J R

— ca’s all about like what we have to protect and how we’re always going around helping everybody out and how they should do everything like us and all you know? but I mean would you ever think he would of actually wrote to me himself hey…?

— Mind if I take some matches buddy? I’m…

— Take one take a thousand, Christ. Do you need toilet paper too?

— Now wait a…

— Look just do what you’re paid for will you? God damn it can’t, why can’t people just shut up and do what they’re paid for! I’ll meet you down there.

— for all these here letters and offers I been getting because I mean like remember this here book that time where they wanted me to write about success and like free enterprise and all hey? And like remember where I read you on the train that time where there was this big groundswill about leading this here parade and entering public life and all? So I mean listen I got this neat idea hey, you listening? Hey? You listening…?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WILLIAM GADDIS (1922–98) stands among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. The winner of two National Book Awards (for J R [1976] and A Frolic of His Own [1995]), as well as a MacArthur Genius Award, a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he wrote five novels during his lifetime, including Carpenter’s Gothic (1985), Agapē Agape (published posthumously in 2002), and his early masterpiece The Recognitions (1955). He is loved and admired for his stylistic innovations, his unforgettable characters, his pervasive humor, and the breadth of his intellect and vision.