3.5
Frolic of His Own
ByPublisher Description
An aspiring author’s lawsuit raises questions about family, inheritance, and the vagaries of the American legal system in this National Book Award–winning courtroom satire.
Oscar Crease, part-time history professor and aspiring playwright, penned Once at Antietam, his magnum opus fictionalizing his grandfather’s experiences during the Civil War. Despite his high hopes and sending copies of the play to everyone he could think of, Oscar failed to get it staged. But then a movie with the same title and other striking similarities comes out. Convinced they plagiarized his work, Oscar decides to sue the studio.
His hunger for recognition and justice is all-consuming, even as his financially dependent half-sister and her husband’s lives get caught in the crossfire. As Oscar’s lawsuit progresses at a painfully slow, bureaucratic pace, legal documents and transcripts are interspersed throughout the narrative, highlighting the exploitation present in both the legal system and Hollywood machine—as well as Oscar’s determination to win despite the rising cost.
Oscar Crease, part-time history professor and aspiring playwright, penned Once at Antietam, his magnum opus fictionalizing his grandfather’s experiences during the Civil War. Despite his high hopes and sending copies of the play to everyone he could think of, Oscar failed to get it staged. But then a movie with the same title and other striking similarities comes out. Convinced they plagiarized his work, Oscar decides to sue the studio.
His hunger for recognition and justice is all-consuming, even as his financially dependent half-sister and her husband’s lives get caught in the crossfire. As Oscar’s lawsuit progresses at a painfully slow, bureaucratic pace, legal documents and transcripts are interspersed throughout the narrative, highlighting the exploitation present in both the legal system and Hollywood machine—as well as Oscar’s determination to win despite the rising cost.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesFrolic of His Own Reviews
3.5
“A novel skewering the law profession on the surface, that delves into human existence. The frantically paced dialogue resembles the court records and newspaper articles that are often quoted in the story. I found it to be laugh-out-loud funny in many places. A sue-happy, money hungry culture is prodded from a middle or upper class perspective. Sexism, detachment and narcissism are all a part of the characters lives, and they are very funny. At first dense and difficult to follow, I adapted to Gaddis’s style and found it to be an amazing read.”
“We don’t usually think of literary fiction as a realm of slapstick and hijinks. Yet, A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis is a novel full of silly humor that would feel more at home on a mid-1990s sitcom than in the staid atmosphere of a college lecture hall or academic conference.
A Frolic of His Own follows the bumbling Oscar Crease, the hapless son of a famous judge, who has recently been injured in an auto accident where he was both the driver and only victim. With his stepsister Christina, Oscar spends much of the rest of the novel trying - and failing - to navigate the American legal system in order to sue various parties that the believes have wronged him. The novel is packed with situational humor as well as slapstick and silly names (the director Constantine Kiester is a highlight). It’s a fast read that with rapid dialogue similar to an episode of Seinfeld or 30 Rock.
I had a lot of fun with A Frolic of His Own and I think most Gaddis fans will feel the same. This book may be a bit of a challenge for non-US readers, since much of the humor is around American law and the penetration of legal language and thinking into everyday life. It’s also very talky and has pretty much no plot. But if you enjoy witty humor, well-developed characters, and a satirical look at the US at the peak of its opulence and self-obsession, A Frolic of His Own may be the book for you.”“really gets in there, and shows us the absurd fabric of the american judicial system. everything’s fucked, we are all fucked. hell yeah! And yeehaw!”
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