J R

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J R is a novel like no other novel, a singularity, a hands-down astonishment, an inferno, a Big Bang, a masterpiece. This introducer, asked to confine himself to a reasonable brevity, can in the pursuit of his introductory task do nothing but throw up his hands and assert the above — that the novel is a novel like no other, a singularity, a Big Bang, a masterpiece. In wrestling with the sheer expanse of the thing, in fact, modalities thereof, the introducer despairs of giving the flavor of J R, of its polyphonies and musicalities, its myriad intertextualities (all of which are meticulously cross-referenced at The Gaddis Annotations, online, a resource that the man himself would probably have found admirably, if outrageously, comprehensive). The introducer can but despair here, accept defeat, and retreat in the process to the safe haven of personal experience, because, when faced with the scale of critical exegesis that swirls around Gaddis, the personal is rarer. And so: My personal experiences — it must be said — do in fact involve episodes in which other writers warned me away from J R, owing to its occult and unjustified reputation for difficulty. J R is too difficult, too demanding, someone or some several someones reductively remarked to this introducer. Or: if one had to read a Gaddis novel, one should read The Recognitions. I did, I read The Recogntions, I devoured it, loved it in an unrestrained and slightly evangelical way, and yet in the completion ofthat reading experience, that encyclopedic reading experience, I rooted around for another challenge, J R, however, sat on the shelf for a while longer, until, in my early twenties, I elected to disregard all advice, and opened a paperback edition of J R and began. And why exactly?

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