GADDIS, William. J R. London: Jonathan Cape. 1975. Thick 8vo. First British edition, first printing. Publisher’s bright red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket by Janet Halverson who also designed the American first published one year prior. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The red topstain vibrant, with a few minor marks to textblock bottom edge. The contents clean and fine throughout without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket price-clipped, but otherwise complete, just a trifle bumped at extremities but presenting very sharply.
A high point in experimental postmodernism, broadly about the titular eleven-year-old who makes a fortune in the penny stocks, but more importantly, a sort of a test given to the reader from Gaddis—with no chapters, breaks, and (often painfully) no dialogue attribution, the reader is snowballed along, but remarkably and seemingly by luck begins to understand what’s going on… almost. A terrific novel, published twenty years after his imperious The Recognitions. This first British edition significantly scarcer than its US counterpart.
GADDIS, William. J R. London: Jonathan Cape. 1975. Thick 8vo. First British edition, first printing. Publisher’s bright red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dust jacket by Janet Halverson who also designed the American first published one year prior. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and square. The red topstain vibrant, with a few minor marks to textblock bottom edge. The contents clean and fine throughout without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket price-clipped, but otherwise complete, just a trifle bumped at extremities but presenting very sharply.
A high point in experimental postmodernism, broadly about the titular eleven-year-old who makes a fortune in the penny stocks, but more importantly, a sort of a test given to the reader from Gaddis—with no chapters, breaks, and (often painfully) no dialogue attribution, the reader is snowballed along, but remarkably and seemingly by luck begins to understand what’s going on… almost. A terrific novel, published twenty years after his imperious The Recognitions. This first British edition significantly scarcer than its US counterpart.
