SOURCE: "Down by Law," in The New Republic, Vol. 210, No. 6, February 7, 1994, pp. 27-30.

[Birkerts is an American critic and educator. In the following review, he discusses the plot and structure of A Frolic of His Own, noting the volume's relationship to Gaddis's previous works.]

In recent years we hear William Gaddis spoken of in tones of breathless adoration—the outlaw late modernist, the father-figure to a generation of American novelists, the overcoat from which Pynchon, Gass and others emerged—or not at all. It is a difficult fate for the working novelist, who has not had the chance to be discussed and evaluated by readers alongside the critics. The reason is simple, and it somewhat indicts us as a culture: Gaddis is very difficult to read. In his second novel J. R., which followed the more traditionally difficult The Recognitions (1955) by two decades, he announced a prose style...