William Gaddis: J R

— Fine yes! now…

— I mean until a performer hears what I hear and can make other people hear what he hears it’s just trash isn’t it Mister Eigen, it’s just trash like everything in this place everything you and Mister Gibbs and Mister Schramm all of you saw here it’s just trash!

— Listen will you, God damn it will you just go do what you have to and…

— That’s what I’m doing yes! Yes and, tell Mister Gibbs…

— I’ll tell him…! he bent with a twinge to lift Wise Potato Chips Hoppin’ With Flavor! to the tub, stood there staring inside before he tied and then closed another box flap on the marionette in a tangle of strings, a laceless red sneaker, an arm lofting a bugle, legless sheep and the Virgin cropped in wild surmise muttering — bastards, young bastards… reached for the tape, turned for the phone — God damn it, hello? Yes wait a minute… and dropped it dangling on 24-One Pint Mazola New Improved. — Yes…?

— Immigration, is this…

— She’s right in there… he pressed back against Mazola New Improved for the brisk passage of serge.

— finally got you boy I mean holy shit where did you…

— Eigen?

— What? Yes what…

— Dumor Delivery, you the party called for a pickup?

— Finally got here yes, look…

— Holy, wait a minute buddy I can’t take all this in my…

— Look I’m not buddy I’m not a party nobody asked you to! Just these boxes here and this pile on the tub they go to East Sixty-fourth Street here, care of Schramm here’s the address on the top one I’ll meet you down there wait, wait hand me that folder, I’m not going to lose it now… and he pulled aside 500 Novelty Rolls 1-Ply White for the constraint of nylon passing with the taut scorn of eyes gone under a fall of black hair, of serge to the floor crushing matchbooks, gray squares of film in perforated sequence, glass squares of stripes in flight.

— ca’s all about like what we have to protect and how we’re always going around helping everybody out and how they should do everything like us and all you know? but I mean would you ever think he would of actually wrote to me himself hey…?

— Mind if I take some matches buddy? I’m…

— Take one take a thousand, Christ. Do you need toilet paper too?

— Now wait a…

— Look just do what you’re paid for will you? God damn it can’t, why can’t people just shut up and do what they’re paid for! I’ll meet you down there.

— for all these here letters and offers I been getting because I mean like remember this here book that time where they wanted me to write about success and like free enterprise and all hey? And like remember where I read you on the train that time where there was this big groundswill about leading this here parade and entering public life and all? So I mean listen I got this neat idea hey, you listening? Hey? You listening…?

WILLIAM GADDIS (1922–98) stands among the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. The winner of two National Book Awards (for J R [1976] and A Frolic of His Own [1995]), as well as a MacArthur Genius Award, a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he wrote five novels during his lifetime, including Carpenter’s Gothic (1985), Agapē Agape (published posthumously in 2002), and his early masterpiece The Recognitions (1955). He is loved and admired for his stylistic innovations, his unforgettable characters, his pervasive humor, and the breadth of his intellect and vision.