JR

By: William Gaddis

Narrated by: Nick Sullivan

Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity training, JR captures the listener in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, and stumble through our words - through our lives - while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes JR the extraordinary novel that it is.

©1975 William Gaddis (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Must-listen for any Postmodern Aficionado

Incredible. Alternately mind-numbing and out-loud laugh-provoking. Masterfully written and performed. THE American satire. Truly meant for audiobook.

Stellar production and reading

Stellar production and reading of a novel that could have become a nightmare listen. A novel one should attempt to relax and laugh with.

Hell of a book, hell of a reader.

I read this thirty years ago and liked it enough to read every succesessive Gaddis book. Hearing it was even better.

This is a very funny book, especially if you like giving some thought to language and speech. Gaddis was a genius; he may ask a little more of the reader than usual, but it's worth it.

A difficult story made easy

This book is a monster. I’d attempted it many times. There’s no indication of who the speaker is, and the novel is almost entirely dialogue. Brilliant performance helps sort through the characters and makes sensible a novel that’s a cross between the dinner scene in Tristram Shandy and the stateroom scene from the Marx Bros

An insightful commentary on an avaricious America.

Stocks and Bonds

If you could sum up JR in three words, what would they be?

Entertaining, Informative, Interesting

Would you recommend JR to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes, because of its entertainment value and characters.

What does Nick Sullivan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Nick Sullivan's interpretation of the characters translates into the most interesting and entertaining listen I have had in quite a while.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The Wall Street Kid Strikes!

Top class audiobook

Who was your favorite character and why?

Not JR

Any additional comments?

Gets pretty maudlin and sentimental at times. Amazed that the narrator kept their characters so consistent. There are these amazingly long dialogues that go about 15 mins longer than you'd think they could, but the content surprising doesn't wear thin

Great

Read Recognitions first. Both are narrated by the same great actor, probably the best narrator I have heard.

Great book and amazing narration

I don’t know what was better the book or the narration. What fun! Crazy, funny, sad, infuriating…a master piece.

One hour in, relentlessly dull and petty

Rarely am I unpleasantly surprised by finance and law-related books, and never to this degree. As of now, 2016, many years on from its writing, which might have seemed more fresh back then, and given my life experience, I have not heard one original idea or phrasing in a full hour's attentive listening. (The imagery of events outside the dialogue is singularly not special.) Rather than being sprightly and enlightening, or surprising to my ears in any manner, or eliciting even one moment's smile, this prose struck me as leaden.
If I had wanted to listen to characters who were tritely epitomizing, while suffocatingly mired in, their own petty frustrations and smallness of mind, I would have opted for a (for me) pointless "normie" life myself. I have emphatically not, and this feels like having my nose rubbed in it. Perhaps I am unconsciously "postmodern" to the point where this seems ploddingly remedial. Not only would I not listen to this for free, I would have to be paid mightily to expend my precious earth time on another moment of this. The audio sample was listenable and hinted at some reasonable satire. The dialogue (and its performance) does evince some nice effort by the participants, "A" for effort here, the narrator's work particularly is solid, but altogether this package is most redolent to me of the worst dinner theater I have ever suffered through. Sorry, all you who can see more in this than I can. It seems you are many. It could be my blind spot alone. Good luck!

Gaddis almost ruined by a narrator that doesn't understand the concept of implied inflection

See title. One of the most beautiful and emotionally intricate books ever written, being read by a guy with the emotional diversity of a bread loaf.