frolic of His Own. I found, though, that I enjoyed both. Unfortunately, I don’t feel I can confidently recommend them to anyone. I think I would have to know a lot about a particular reader’s likes and dislikes before I could make such a recommendation.

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Justice and the Law, huh? With "A Frolic of His Own" William Gaddis has blown the lid off this coop and the chickens come home to roost under the starry firmament that's a glittering, blithering endless nebulae much like the idea of judicial finality in a court of law. Or like Hamlet says 'words, words, words' the legal kaleidoscope of point counterpoint I'll thrash you, you, me, file a motion make yer head spin like a hooty barn owl on mouse crack. Oscar Crease, our pawn our foil says it's all farce, may as well sit catatonic in front of the boob tube and swill pinot while Rome burns, Nero sawing at the strings, ass over teakettle oblivion. This hardy har har takedown of what we supposedly call our bedrock of freedom, the rule of law the rights of every citizen for a chance to assert his/her inalienable freedom to be anything they can create IS only as good as the house of cards it sets on. Do the lawyers or the bankers or the politicians really believe that this system can be prolonged indefinitely, or at least propped whilst they get theirs and screw the pooch of a next generation, or the environment or the very fabric of family hearth gone cold. Plato's Republic and biblical verse are evoked repeatedly 'laying up treasures in heaven' - whose a slave to what and if some are just naturally meant to embrace a lesser or servitude existence while their masters look out for their sheep only to be fleeced into the bargain.



I've thought about that 10,000 hours of practice thing, a threshold of learning and doing, in my case the reading and thinking about books and what it means to engage with authors' realm of creating narratives reflecting bit/pieces of what's purportedly our "real world." Guys like Gaddis have distinct signatures, sure hands at style and composure, a real sensibility for their readers' appetite for both surprise and confirmation that whether or not cogito ergo sum sums qualitatively may never be fully understood but it serves as basis with which all things human in generative fact abide. Gaddis is a cool cat and slings his wares onto hot tin roofs so that a sizzle is ours, brains lit up like a Griswald spectacle of gaud and pomp, we us readers get paid, our suits and zoots skippity doo da day!

[Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oscar ( like Edward Bast in JR) serves as a punching bag for bureaucratic forces outside of his control. This is a very funny book, but some pacing issues made me ditch it for days or weeks at a time. The readings of Oscar's play, starting around the 100 page mark, completely killed the momentum for me, as did any of the scenes summarizing the remainder of the play/ the movie that he alleges ripped it off. Stylistically, it could be argued that these choices make sense given Gaddis's dialogue-heavy, theater-like method of storytelling. Reading sections of a bad play in the middle of a good book just didn't hold my interest. Despite my qualms, this is still very much worth reading. I like it more than The Recognitions and Carpenter's Gothic, but less than JR.

[Ian Scuffling · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the annals of the William Gaddis literati, The Recognitions and J R seem to get all the love, and rarely do you hear as much about Carpenter's Gothic, or A Frolic of His Own, which I'll call Gaddis's final novel since Agape isn't very good nor is it very complete, and it's also like barely 100 pages. But I might argue Frolic could be Gaddis at his best.

Centering on Oscar Crease, the son of a successful judge who in turn was the son of a successful Supreme Court Justice, the novel unfolds as the younger Crease seeks restitution for what he perceives a thievery of not just a Civil War-based play he's written, but a theft of his family's history as the play loosely retells a story of his grandfather. Gaddis's primary concern is immediate in the first words of the novel, but it's merely an entry into larger themes that are essentially the synthesis of Gaddis's previous three novels, including--but not limited to--philosophy of art and the artist, money and wealth, and, tied into all of the above, the essence of human greed in all of it's forms (from the malevolent to the banal).

Like J R, Frolic is told mostly through dialogue, which Gaddis has perfected--while there are few if any attributions to the dialogue, there is music and nuance to each voice so that it's not all that challenging to understand who is speaking. What's more, in-dialogue cues seamlessly clue readers into present action without the need for much exposition--the reaction to a ringing phone or some other interruption like another character entering the room. This style gives a speedy, quick-witted quality to the writing, and also lends itself to a lot of humor as quirks and idiosyncrasies of the characters play out.

With the lawsuit concerning the blockbuster film that is charged with stealing Oscar's play, Gaddis explores the philosophical understanding of what makes art art. This is especially clear in a section where Oscar is deposed by the film's legal counsel. We learn that Oscar's play has several homages and even verbatim uses of Plato and others, which Oscar finds as distinct from the kind of intellectual theft the film performs on his play. The film, Oscar assumes is vulgar and dumbed down (without having seen it), and argues it's an inferior product that damages his original play. So what makes Oscar's intellectual theft art and the films theft not? Is there a worthwhile distinction to be made in high v. low brow art? How does intellectual theft/homage/pastiche play out in artistic expression? And when does that kind of "borrowing" become a theft rather than an intellectual, artful exercise?

The final thing I think here is the power of money and greed. Oscar, while seemingly seeking Justice, is really only pursing "the Law" and within the law, justice only comes in the form of money. There's something really interesting going on here with Oscar, who is otherwise pretty well endowed, but seeks outrageous-seeming sums of cash for trespasses on him--he seeks justice in the form of cometary compensation while bemoaning a society that is money obsessed.

In many ways, I think Gaddis may be the master of this "era" of fiction--he matches style with wit, intellect with baud, and his novels are rigorously, immensely engaging explorations of what defines post-war American-ness. Plus, he has that kind of cantankerous, smirking anger at society that I can get behind.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me, this is Gaddis' most accessible work. It's lively, funny, and not nearly as obscure or as bewildering as his other novels. As a law teacher, I love the opening line: "Justice?--You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law." Too true!

[Antonio Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡GADDIS, GADDIS, GADDIS! 🎊
Sentencia: excelso.

Monumento a este señor, por favor. Un titán del sarcasmo y la elocuencia, además de analítico y (brutal) maestro del diálogo. Su pasatiempo favorito me ha resultado divertidísimo y especialmente agudo. Su dosis de ingenio es abrumadora.

Los diferentes sistemas que engloba Gaddis están totalmente desquiciados: desde el individuo hasta las diferentes capas sociales y la situación jurídica y política del país (EEUU). Alta podredumbre, infestada por el poderoso caballero, don Dinero. Sus personajes: ensimismados, neuróticos, verborreicos, fuera de la brújula de la sensatez. Son veletas víctimas de un funcionamiento global. El vacío es terrible, desolador.

El pasatiempo favorito: ¡Litigios, litigios y más litigios! Una afición/costumbre del país que emplea Gaddis para analizar con sorna la banalidad y pretensiones absurdas que aquejan a la sociedad contemporánea estadounidense. Nos encontramos ante un páramo desértico en el que se construye un sistema irrisorio y fatal. Pero Gaddis nos lo narra con gran talento, de una forma divertida y fascinante.
¡Brillante!

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, A Frolic of His Own. I was told going in that it was funnier than JR (which made me laugh more than any other novel I had read up to that point). Personally, I still think JR is funnier (not to mention Gaddis’ ultimate masterpiece), but Frolic features a simpler story and a smaller cast of characters; the reading is less demanding and therefore (arguably) more enjoyable.

While JR remains my personal favorite of the two, Frolic has a number of things going for it. It’s witty as hell, the dialogue is unbelievably lifelike, the story moves along very quickly and it features the most likeable cast of characters Gaddis ever assembled (not to mention the strongest female character he ever wrote). It’s a relentlessly, wickedly funny send-up of all things litigious.

I won’t say much about the story, but I particularly enjoyed the subplot about the dog stuck inside of/underneath the outdoor metal sculpture and the media/legal/retail circus that ensues as a result. Oh, and Oscar’s automobile mishap and his pursuit of justice (against himself, technically) is priceless.

I’d say this would make for an ideal starting place with Gaddis were it not for the fact that it offers clarity on (or spoils, if you haven’t already read it) the ending of his previous novel, Carpenter’s Gothic. So please, read Carpenter’s Gothic first and then tackle this one. You’ll be glad you took my advice.

To conclude, Gaddis’ final proper novel is a winner, start to finish. It’s not HIS masterpiece, but it is A masterpiece of American fiction any way you slice it. An easy five stars all the way. Read it.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like most Gaddis (the most extreme example being JR), consists of mostly dialogue, with brief interjections of action in between, almost like stage directions, such that the book (lacking any chapter divisions) reads straight through like one continuous scene, though the action takes place over at least a few weeks. An additional Gaddis quirk is the Joycean/continental use of dashes to indicate dialogue beginning, with no corresponding "close quote", leading to frequent passages like

—Well it’s late enough Oscar, I brought out some sturgeon, maybe we’ll just want lunch? But he’d already ordered up tortellini for lunch, told that woman to fix it in some broth and then something in an Alfredo sauce and salad if anyone could find her, bad enough just trying to find anything herself, scissors, any scissors, those ginger preserves, his copy of Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! because he certainly couldn’t scale the shelves in the library the mess it was in since they’d moved things around to put a bed in there for him where he couldn’t reach the phone that had already ring twice since he’d been left sitting here in the rain, abandoned was really the word for it, he’d had her look in his room upstairs for his play in a black pebbled binder and she finally came down with an old address book and the papers, had they brought out the newspapers? Not that he could read them if they had because that was the worst of it, his glasses, —what that woman could have done with my glasses I haven’t been able to read anything but the headlines since the day before the, the mail even the mail, wherever she’s hidden the mail like every illiterate in this whole illiterate country I have to watch the news trimmed to fit that damned little screen between the hemorrhoid and false teeth commercials, can you imagine what the rest of the audience looks like? America has taken Spot to its heart, did you see it last night? Every idiot in sight down there with something to sell, dog candy, hot dogs, Free Spot! buttons, Free Spot! T shirts, Spot dolls with huge wet eyes and that whole hideous Cyclone Seven? peddling this take apart puzzle model and a game where you try to get the dog out with magnets shaped like a dog bone? Marching around for animal rights, artists’ rights, black rights, right to life, abortion, gun control, Jesus loves and the flags, Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars and then somebody . . .

The plot concerns Oscar, a self-absorbed and reclusive history professor living in the family mansion in the Hamptons, who is suing the producers of a major Civil War movie he claims have stolen a play he wrote decades earlier. That play, quoted extensively in the book, is ponderous and Socratic - parts of Plato's dialogues are quoted almost verbatim - and bears a passing resemblance to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (and eventually O'Neill's estate ends up suing Oscar). Oscar is frequently visited by his gold-digging hick girlfriend Lily, sister Christine and her husband Harry (a lawyer who comes closest to the Stephen Dedalus-like Otto of The Recognitions: learned, cynical, with literary leanings). As the reader must guess who is talking, each has a distinct style, but all Gaddis characters speak in a frantic, self-interrupting, torrent. Thus between other experimental flourishes, like long passages of drama, legal rulings, or news articles, the book reads most like the fast, witty plays of Noel Coward or David Mamet (or more classically, Sheridan's School for Scandal, which appears peripherally in the novel). Lawsuits multiply (Oscar is also suing the manufacturer of his car, since he accidentally ran himself over trying to start it; Christina's friend is suing the father of her aborted foetus to maintain her right to abort it, while suing a hospital for foetal endangerment; and a dog trapped in a metal sculpture in Greenwich Village creates a ping-pong of suits and countersuits...). If there is a theme it might lie in Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., whose Civil War experiences made him a moral and philosophical skeptic, and led to the watershed of legal realism, something Oscar's grandfather, a colleague of Holmes', fiercely opposed. By 1994 (when the novel takes place) it is clear Holmes has won - as the book opens

Justice? – You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law

Overall it is a chaotic, mandarin satire of the inane wasteland of American culture; learned, entertaining and fiercely misanthropic.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gaddis still holds up. America is hilarious.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Frolic of His Own is more difficult than The Recognitions, less difficult than JR and way less difficult than Carpenter’s Gothic, which I found impenetrable. Punctuation is only the tip of the iceberg that the reader has to plow through to reach appreciation of this comic masterpiece. Numerous subplots, an epic cast of characters, Latin and legalese, whiplash shifting of POV (perhaps it’s the shifting of no point of view), the integration/interruption of the main narrative with background sounds and images (similar to the famous scene in Madame Bovary when Rodolphe seduces Emma against the backdrop of an agricultural fair auctioneer selling swine), several fonts, formatted excerpts from plays and movies, transcriptions of depositions. Why write a book this way? To capture the mania of our absurd contemporary life.

The main plot involves Harry Crease, steeped in law, history and family legend, suing Constantine Kiester, a Hollywood producer, for plagiarizing Once at Antietam , Crease’s hard wrought Civil War play, which years ago Crease had shopped around. Kiester’s movie is called The Red in the Red, White and Blue, a cinematic bloodbath that includes a scene described by one critic as “the most widely discussed mass rape scene in screen history.”

Disgruntled writers sue Hollywood for plagiarism daily, but what makes Oscar’s suit so wonderful is summed up by Oscar’s sister, Christina: [I’m forced to use quotes]”—Well my God Oscar what’s the problem then. You’re furious because they’ve stolen your play and then you’re furious because there’s nothing like it in the movie anywhere, how do you expect anybody to take you seriously if you...”

Oscar contends that even if his work has been distorted out of all resemblance, it’s still his work, (based on the Crease family history) that has been distorted. And so the suit—against all odds of winning—is pursued. This is the spine of the novel: Christina’s husband, Harry (a lawyer) says, “He goes off on a frolic of his own writes a play and expects the world to roll out the carpet for...” When Christina asks what this “Frolic of his own” means, Harry explains, “—Just a phrase, comes up some times in case of imputed negligence, the servant gets injured or injures somebody else on the job when he’s not doing what he’s hired for, not performing any duty owing to the master, voluntarily undertakes some activity outside the scope of his own employment like...”

Compounding the complications of Oscar’s suit are numerous other suits both intersecting and tangential to Oscar’s. Jardnyce and Jardnyce times ten.

One of the suits has Oscar suing himself for running over himself with his own car. Frank Gribble, a representative of the insurance agency meets with Oscar and asks to be shown the vehicle. Oscar is compliant.

“—Examine the car of course, I only want justice after all.
--It’s garaged at your, at the place of the accident I can’t find the, what kind of car is it.
--Sosumi
--I’m being quite serious Mister Crease.
--So am I. it’s a Japanese car, a Sosumi.”

From the sublime to slapstick. Iceberg ahead, captain!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coulda shoulda been half the length. Cut the first part about Spot vs Sysyk. Requires close attention, this being Gaddis' trademark ambiguity within dense dialogue. The legal matters about copyright, intellectual property, novelty and originality of creative entertainments prove surprisingly durable, and remain interesting 30 years later, given "A Frolic"'s one of the last "big" novels to take place when front page rather than touch screen grabbed our public eye; otherwise "we" were clueless circa the middle of the Nineties. One realizes how delayed was the dissemination of information.

However, the frequent recourse to this for plot shifts, along with the ever-ringing phone (some things never change), for moving the action, or often lack of, forward gets tiresome. So does the reliance upon what the characters are watching on t.v. as to the news and ads. The people populating this (and there's slight overlap with the similar "Carpenter's Gothic") simply aren't that captivating. It's like a play set in a manse removed from the life we know. Yeah, I get this is social satire. But as with the mid-80's "CG" (see my recent review), there's little that's novel about Gaddis' take. Unbelievable to think that three decades ago, this earned a National Book Award, contrasted with the pandering patronizing dreck that usually wins prizes and plaudits nowadays.

So, it has its moments. I learned what "laches" and "per stirpes" mean in legalese. And how every profession deploys language as a "self-regulating" "conspiracy against the public." E.M. Cioran is quoted: God may mark the fall of every sparrow, but He doesn't do anything about it. The titular reference gets explained on p. 348. The 'vacant stare" of a blockbuster's audience is compared to their impassioned (easy for a silver-spoon scion like Gaddis to say; his protagonists here tend to be of the upper crust with often few visible means of support in the tonier demesnes of New York State) pursuit of "greed undiluted by any exercise of the intellect let alone the bewildering thicket of Socratic dialogue." On the same scene, "the mirth provoking possibilities provided by" stock figures onscreen generated by "each successive wave of immigration." Finally a typically novel and oddly conceived analogy between the ridiculous descent to the vernacular by the Catholic Church post-Vatican II and a rabbi whose disembodied, distant, telephoned voice over the food renders it kosher.

At least now I can move on to the major dude's tomes, "The Recognitions" and "J.R." As with those (not so much "CG"), the online eponymous wiki helps unravel some knotty passages in a formidably law-clogged narrative. Ran out of steam, too many deaths tallied long distance, hermetically sealed. It leaves one wondering the pros and cons of fiction dealing with the drudgery of the law. Not a subject non-thriller/mystery/true crime authors tend to choose, and Gaddis has sure done due diligence. A severe editor, a determined delete key, and a parsimonious storyteller: these would have invigorated the pace. On the other hand, would that streamlined result "be" WG?

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Frolic of His Own was somewhat disappointing to me not because it was bad, but because it was less than what I expected rightly or wrongly after experiencing the Gaddis of The Recognitions. It was a witty if repetitive satire about the chaotic nature of litigation in America today and the greediness and foolishness of those relying on it for justice, financial gain or simply revenge. Light though relevant subject matter that while fun was less than inspirational.

But Frolic also focused on a Recognitions theme, that of the difficulty if not impossibility of being truly original or authentic. Oscar’s play lifted ideas, themes and plotlines from Plato, Rousseau and O’Neil just as it may have been in turn copied for the movie underscoring the whole problem of what originality means and the absurdity of being able to discern a dividing line between an idea and its expression. I found this theme much more appealing than the ridiculousness of the legal system, court opinions or characters.

I have only read these two Gaddis novels and it is probably unfair to expect the second Gaddis novel I read to be as deep and moving as The Recognitions. Perhaps I should try JR and of course The Recognitions is well worth reading again.

[Rissi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sloughed through 372 pages of this and just can't find motivation to read the last 130 or so pages. Not only is the avant garde, or Gaddis's personal idiosyncratic stream of consciousness and to heck with conventional conversation and punctuation, extremely off-putting and difficult, the "frolic" takes place in mid-1980s, which (and I was there) were boring, banal, and otherwise a pain to live through, he puts us through it again. Only thing missing is the bad music.
I'm complaining also about the typesetting. When he inserts, in ghastly legal detail, the legal suits filed that have some strange relevance to the story, he does it in sans serif typeface with no leading. Hard to read. As mentioned above, he uses no quotation marks to identify conversation and every character's conversation (or blathering) runs into the next characters.
There is some humor, but it's too hard to find and to care about.
Finis.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Frolic of His Own marks William Gaddis returning to top form, after the disappointing Carpenter's Gothic (which would be very fine if written by someone else); it's more in keeping with the expansiveness of The Recognitions and J R.

Formally inventive, funny, and angry, here it seems that Gaddis has gone down even deeper into a bitter well. Between these covers resides a play, multiple lawsuits, legal judgements, transcripts of court testimony, a pastiche of "Hiawatha" used to describe life in a fish tank, word play, disguises, and, most of all, the language of the law and the absence of justice. The only reason A Frolic of His Own doesn't get five stars is because nothing can truly compare to Gaddis' first two novels, two of the best works in u.s. fiction in the 20th century.

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my God this book is hard to read. Gaddis not only knows a lot of words, he's happy to leave out the quotation marks to indicate someone is speaking. (Incidentally, every book I've ever read that left out quotation marks was brilliant. They have to be, because they're practically unreadable.) Anyhow, it's brilliant. There's a legal opinion that is dry, dry, dry and hilarious, and there's deep sadness and crushing emotion, and it made me read (eventually) every other book Gaddis wrote.

PS They're all good, and they're all too hard for you to read. You probably shouldn't try.

[Gerard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This felt like a representation of the increasingly sharp and satirical trajectory of Gaddis' writing style reaching its apex.

[nethescurial · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh gee another total nonstop banger from Gaddis, I'm so surprised. Granted it's maybeeee not as pulled together by a solid emotional core as his other novels [though the last third more than makes up for that imo] but it doesn't matter much when this just has every quality of what generally makes his work electrifying - a seamless balance between vivid realism and bonkers absurdism that never compromises the effects of either complete with an absolutely mind-boggling talent at the art of transition, as full of roaring comedy and goofiness as it is pulsating dread and doom, with characters as conversely lovable and insufferable as anyone you're going to meet in real life. And, of course, some of the best written dialogue you'll ever read in the English language, with those characters' voices so distinct and defined you may as well be listening to real people speak, even while so much of this never shies away from out-and-out parodic farce. In theory, this could have been Gaddis treading water, seeing as it plays on many of the same ideas and structural flourishes as J R and Carpenter's Gothic, but there's enough working for it on its own merits to feel like a distinct and important piece of his ouvre, despite consensus of it being a lesser work. But even if it is a retread of sorts, I think after a lifetime of writing Gaddis had completely earned it at this point - this does in part read like an established master writing the most deranged and rollicking iteration of his own style that he could think of, and the effort pays off as one would expect from a writer of this caliber this late in the game.

There's a part of me that feels like I shouldn't be as keen on Gaddis as I am... satire is very blatantly one of his primary modes of literary conduct, and while I'm a big fan of comedic work, satire tends not to be my bag because it tends to come with this implicit manner of aloofness bordering on emotional coldness, as well as a striking out at "the masses" which imo is often unnecessarily and mean spiritedly digging at the symptoms of late stage capitalism rather than the diagnosis itself. And Gaddis for sure is all of these things, no doubt an utterly insufferable elitist snob, which is about as antithetical to my values on literature [and art in general] as one could get - however, what elevates Gaddis' satire for me is that he never stops just at his criticism of the rabble, but mines deeply and deliberately into the very structures that cause people to worship products and just generally act terribly to one another. This actually may be his most complete novel in terms of actually tackling an anti-capitalist worldview, because it has the strongest acknowledgment of all his works that human barbarism is not created in a vacuum but instead arises directly from systems of state power in which these things are not anomalies but directly built into the machinery of, which Gaddis in this book uses the apparatus of American law as a convenient vehicle for. The capitalist state is not "broken", what makes it frightening is that it works perfectly, and thus it's perfectly easy for even the people who think they're set against it to be swept up into its jaws and work the system or else doom will befall them. The sense of inevitability I get from this book, in contrast to some of his earlier works, is less that "humans inevitably suck" and more like "humans inevitably suck under a system which literally prioritizes that they Inevitably Suck or else survival is impossible". His characters are also not one-dimensional caricatures and there's very much a lot of depth and care that went into writing these people, which is important since the satire would fall flat and just become another mean spirited and aimless critique without their human impact. So while Gaddis' work remains bleak, I don't really think it's his obligation to provide a Cogent and Structured rebuttal to how all this works, as I've said before if he wanted to do that he'd be a philosopher not a fiction author, he was simply portraying the world as he saw it, with a righteous disdain toward an apparatus that he thought was killing people's ability for love, connection and culture [and what does capitalism do if not stifle all of those things?]

As far as symbolism and atmosphere and like Pure Aesthetic it might actually be my favorite besides The Recognitions, like that book it's very indebted to this atmosphere of religious apocalypse and the judgment of the wicked from the divine [God and The Law are often wonderfully juxtaposed here, in a manner that's perhaps not too subtle but who needs subtlety anyways]. Also like his debut Gaddis builds the mechanics of the novel out of his literary influences and references them in ways largely absent from the previous two novels, and it was refreshing to see a return to that especially in the way it informs the fire-and-brimstone subtext and the sense of Biblical dread overriding much of the narrative. I love the way the imagery of the pond next to Oscar's estate is played in the novel, almost like this divine connection to God and the natural world that lies just outside the bounds of the main cast but they are so imprisoned in the world of law and bills and bureaucracy that they can only see from the inside looking out, unable to really be one with it, making Oscar and Christina's predicament feel like a prison of the mind as much as an actual claustrophobic entrapment. As far as form it's not quite as innovative as his previous books but there's still a lot going for it - Oscar's play adds a lot to the thematic content and subtext, and many of the legal documents interspered throughout the narrative, while at times utterly mind-numbing [intentionally so, but nevertheless], are also home to some of Gaddis' best moments of black comedy.

I think overall too that this may be his most accessible novel to a first time reader, though at the same time I'm not sure I'd recommend starting with it - despite all the legal jargon and absurdism, it maybe has the most easily graspable narrative core of all his works, but concurrently that narrative may not be as thoroughly appreciated without a former knowledge of Gaddis' literary history [he definitely seems to be an author best suited for a chronological reading, which I definitely plan to do while rereading him at some point]. But either way, this is yet another immense achievement from one of post-war America's greatest minds, and is entirely worth your time if you're into this sort of thing. Probably not his greatest work overall, but not a single Gaddis book isn't some level of amazing - trying to rank or classify them by quality is a moot point.

[bushn · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much going on here. But I need to tell you one thing: watch Lily.

Gaddis manages to direct a background character in the background with stage directions given by another character, all through dialogue. How do I even describe it?

Lily is the only actor in a solo play. She's introduced as a simple, shallow and discordant accessory to Oscar's scattered intellectualism. Through her rare and persistently ignored speeches she relates a life somehow more chaotic and absurd than Oscar's: a dead sibling, brainwashed parents, insolvency, several affairs and lawsuits. Despite this, she remains with Oscar and becomes the silent anchor during the Crease family collapse. She's constantly told (mostly by Christina) to help. We find out that she does (all through dialogue) because she's either reporting back or ordered to do another task. She never argues. She's never asked nicely or thanked. She's mistaken for the housekeeper and doesn't complain (or doesn't notice). The gaps in her lines are almost always explained by assumed intervals during which she wordlessly completes a task. The reader has to do all her work in their head, because nothing is described. Lily's expected (and deserved) revolt, exhaustion or abandonment never comes. She is in the background, but she is there, more than anyone. It's amazing.

And try to find Lily referenced meaningfully in any other review of this book. There's so much going on. But I also want to tell you something else:

People often refer to Gaddis' dialogue as some kind of gimmick or pretension. Maybe it was. But Lily's astonishing character arc is only a small part in a book full of astonishing parts. Parts in an unwieldy Civil War play Gaddis wrote and then wrote this book about, to ridicule and deconstruct. Parts in trials that drive the plot, showcased in elegant legal writing and stenographed transcripts. And finally parts in and around a family carefully created and destroyed, also transcribed verbatim. Gaddis is not writing a story, he's presenting evidence.

A trial is a story, a real story. To leave something out, to perjure the reader with cleaned up, encapsulated, marked-up dialogue that doesn't represent how people actually exist and interact, is against the law. Or it should be.

[Maya Lang]

I have no idea how to rate this novel, which flummoxes more than it charms. I appreciated Gaddis' maneuvers and techniques but did not feel moved by them, sort of like when eating a meal prepared with great artistry that doesn't actually taste good. Some highlights: the novel opens with several pages of streaming dialogue in which no character is introduced or explained, so all must be deduced from context. This is followed by a lengthy court ruling, which in turn is followed by a play. Gaddis is a genius at creating a rich textual world that keeps the reader on her toes, and the plot lines are hilarious and damning.

Oscar Crease is run over by his own car while attempting to hot wire it, so he is both owner of the car and victim--a conundrum for his insurance company, as Oscar convalesces in the hospital with relatively minor injuries, and a litigious puzzle. Lawsuits--both potential and in progress--abound in this novel. Some are sources of obsession, like Oscar's conviction that his unpublished play has been plagiarized, while others are noted in passing, like his girlfriend's messy divorce from her ex-husband. Gaddis' dark sense of wit finds fertile ground in the legal system, and he is able to satirize contemporary America in a way that is rich, provocative, sad, and surely worth the (considerable) efforts involved in reading this.

Still. I wish Gaddis had taken himself to task and exercised some restraint. Do we really need fifty pages of legal brief? Wouldn't shorter passages from the play have sufficed? Does the dialogue really, truly need to be unpunctuated? Gaddis defended his signature style by saying that it created a sense of "authorial absence." I would argue just the opposite. I felt very *aware* of Gaddis' choices (lack of punctuation, refusal to edit), and was deeply frustrated by how much more dazzling this novel could have been.

[David Lentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Frolic after JR and The Recognitions of which I was more impressed than Frolic. It's amusing to watch Gaddis skewer the legal profession -- I can think of few professions more worthy of it -- but while he addresses the national feeding frenzy of greed associated with litigation his characters fail to capture much empathy as they were more hideous in many cases than their legal representatives. Consequently, I found myself detached from main characters and unsymapthetic to their sordid fates. In JR and The Recognitions I found characters whose destinies in the story lines mattered to me -- not so in Frolic. Gaddis has his finger on the pulse of a national disgrace in the need for tort reform but, since the reformers are self-regulating lawyers, it isn't likely to happen anytime soon. This novel is very finely written with powerful, pithy observations expressed in breathtaking jabs and poetic riffs. Frolic isn't as densely packed with intellect as JR or The Recognitions but is more accessible than either as his style is more accommodating in Frolic. This novel is just shy of great compared to the high standards set by his other works, which are among the best brace of American novels of the late 20th century. The great novels of Gaddis are destined to be discovered by wider readerships, to radiate brilliantly on America's literary landscape and to endure.

[Iván Ramírez Osorio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un primer acercamiento a Gaddis. Me declaro fan de su estilo "caótico", de su habilidad de hilar hechos y de su talento para separarlos y engañar a quien le lee. Me declaro fan al no saber reconocer entre la sátira y su lenguaje, en momentos, de odio. Con ansias de más.

[Mariano Hortal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Publicado en http://lecturaylocura.com/su-pasatiem...

Su pasatiempo favorito de William Gaddis. Culmen postmodernista

El lector habitual de Gaddis acaba una obra suya y se siente envuelto en un aura de reverencia. La sensación de haber caminado por un inmenso desierto, lleno de trampas, penurias, hambre, etc. pero también sabe que se ha encontrado con oasis donde lo placentero remedia el viaje por la tierra baldía, son respiros donde se distingue con mayor intensidad la potencia de la prosa del escritor. Tras leer Su pasatiempo favorito, la última obra de ficción que quedaba por reeditar por Sexto Piso, el desierto ya no es tal, los oasis han aumentado milagrosamente. Estoy en ese momento en el que he disfrutado plenamente del escritor y su obra, y todo ello olvidando el halo de dificultad que le rodea. (Podría ser un buen momento para releer alguna de sus obras anteriores).
Su pasatiempo favorito, publicada en 1994, fue la culminación de su obra narrativa en vida, sus tres obras anteriores, excelsas, le sirvieron para desarrollar un estilo propio que está presente en esta última, la mayor diferencia estriba en el tema que trata de fondo: una sátira del sistema judicial estadounidense. Sin embargo, muchos de los temas tratados ya aparecieron en sus obras anteriores y el estilo, al tener menos narradores, no resulta tan enrevesado para seguir, es mucho más accesible manteniendo la sutileza de Gótico Carpintero ; de ahí que esta obra resulte como una amalgama de todo lo bueno que desarrolló Gaddis y que ahora mismo resumo, por ejemplo, la siempre presente motivación musical que tan bien desarrollaba en JR:
“Estos papeles que me has hecho que te traiga porque tienes miedo de que te los roben y mira Harry tiene razón, lo demás es pura ópera. Yo soy la Reina de la Noche y ese misterioso mensajero recorre las salas del hospital en busca de casos terminales, engatusando al viejo conde para que componga un réquiem y así hacerlo pasar después por obra suya, asustándome cuando éramos niños cuando decías que volverías a la casa en forma de fantasma, justo lo que me ha pasado esta mañana, con la neblina que rodeaba el lago y de repente una bandada de cisnes aparecen planeando como muertos y al otro lado del lago todos esos rojos y rojizos…”
Sus referencias musicales van más allá de la simple mención, hay un conocimiento mucho más profundo como ya he comentado en alguna ocasión, lo mismo podemos decir de su sapiencia literaria que se manifiesta de manera muy clara en el siguiente párrafo y que vuelve a poner la diana en el discurso artístico que está presente de desde su primera obra:
“Entre los ejemplos más egregios cabe destacar la acusación de Ruskin contra Whistler de haber arrojado un bote de pintura al rostro del público; las burlas que al principio recayeron sobre los impresionistas y que, una vez asimiladas, se dirigieron contra los cubistas; las mofas con que fueron acogidas las innovaciones musicales de Bizet, consideradas responsables de la muerte del artista; los desórdenes provocados por el estreno de La consagración de la primavera, de Stravinski; sin olvidar que desde el día en que Aristófanes tachara a Eurípides de “creador de muñecos y granujas” se ha venido acumulando sobre los escritores una avalancha de desdén: la prensa recomendó al autor de “Oda a una urna griega” que volviese con “los emplastos, las píldoras y los botes de ungüento”; calificó Espectros, de Ibsen, de “repugnante herida sin vendar, un acto obsceno realizado en público”; de “basura sentimentaloide” la Ana Karenina de Tolstoi; en nuestro propio país, el desprecio que despertaron todas y cada una de las obras de Herman Melville culminó en Moby Dick, “enormes dosis de jerga hiperbólica, sentimentalismo lacrimógeno y bazofia tragicómica”, y desde los días de Melville los escritores que han corrido la misma suerte son demasiado numerosos para citarlos a todos.[…] En definitiva, el artista es el blanco de la crítica y su causa confusa.”
De hecho no suele faltar su reflexión (en tono jocoso) al respecto de la crítica cultural, uno de los chistes recurrentes en este libro como podemos ver aquí:
“SR. BASIE: Debe constar en acta y es una cuestión de forma. Está confundiendo al testigo deliberadamente, yéndose por las ramas con eso de los críticos literarios y…
MADHAR PAI: Perdone, amigo, pero yo no he hablado de críticos literarios, sino de quieres reseñan libros, y existe una diferencia enorme, aunque a muchos les gusta que los llamen críticos, a no ser que tengan problemas, en cuyo caso prefieren que los llamen periodistas. Y si no le importa, querría continuar con…”
Gaddis siempre utiliza casos particulares para llevarnos a la caracterización de una sociedad entera, la desorbitada presencia de abogados por habitante nos alerta sobre la corrupción de una sociedad avariciosa y estúpida que no actúa por el bien del individuo; los pleitos, o más bien su deformación, son las consecuencias de un sistema injusto donde la única motivación es el bien propio, el egoísmo:
AFrolic“-No te burles Harry, no puede uno reírse de los problemas de la gente… Puede parecer así, pero ¿por qué no intentas ver el lado bueno?
-No deberías haberte casado conmigo Christina. Nosotros no tenemos muchas oportunidades de ver el lado bueno de la gente, con tanta avaricia, tan estupidez, tanto doble juego.. En un sistema como el nuestro, ¿cómo quieres que la gente saque a la luz lo bueno que lleva dentro? Hay un abogado por cada cuatrocientos o quinientos habitantes y la mayoría no puede permitirse el lujo de pagarles. Los que pueden, como tu amiga, son todavía peores, lo lían todo y encima luego quieren que les soluciones el lío y…”
Me imagino que, por la época en que fue escrita, Gaddis era más que consciente de la cultura del espectáculo, encarnada especialmente por ese monstruo/ente mediático que tiene que ver con Hollywood, Broadway; nuevamente su idea del espectáculo hoy en día (sea este cine, teatro, etc…) está estigmatizada por elementos superficiales muy lejanos a lo que él entendía como arte, elementos que, por otra parte, llaman más la atención que su concepción de un arte que va más allá de lo que se ve a primera vista:
“-¡Pues precisamente porque nunca ha llegado a representarse! No la ha visto nadie, porque ¿usted cree que una obra de ideas tan seria tiene cabida en Broadway? Lo único que quieren son tetas y culos, un montón de idiotas haciendo cabriolas en el escenario y cantando estupideces sobre culos y tetas y ordinarieces, con las entradas pagadas por la empresa para los clientes de otra ciudad, que no están precisamente interesados en nada que requiera una pizca de inteligencia y…”
Concepción, la suya, que se fundamenta, ni más ni menos que en el uso de la palabra:
“-Vamos a pasar a las declaraciones Oscar, todavía no ha visto usted nada. Es lo que intento que comprenda desde el principio: palabras, palabras y nada más. De eso se trata precisamente.
Adviértase que, de acuerdo con el artículo 31 del Código de Derecho Civil, el demandado, denominado Kiester en el presente documento, reconocerá al demandante, Oscar L. Crease, como la parte contraria […]”
Y que le sirve para presentarnos un concepto que me resulta muy interesante: el lenguaje como protección. De hecho lo podemos ver como ejemplo en el propio libro gracias a las sentencias que el autor, amablemente, nos presenta con toda la verborrea habitual del lenguaje judicial. El lenguaje, en sí mismo, se convierte en una barrera que protege la accesibilidad con respecto a la profesión completa. En efecto, no es algo que ocurra solo en esta profesión sino que ocurre en la mayoría de ellas y contribuye a que los profesionales se sientan seguros en el medio que ejercen, toda una paradoja que el lenguaje se vuelva estable en inestabilidad ya que, en la mayoría de los casos, se caracteriza por la oscuridad y ambigüedad de aquello a lo que se está refiriendo (jerga judicial):
“-Pues claro, no me hace falta pensarlo. Todas las profesiones son una conspiración contra la gente, todas las profesiones se protegen a sí mismas con un lenguaje propio, si no fíjate en el psiquiatra al que me mandan, ¿has intentado leer alguna vez una hoja de balance? Es como lo de las plumas de esa ave gigantesca parecida al perro que acorrala a su presa, todo se diluye en la lengua que se enfrenta con el lenguaje y lo convierte en teoría hasta que no trata de lo que trata sino que trata sólo sobre sí mismo, […]”
A falta de sus ensayos y cartas, es indudable que estamos ante uno de los escritores con una carrera literaria más consistente, pocos hay que puedan contar sus obras por número de obras maestras (sus cuatro primeras lo son); es un lujazo que podamos disponer (gracias al esfuerzo de Sexto Piso) de todas ellas para releerlas en cualquier momento y dejarnos seducir una vez más por el embrujo de la subyugadora prosa de William Gaddis:
“Sobre el lago había descendido una extraña bruma y la extensa pradera se deslizaba hacia el agua como si se estuviera inundando, ni una nube en el cielo a la que culpar del súbito cambio de la luz con el que la orilla opuesta desapareció bruscamente en una apagada línea de gris y la distancia media pareció avanzar y retroceder, el lago entero elevarse, jadeante, al menguar al pie de la pradera en una ondulación ascendente hacia el otro lago como un enorme desnivel mecido por alguna catástrofe del inframundo, titubeando con el regreso de la ondulación, retirándose con un ritmo ininterrumpido como si se ladease un cuenco gigantesco, cuando ella se aferró con una mano al alféizar arrastrada por una oleada de vértigo que, de repente, le frunció la blusa contra el cuello y se volvió buscando aire entre la nube de humo que se dirigía hacia ella, rizándose desde la chimenea.”
Los textos provienen de la traducción de Flora Casas de Su pasatiempo favorito de William Gaddis editado por Sexto Piso.

[Matthew Linton · Rating 4 out of 5]

We don’t usually think of literary fiction as a realm of slapstick and hijinks. Yet, A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis is a novel full of silly humor that would feel more at home on a mid-1990s sitcom than in the staid atmosphere of a college lecture hall or academic conference.

A Frolic of His Own follows the bumbling Oscar Crease, the hapless son of a famous judge, who has recently been injured in an auto accident where he was both the driver and only victim. With his stepsister Christina, Oscar spends much of the rest of the novel trying - and failing - to navigate the American legal system in order to sue various parties that the believes have wronged him. The novel is packed with situational humor as well as slapstick and silly names (the director Constantine Kiester is a highlight). It’s a fast read that with rapid dialogue similar to an episode of Seinfeld or 30 Rock.

I had a lot of fun with A Frolic of His Own and I think most Gaddis fans will feel the same. This book may be a bit of a challenge for non-US readers, since much of the humor is around American law and the penetration of legal language and thinking into everyday life. It’s also very talky and has pretty much no plot. But if you enjoy witty humor, well-developed characters, and a satirical look at the US at the peak of its opulence and self-obsession, A Frolic of His Own may be the book for you.