Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System

In 2002, following the posthumous publication of William Gaddis’ collected nonfiction, his final novel, and Jonathan Franzen’s lengthy attack on him in
The New Yorker , a number of partisan articles appeared in support of Gaddis’ legacy. In a review in
The London Review of Books , critic Hal Foster suggested a reason for disparate responses to Gaddis’ reputation: Gaddis’ unique hybridity, his ability to
write in the gap between two dispensations,
between science and literature, theory and narrative, and
different orders of linguistic imagination.
Gaddis (1922-1998) is often cited as the link between literary modernism and postmodernism in the United States. His novels -
The Recognitions ,
JR ,
Carpenter’s Gothic , and
A Frolic of His Own
- are notable in the ways that they often restrict themselves to the language and communication systems of the worlds he portrays. Issues of corporate finance, the American legal system, economics, simulation and authenticity, bureaucracy, transportation, and mass communication permeate his narratives in subject, setting, and method. The essays address subjects as diverse as cybernetics, the law, media theory, race and class, music, and the perils and benefits of globalization. The collection also contains an unpublished interview with Gaddis from just after the publication of
JR
and an essay on the Gaddis archive, newly opened at Washington University in St. Louis.