SOURCE: "So Sue Me," in London Review of Books, Vol. 16, No. 9, May 12, 1994, pp. 20-1.

[Wood is an English-born critic, screenwriter, and educator. In the following review, he examines Gaddis's use of dialogue, wordplay, and humor in A Frolic of His Own.]

It's hard to think of a writer who publishes a book every ten or twenty years as garrulous, or of a person who produces his fourth novel at the age of 72 as prolific; but we need some such terms if we are to begin to describe the extraordinary work of William Gaddis, born 1922, the author of The Recognitions (1955), JR (1975), Carpenter's Gothic (1985) and now A Frolic of His Own.

Everyone talks in these novels, all the time and at length. They don't listen, or they barely listen; or they listen too late, so that what they finally hear confounds everything they have been saying. Their style, at least...