TMR 14.4: “Who Made the Rules” [J R]
Ryan Chapman (Riots I Have Known) joins Chad and Brian to crap on Jonathan Franzen's "famous" "essay" about Gaddis, "Mr. Difficult." They also talk about the casual sexism present in so many of the male characters, the parallels and reversals connecting various scenes, just how funny and readable this book is, and the ...
>
TMR 14.3: “Stamp Out Smut” [J R]
Vince Francone made his TMR debut on this episode about one of the funniest sections of J R to date. They talk about the dirty photos, how the book isn't as challenging as its reputation indicates, the maybe incest scene, shitting in a piano, and much more. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on ...
>
TMR 14.2: “How to Make Big Profits Overseas” [J R]
First time Gaddis reader Elizabeth DeMeo from Tin House joins Chad and Brian to talk about J R's field trip to the New York Stock Exchange where his class buys a share of Diamond Cable stock. In addition to recapping this somewhat chaotic segment—just imagine twelve sixth graders loose in NYC—they talk about Gaddis's ...
>
TMR 14.1: “Money?” [J R]
Chad, Mauro Javier Cardenas (Aphasia), and NYRB publisher Edwin Frank kick off season 14 by talking about entropy, Gaddis's humor, how best to approach reading this book (fast and out of control), the little plot hints that are left to figure out, the lack of interiority in J R and how he develops characters and voice, and ...
>
TMR Season Fourteen: “J R” by William Gaddis
To celebrate the NYRB reissue of J R by William Gaddis—one of my all-time favorite books—we're going to feature it as the next title in the Two Month Review. The full schedule is below, but in short, the first live episode will be on Wednesday, December 16th at 3pm eastern (available as a podcast the next ...
>
All Over the National Book Foundation Site Today
Following up on the post about Gravity’s Rainbow, the National Book Foundation just posted a short appreciation I wrote of William Gaddis’s J R. J R is the perfect novel for our new recession-driven world. Similar to Gravity’s Rainbow (which I wrote about earlier), this is another encyclopedic novel with ...
>