- Paperback: 726 pages
- Publisher: Atlantic Books; New edition edition (10 Sep 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1843541653
- ISBN-13: 978-1843541653
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.6 x 4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 376,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
A biting satire, JR features JR, an eleven-year-old capitalist, who embodies the cash culture he grows up in. The young JR manipulates his meagre economic beginnings including a shipment of Navy surplus picnic forks, a defaulted bond issue and turns them into a massive paper empire. The novel's satiric assault upon the American Dream, and the economics it represents makes a compulsive read and the seminal American novel.
About the Author
WILLIAM GADDIS (1922-98) was one of the greatest writers in twentieth-century America. He wrote five novels and won two National Book Awards, for JR (1976) and for A Frolic of His Own (1995). His other landmark novels include: The Recognitions (1955) and Carpenter's Gothic (1985). Agapc Agape was published by Atlantic in 2002.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a phenomenal creation, a 726-page prophecy of everything that Gaddis foresaw was bound to follow from unfettered capitalism as day follows night - almost all of which did indeed transpire, from shortly after its publication in the messy mid-1970s right up to the global capitalist meltdown we're going through now.
Aside from this astonishing prescient quality, it's a laugh-out-loud narrative, fierce and exciting, and so rich that it can't be digested in anything like a hurry. It's a book to wallow in, to enjoy like a deep warm bubble bath savoured in a perfectly lit bathroom. I began it 10 years ago, read nearly 200 pages, and always intended to return to it (okay, I got out of the bath, lived a little, then drew another one!). When I did pick it up again, a couple of months ago, there were many new elements in place to help me get even more from the novel: the two main ones being the Gaddis website where I could refresh my memory of the plot points up to where I left off, and my having engaged in the world of business as I hadn't when much younger.
So I cracked through the next 500 pages, despite their dense dialogue-based content. The lines are so good, true, funny, authentic, vivid, that there's very little to critique, even 34 years after its publication. The mix of barmy satire with more straightforward dramas is held together by the energy of the writing. The characters are all written sympathetically, except perhaps for the relatively minor one who most closely resembles Gaddis himself!
Gaddis wrote a short update to the book in 1987, when the first big stock market crash of the modern era came; but the original is too perfect, and too visionary to need anything like amending, improving, refining. It defines its context, the society that created it. Until that society evolves, and even in the present mire it doesn't really look like it will, JR will remain relevant, percipient, contemporary, and completely and utterly worth the effort.
Aside from this astonishing prescient quality, it's a laugh-out-loud narrative, fierce and exciting, and so rich that it can't be digested in anything like a hurry. It's a book to wallow in, to enjoy like a deep warm bubble bath savoured in a perfectly lit bathroom. I began it 10 years ago, read nearly 200 pages, and always intended to return to it (okay, I got out of the bath, lived a little, then drew another one!). When I did pick it up again, a couple of months ago, there were many new elements in place to help me get even more from the novel: the two main ones being the Gaddis website where I could refresh my memory of the plot points up to where I left off, and my having engaged in the world of business as I hadn't when much younger.
So I cracked through the next 500 pages, despite their dense dialogue-based content. The lines are so good, true, funny, authentic, vivid, that there's very little to critique, even 34 years after its publication. The mix of barmy satire with more straightforward dramas is held together by the energy of the writing. The characters are all written sympathetically, except perhaps for the relatively minor one who most closely resembles Gaddis himself!
Gaddis wrote a short update to the book in 1987, when the first big stock market crash of the modern era came; but the original is too perfect, and too visionary to need anything like amending, improving, refining. It defines its context, the society that created it. Until that society evolves, and even in the present mire it doesn't really look like it will, JR will remain relevant, percipient, contemporary, and completely and utterly worth the effort.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
JR is, and I think will come to be seen as, one of the greatest works of literature. Like the worldıs other masterpieces, it rewards persistence magnificently. Like them, it takes some adjustment, for it is a sort of parallel world with a structure and complexity mirroring ours so well that one may mistake it, as one may take our world, for random chaos (the novel contains, in fact, a scene of pandemonium unequaled in literature). But the more one reads it, the more formal excellence it discloses: both in its overall plan and in its detail. JR is a book of voices, written mostly in dialogue. Among other things, it is the greatest novel of New York and environs ever written. Head and shoulders above any other American novel of this century. Buy it, and just keep reading.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
You need to set aside your pride to read anything by William Gaddis, because at first you'll think he makes no sense. As you get used to his singular style, however, it becomes apparent that the man has caught more of the rhythm and cadence of American life than anyone this century. He understands the transactional mindset that is so singular to American myth, the constant reassessing of worth in the marketplace of ego and ideas. Moreover, he's figured out a way to translate this unquantifiable belief structure to paper. Only Wallace Stevens has as clear and true a vision of this gorgeous and awkward Arcadia we call America.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Incredible masterpiece
This is a fantastic work of artistic genius, but it's not for everybody. Most of the people I know that like it are writer wannabees, or people seriously interested in 20th... Read more
Published on 14 Oct 2008 by John Econopouly
A page turner for the few & brave
I was heartened to see other reader comments on this intensely subversive, fabulously funny and amazing novel of commerce, art and the American Century. Read more
Published on 19 Mar 1999
Exceedingly difficult, satisfying, and good with soup.
See: one-line summary. A very, very good work of fiction. On the same level as John Barth's best work.
Published on 7 Feb 1999
Simply Outstanding
As in his "Recognitions", Gaddis has shown himself the true successor to Joyce. In wonderful verve he displays his understanding of America with the usual acute insight,... Read more
Published on 19 May 1998
Unremittingly boring
This award-winning "novel" by William Gaddis is unremittingly boring and I recommend it only to your worst enemies. Read more
Published on 22 Sep 1997
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