A Frolic of His Own Critical Essay | A Frolic of His Own

Critical Review by Steven Moore

SOURCE: "Reading the Riot Act," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 258, No. 16, April 25, 1994, pp. 569-71.

[An American critic and educator, Moore is author and editor of several works on Gaddis. In the following highly laudatory review, he discusses the experience of reading A Frolic of His Own and questions the validity of critical assessments that denigrate the novel for its ostensible "difficulties."]

The phrase "literary event" has been dulled by years of misuse by glib publicists; but no other phrase describes the appearance of a new novel by William Gaddis, one of this country's true literary giants. The review media's response to this literary event [the publication of A Frolic of His Own] has been disheartening, however, as if nothing has changed in the forty years since Gaddis's first novel, The Recognitions, was panned. Then as now, the main charge is "difficulty," yet only in literature...
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