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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 is the perfect novel for our new recession-driven world. Similar to GravityÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s Rainbow (which I wrote about earlier), this is another encyclopedic novel with dozens of characters, subplot upon subplot, quite literally overflowing with ideas, conversations, and detritus. And money. ItÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s all about money.

At the heart of this comic masterpiece is an eleven-year-old boy named J R, who, with a bit of capitalist ingenuity and the help of his music teacher Edward Bast, builds a paper fortune out of surplus goods, common stock, and an unerring ability to game the system. ItÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s a coming-of-age tale for the late-capitalist period of irrational exuberance.

Of course, things fall apart in the end. BastÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½”who dreams of becoming a composerÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½”loses his artistic mojo, and J RÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s paper empire is just that, and implodes like a house of cards. (Sound familiar?)

for the complete piece.