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 la...
William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book ...
You will cause a device to be prepared, without unnecessary delay, with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible, this national recognition.” —Abraham Lincoln’s Treasurer, to the director of the Mint. —I can’t live with you and be...
—Darwin, The Origin of Species —It reminds me rather of that convent, the one at ... Champigneulles, was it? Near Dijon, said a tall woman, looking round her. —The one that was turned into a madhouse. —I know what you mean, said the girl beside her. —Everyone keeps changing size. The tall woman...
—Well that’s certainly not what woke me up, you haven’t run through that cash I put in the towel drawer have you? —How could I? It’s this bunch of hundred dollar bills and all I’ve used it for was some groceries and his fishes. —I mean thank God I had my wits about me when those two vultures were...
Beaton? Where's the notes on this hearing.—Yes sir I think you have them right there sir.—I do not have them right there sir! I have this damn Endo decree and a lot of fool nonsense on this alleged conspiracy to fix prices of materials supplied to the cable industry right there sir!—Yes sir I, we...
He mapped and delved. His reach was enormous . . . Agapē Agape is the deathbed summa, the parting shot—complete and fully realized . . . its every strange sentence carries full disciplined intention, hurtling towards synthesis even as it writhes and falls. . . . The book is an exalted, paranoid o...
