Abstract

Reading the Riot Act
Moore, Steven | April 25, 1994 issue

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The article presents information on the book "A Frolic of His Own," by William Gaddis. The book is both cutting-edge, state of the art fiction and a throw-back to the great moral novels of Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens. That it can be both is just one of the many balancing acts it performs. It is bleak and pessimistic while howlingly funny, it is a deeply serious exploration of such lofty themes as justice and morality but is paced like a screwball comedy; it is avant-garde in its fictional techniques but traditional in conception and in the reading pleasures it offers. it is a damning indictment of the United States, Christianity and the legal system, but also a playful frolic of Gaddis's own.

See Also:

FROLIC of His Own, A (Book); GADDIS, William, 1922-1998; BOOKS; COMEDY; LITERATURE; UNITED States
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