{"id":568,"date":"2024-08-05T16:47:23","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T13:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/?p=568"},"modified":"2024-08-05T16:47:38","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T13:47:38","slug":"jr-william-gaddiss11-year-old-tycoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/jr.html","title":{"rendered":"JR William Gaddis’s11-Year-Old Tycoon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Ted Gioia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty years elapsed between William Gaddis’s debut
novel\u00a0The Recognitions<\/em>\u00a0(1955) and his follow-up book
JR<\/em>\u00a0(1975). \u00a0Don\u2019t blame Gaddis for laziness. \u00a0During
that period, he needed to work a series of demanding
day gigs to pay his bills, earning his keep from IBM, the
US Army, Eastman Kodak and other big organizations
to compensate for the royalty checks that never arrived. \u00a0
When interviewer Malcom Bradbury
told Gaddis, years later, how he and
all his friends recognized the brilliance
of\u00a0The Recognitions<\/em>\u00a0when it was first
published, the author tartly responded:
“My royalty statements were $4.72.”
Did Bradbury\u2019s clique, he wondered,
simply pass around the same one or
two copies.

Okay,\u00a0JR was<\/em>\u00a0a long time coming. But
Mr. Gaddis starts up his second novel
exactly where he left off with\u00a0The
Recognitions. \u00a0His debut book
ended with a composer struggling to
overcome a creative block and un-
expectedly causing a grand calamity
when he finally finishes his project. In\u00a0JR<\/em>\u00a0we soon meet
a similar character, Edward Bast, who like so many
Gaddis protagonists, can never make much headway
on his artistic projects. \u00a0Like Stanley in\u00a0The Recognitions<\/em>,
Bast inadvertently causes mayhem and disaster on his way
to achieving\u2014or, more often, finding ways to avoid achieving
\u2014his goals as a composer. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the continuity with\u00a0The Recognitions<\/em>\u00a0is even more
marked when we consider the tone of the work. \u00a0Gaddis
often complained that critics and readers did not
appreciate the comic elements in his debut novel. \u00a0But,
in truth,\u00a0The Recognitions\u00a0<\/em>starts out as a twisted existential
narrative, and only gradually evolves, over the course of
almost one thousand pages, into a equally twisted work
of dark humor. \u00a0In\u00a0JR<\/em>, in contrast, the comic element is
evident from the outset, and continues for the entire
duration of the book. \u00a0Indeed, Gaddis seems willing to
put every kind of gag, joke and stunt in this novel. \u00a0We
have malapropisms, slapstick, satire, parody, even a
section of a hundred pages or so that tries to recreate
the\u00a0stateroom scene\u00a0from the Marx Brothers\u2019\u00a0A Night
at the Opera<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0

Much of this humor is still timely today. \u00a0Critics of the
current shift from face-to-face teaching to online courses
will find much to enjoy in this novel’s depiction of a 1970s
school that spends large sums of grant money on a
half-baked program to instruct students via television
broadcasts. \u00a0In a similar manner, Gaddis’s sendoff of
corrupt politicians, obfuscating lawyers and crass
corporate execs shows that some things never change,
even if they should. \u00a0And those still suffering from the
housing and mortgage meltdown of recent times will
laugh, or perhaps cry, at Gaddis’s presentation of a
similar financial collapse\u2014caused by the market
machinations of an over-reaching eleven-year-old
operating out of a payphone. \u00a0\u00a0

JR, our precocious corporate kingpin, drives our story
as well as the financial markets, and ranks among the
strangest characters in 20th century American fiction. \u00a0
This youngster starts with modest ambitions, trading
novelties and magazines with fellow classmates, but
soon learns that his skill at arbitrage can earn greater
rewards in the world of grown-ups. \u00a0JR lacks social graces
and his intelligence is limited to money matters, but even
he realizes that the titans of commerce don’t want to
deal with preteens. \u00a0So he enlists, the down-and-out
composer Edward Bast, and a host of other inter-
mediaries, to serve as fronts for his business
transactions. \u00a0

When one deals is finished, JR rolls the proceeds on
to another one, like a gambler who lets everything ride
on the casino gaming table. \u00a0When asked to justify his
ceaseless ambition, the child offers a simple explanation: \u00a0
“You can\u2019t just play to play because the rules are only for
if you\u2019re playing to win which that\u2019s the only rules there
are.” \u00a0Or put even in fewer words: “I didn’t invent it I mean
this is what you do.”

JR knows a considerable amount about business,
despite his tender years. \u00a0And Gaddis clearly does
as well. \u00a0I’ve read many novels about business, but
haven’t encountered any work of fiction that gets so deeply
into tax-loss carryforwards, accelerated depreciation,
restrictions on the exercise of stock options, equity-for-
debt swaps and a host of other arcane topics that
novelists rarely have any reason to understand. \u00a0Most
of the jargon and marketplace minutiae are tossed off
in passing in these pages, and I’m sure many readers’
eyes glaze over when Gaddis allows JR or another
character to expound on the tactics and economic
rationale for various wheelings and dealings. \u00a0But given
the shallowness of most depictions of high finance in
modern fiction, Gaddis\u2019s attention to detail warrants
praise, especially given the comic nature of his book,
where few would seek this degree of realism in the finer
points.

But the real achievement in\u00a0JR<\/em>\u00a0is in the dialogue. Did
I mention that this novel consists almost entirely of
conversations? \u00a0Yet this isn’t your typical repartee. \u00a0
You may wonder how a book filled with dialogue on
practical matters, such as business, education and
politics, ever got a reputation for being difficult to read. \u00a0\u00a0
After all, how hard can it be to follow a discussion on
such prosaic topics conducted by characters of
average intelligence? \u00a0But Gaddis uses every possible
trick and device to make these conversations hard
to follow. \u00a0(See my related essay on\u00a0“William Gaddis’s
8\u00a0Rules for Unruly Dialogue.”) \u00a0JR<\/em>\u00a0would demand our
respect as a pathbreaking novel if only for the technical
mastery demonstrated in the construction of these
convoluted colloquies. \u00a0What Joyce did for stream-of-
consciousness, Gaddis did for stream-of-speaking.

The result is a peculiar hybrid. The slapstick elements
of the humor\u2014some of it markedly lowbrow, relying on
car collisions, broken plumbing, and other set-ups straight
out of the aesthetic of the Three Stooges\u2014don\u2019t always
mix easily with the experimental intentions of the prose. \u00a0
I occasionally found myself laughing out loud at an
especially choice bit of comedy in these pages. But I
suspect that the longest lingering impression of\u00a0JR<\/em>\u00a0won’t
be the one-liners, but rambling monologues and crazy
financial transactions. \u00a0

And, yes, JR himself. \u00a0This child tycoon is the centerpiece
of the novel. \u00a0True, he is almost a parody of a parody. \u00a0
Even the most ridiculous characters out of Dickens, a
Mr. Micawber or Miss Havisham, seem staid and
reasonable by comparison. \u00a0Yet Gaddis somehow
also imparts a dose of humanity to JR, perhaps even
a measure of pathos. \u00a0In this one figure, the sometimes
contrary ambitions of the novel\u2014the darkness, the
lightheartedness, the serious and the ludicrous\u2014all
cohere. \u00a0Above all, JR is a distinctly\u00a0America<\/em>character,
the heir to all those other troubled and troubling
youngsters in our homegrown fiction, from Huckleberry
Finn to Holden Caulfield. \u00a0These kids want to grow up
on their own terms and in their own cussedly intransigent
way. \u00a0God bless ’em and God bless America, but watch
out below!

And what can be more dispiriting, but also beguiling,
than to find our national character so closely wedded to
the traits of dreaming and scheming youngsters? \u00a0\u00a0If we
ever grow up as a nation, this kind of book won’t have
much of an impact, and a character such as JR will be
little more than a puzzling anachronism. \u00a0But the smart
money\u2014not that you find much of it in this book\u2014says
that JR keeps relevant for a long time to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ted Gioia Twenty years elapsed between William Gaddis’s debutnovel\u00a0The Recognitions\u00a0(1955) and his follow-up bookJR\u00a0(1975). \u00a0Don\u2019t blame Gaddis for laziness. \u00a0Duringthat period, he needed to work a series of demandingday gigs to pay his bills, earning his keep from IBM, theUS Army, Eastman Kodak and other big organizationsto compensate for the royalty checks that never<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t Continue Reading <\/span><\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Twenty years elapsed between William Gaddis's debut\r\nnovel\u00a0The Recognitions\u00a0(1955) and his follow-up book\r\nJR\u00a0(1975). \u00a0Don\u2019t blame Gaddis for laziness. \u00a0During\r\nthat period, he needed to work a series of demanding\r\nday gigs to pay his bills, earning his keep from IBM, the\r\nUS Army, Eastman Kodak and other big organizations\r\nto compensate for the royalty checks that never arrived. \u00a0\r\nWhen interviewer Malcom Bradbury\r\ntold Gaddis, years later, how he and\r\nall his friends recognized the brilliance\r\nof\u00a0The Recognitions\u00a0when it was first\r\npublished, the author tartly responded:\r\n\"My royalty statements were $4.72.\"\r\nDid Bradbury\u2019s clique, he wondered,\r\nsimply pass around the same one or\r\ntwo copies.\r\n\r\nOkay,\u00a0JR was\u00a0a long time coming. But\r\nMr. Gaddis starts up his second novel\r\nexactly where he left off with\u00a0The\r\nRecognitions. \u00a0His debut book\r\nended with a composer struggling to\r\novercome a creative block and un-\r\nexpectedly causing a grand calamity\r\nwhen he finally finishes his project. In\u00a0JR\u00a0we soon meet\r\na similar character, Edward Bast, who like so many\r\nGaddis protagonists, can never make much headway\r\non his artistic projects. \u00a0Like Stanley in\u00a0The Recognitions,\r\nBast inadvertently causes mayhem and disaster on his way\r\nto achieving\u2014or, more often, finding ways to avoid achieving\r\n\u2014his goals as a composer. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fractiousfiction.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}