William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own

Peter Dempsey (University of Sunderland)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1994

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

In a similar fashion to J R, Gaddis's last novel published in his lifetime, A Frolic of His Own (1994) announces its theme with its first word, but then develops it in the rest of its first line: “Justice? – you get justice in the next world, in this world, you have the law”. The novel follows a series of litigations through the courts and it is the discrepancy between the ideal of justice and the reality of the law that is Gaddis's subject. For Gaddis, the theory of justice is a beautiful, ordered system we have constructed to ward off or minimise the chaos and contingency of existence. The practice of law however, is for him “a carnival of disorder”, a self-sustaining system of legalese and a conspiracy against …

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436 words

Citation: Dempsey, Peter. "A Frolic of His Own". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 December 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7126, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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