Disaster capitalism in William Gaddis' "J R."
"Has it ever occurred to any of you that this is all simply one grand misunderstanding?
Since you're not here to learn anything,
but to be taught so
you can pass these tests, knowledge has
to be organized so it can be taught and
it has to be reduced to information so it
can be organized. Do you follow that? In
other words, this leads you to assume
that organization is an inherent
property of the knowledge itself and
that disorder and chaos are simply
irrelevant forces that threaten it from the outside.
In fact, it's exactly the
opposite.
Order is simply a thin, perilous
condition we try to impose on
the basic reality of chaos.
Join us today as we
examine the insanity of capitalism run
amok in William Gaddis' satirical
novel "J R."
I'm your host, Bob.
Now please, sit back
and enjoy today's edition of Lit Tips.
In 1975 William Gaddis published what was
only his second novel in 20 years: "J R."
Gaddis, an obscure author so underread
that one might even hesitate to label
him a cult figure, had been chiseling
away at the novel for years.
When it was at last delivered, it received rave
reviews from a small but devoted group
of acolytes and, stunningly, went on to
win the National Book Award for fiction.
After this unexpected success, Gaddis'
output became comparably more prolific,
but he still only completed three more
novels before his death in 1998.
Gaddis' work as a whole still lingers,
not forgotten but still overlooked,
in the corners of the American literary
canon. Though all of his books are dense
and asked a fair amount of the reader, "J R"
is arguably his most accessible.
It tells the story of an enterprising 11 year old
boy, J R Vansant.
J R comes from destitute circumstances
and is enamored with the concept of free enterprise.
Starting a business is his ticket to
riches and success, and the means by
which he acquires them aren't of any
concern.
Through manipulation, coincidence, and sheer dumb luck,
he parlays investments in over-the-phone penny stocks
into an international
conglomeration which exists,
and this key, entirely on paper.
His actions have
profound effects on the lives of
everybody he comes in contact with from
his down-on-his-luck music teacher, Edward Bast
to the Wall Street rubes who
happily agree to go into business with
a kid who has convincingly disguised his voice to them during telephone calls.
J R inadvertently
disrupts thousands of lives and even
destroys a small town in the name of
putting his firm, J R Corp., on the map.
"J R" is one of the most pointed satires
the American Dream ever constructed.
Its influence, intentionally or not, can be
traced directly to films like
"The Wolf of Wall Street" and "The Big Short."
In 1975, the idea of a Twainian youth falling upwards into control
of a vast corporate
empire was funny enough
because of its sheer absurdity.
Today, while it's just as
easy to laugh at the debauched antics of
say, Jordan Belfort, who has more than a
little in common with J R, there exists
an undercurrent of existential concern
for how a system that encourages and
celebrates such a reckless behavior
exists in the first place.
Gaddis sought to turn the American
Dream inside out.
Were he writing "J R" today,
he'd have to ramp the absurdity up considerably to set it apart from the
actualities that pervade the world of modern finance.
"J R" is a novel that, even
with its sprawling scope and huge cast of characters,
is deeply connected to the
personal experiences of Gaddis himself.
Gaddis arrived on the literary scene in
1955 with "The Recognitions."
That novel, boiled down to its simplest components,
is a retelling of "Faust."
Its protagonist is a troubled, disillusioned artist who
forges Renaissance era paintings for the wealthy
at the cost of not being able to
develop a true artistic voice of his own.
If the primary theme linking Gaddis'
first two novels is the endless war
fought between art and capital, "The
Recognitions" immerses itself more in the
art world while "J R" is Gaddis' scathing
indictment of meddling business interests.
Gaddis was never fully
immersed in, but was an affiliate of, The Beats.
If you have your Duluoz Legend
checklist handy,
he appeared as Harold Sand in "The
Subterraneans."
Gaddis' portrayal of the scene isn't particularly flattering.
His ire isn't directed at central figures like Kerouac and Burroughs,
but at the hangers-on and posers who are
quick to immerse themselves in its
bohemian lifestyle because it seemed
like the cool thing to do.
Following the
failure of his long labored-over debut,
Gaddis was forced to come to terms with
the fact that for the time being he was
not going to be able to live off of his
fiction writing.
Instead he found employment in various other industries.
He worked in public relations for
pharmaceutical giant Pfizer
International before moving on to
writing documentary films for the U.S. military.
When the country became embroiled in the
Vietnam War,
Gaddis quit and became a freelancer
primarily writing copy for in-house
industrial films and speeches for
Eastman Kodak.
In the late 1960s, he began working on
what would become "J R." To help
create the sense of total immersion in
the chaos that is Wall Street,
Gaddis employed a unique prose style
that lends "J R" an inimitable charm: the
novel consists of about 99% spoken
dialogue all written in a manner that
captures the tics and quirks of
real life speech; characters cut each
other off mid-sentence, stumble over
their words, and contradict themselves
from one sentence to the next.
Once the reader understands the rhythm of
Gaddis' approach, it becomes clear that
the novel's themes and its style are
inseparable.
Scenes devolve more often than not into
Coen Brothers style messes
of inanities and tangents and only
heighten the inherent ridiculousness
of "J R's" premise. An example:
"Mr. Duncan there's nobody-"
"Do you want to split a beer?
Split a beer with me will ya?"
"Well well alright but-"
"Never in the service were
you Bast?"
"No I nev-"
"14 years it took me to get out of the wallpaper business.
The first pay day I was drafted down there
at Dick's and I started a 10 cent crap
game. Son of a bitches came racing at
a dollar, five dollars, ten. I got out and
started another ten cent crap game. Same thing
happened, kept happening until I was
standing there alone. Crap games going on
and on all around me. I started them all.
How do you like that? I said how do you like that?"
If there's any character who
may be seen as an avatar for Gaddis himself, it's Bast.
Fired from his music
teaching job at the beginning of the
novel for daring to call out the
school's curriculum, he soon finds
himself pulled into J R's machinations.
The boy convinces Bast to stand in
for him during in-person meetings with
clients
were simply disguising his voice won't suffice.
As the situation spirals
out of control,
it is Bast who is forced to bear the
brunt of the consequences of J R's actions.
All the while he nurtures a
dream of composing an opera, the
masterpiece that will finally earn him
the artistic acknowledgment he deserves.
As the novel proceeds, he becomes
progressively more disillusioned.
His operatic ambitions are adjusted to a
desire to compose a more achievable
symphony, then a sonata, until finally at
the close of the novel his great dream
is to complete a solo piece for the cello.
The dissolution suffered by Bast
matches what Gaddis must have
experienced in the decades between
publishing "The Recognitions" and "J R."
But rather than succumbing to despair
and bitterness,
Gaddis channels his frustration into the
latter novel, which in addition to Wall
Street takes aims at the frivolities
of the publishing industry.
Lee Konstantinov, writing for the "Los Angeles Review of Books,"
sums up the situation thus:
"Both publishing and Wall Street,
Gaddis' novel suggests, are paper
empires, enterprises heinously,
hilariously bad at what they do and bad
in similar ways. Both have subordinated
their alleged functions, rationally
allocating capital, optimally connecting
readers and writers, to reckless
speculation.
Conmen and gamblers rise while the sensible and the serious are crushed.
If Gaddis' indictment is right,
his novels may therefore be
paradoxically doomed to be ignored,
derided, and misunderstood, to fail to
find the readership they deserve not
despite but because of their integrity.
Gaddis' novel would thus be both the
great chronicler of Wall Street's
malignant rise and the victim of its triumphant ethos."
Despite the unmitigated
global disasters brought about by J R Corp.'s
transgressions, the young founder
isn't portrayed as any sort of villain.
J R represents the misguided youth of
America raised from birth to aspire to
untold heights of wealth and material
acquisition. He worships the businessmen
on Wall Street for their extravagant
lifestyles and because there isn't a
guiding moral compass for him to follow,
J R independently concludes that as long
as his dealings yield profits, any
collateral damage is negligible.
He's too young and ignorant to ever factor the
human cost into any of his decisions.
The only goal is to raise his bottom line
and it's not long before his monetary
gains become less a means of measuring
profit than simply a way of keeping
score against the competition.
That his childish disregard for ethics earns him
a fortune in record time says it all
about the
societal mechanisms that foster such rewards.
In the end he learns nothing.
The novel concludes with J R planning his next venture over the phone.
The man on the other end, preoccupied with signing
for a delivery, ignores him. J R,
oblivious, rambles on, his eyes always on
the prize with no indication he'll
recognize the error of his ways or gain
an ounce of self-awareness anytime soon.
Free enterprise, after all, doesn't take breaks.
We hope that you enjoyed this
edition of Lit Tips.
As always, hit that "Like" button if you like what we're doing,
subscribe for more videos on literature from your favorites to the plain obscure,
hit that bell if you want to be notified when videos drop,
and leave a comment with your thoughts on
this video along with suggestions for
any books or authors you would like us
to cover in future episodes.
Until next time, keep reading.
