J R
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| J R | |
| Author | William Gaddis |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Publication date | 1975 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 726 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-14-018707-3 (paperback edition) |
J R is a novel by William Gaddis. Published in 1975 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., J R was Gaddis's second novel and received the National Book Award in 1976.
J R tells the story of the eponymous 11-year-old boy who obscures his identity through payphone calls and postal money orders in order to parlay penny stock holdings into a fortune on paper. The novel broadly satirizes American financial markets.
The novel is told almost entirely in dialogue, and there is sometimes little indication (other than conversational context) of which character is speaking. There are also no chapters, with transitions between scenes occurring by way of shifts in focalization: for example, a character who is in a meeting may leave the meeting, get in his car, and drive off, passing, as he does so, another character, who becomes the subject of the next scene without any break in the continuity of the narration (though the novel is written in a discontinuous or fragmentary tone).
Another important character in this novel is Mr Bast, J.R.'s music teacher. Bast is a young composer employed casually by the school. Bast is drawn into assisting J.R. and becomes a critical link for the development of the business empire J.R. assembles. When Bast starts at the school his ambition is to write an opera. As the novel develops he is increasingly burdened by the business accumulations J.R. makes and his musical ambitions are sidelined. Bast's ambitions slide from opera to symphony, then to sonata and by the end of the novel he aspires to compose a suite. The responsiblities that come from being involved with the childish shenanigins of corporate takeovers and asset stripping has had a corrosive effect on Bast's capacity to create art.
Gaddis received funding toward completion of the novel from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Excerpts were originally published in The Dutton Review, Antaeus, and Harper's magazine.
