Reading order
Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Rush for Second Place | 2002 | William Gaddis | Buy |
| 2 | Agapē Agape | 2002 | William Gaddis | Buy |
William Gaddis’s two 2002 collections were both published posthumously or near the end of his life. The Rush for Second Place gathers essays, speeches, and occasional prose that Gaddis produced across his career alongside his major novels. The collection offers a view of Gaddis as a cultural critic and public intellectual, covering topics including the relationship between art and commerce in America, the nature of literary fame, and his own experiences as a writer who achieved critical recognition without popular success.
Agape Agape, published the same year, is a more formally adventurous work, a single-voice prose monologue in which an elderly narrator ruminates on the mechanisation of art, the history of the player piano, and his own failing health. The work draws on decades of research that Gaddis conducted for what became his non-fiction treatment of the player piano’s cultural history, and it stands as his final fictional statement. The title’s double meaning, referencing both the Greek word for spiritual love and the English word for an open mouth, reflects the book’s central preoccupations.
Both volumes are best approached by readers already familiar with Gaddis’s four major novels, as they assume knowledge of his preoccupations and develop themes that run through his fiction. The Rush for Second Place is a good entry point for readers interested in Gaddis’s views on literature and culture.