Info on gaddis' play on german radio
rj
rjackson at mail.usyd.edu.au
Fri Sep 10 17:54:25 CDT 1999
Thanks for this, Kai and Rich.
In Gaddis's *J R* (1975), the character Gibbs' unfinished book, titled
*Agapé Agape*, is not really "a novel, ... more of a book about order
and disorder more of a, sort of a social history of mechanization and
the arts, the destructive element . . . " (p. 244) Gibbs (a fairly
self-deprecating authorial persona) is named after J.W. Gibbs, the
American mathematical physicist, who wrote about entropy and chaos.
On the strength of all this it seems to me that Gaddis had indeed been
preparing this final testament for 25 odd years, perhaps more, and that
it is in fact the sort of collection which the German play refers to.
I'm very excited.
Another thought: The publication of *Agape Agape* will reestablish the
balance between the oeuvres of Gaddis and Pynchon, which Steven Moore
has noted. (Moore, *William Gaddis*, Twayne, p. 140) The novels are
rather evenly matched, in terms of length if nothing else: *The
Recognitions* with *V.*, *Gravity's Rainbow* with *J R* (vice versa
though, in terms of actual word count), and *The Crying of Lot 49* with
*Carpenter's Gothic*. Certainly *Vineland* and *A Frolic of His Own*
continue the "pattern" Moore detects. No doubt *Agapé Agape* will
similarly be seen to emulate *Mason & Dixon*. I wonder, after December
1999's publication, which of these two forefront American authors of the
last half-century will be regarded as the ...
... best?
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