A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis
"A Frolic of His Own" is a novel by William Gaddis that explores the complex interplay between justice and the law through the life of college professor Oscar Crease. The narrative begins with Oscar in a hospital after a bizarre accident involving his own car, setting the tone for a story filled with legal absurdities and dark humor. The title refers to a legal concept where a worker causes harm to themselves while acting outside the bounds of their contract, which parallels Oscar's chaotic life and his pursuit of litigation against a car company and a film that he claims plagiarized his play.
The novel delves into themes of familial dysfunction as Oscar navigates relationships with his girlfriend, Lily, and his sister, Christina, while dealing with the legacy of their father, a controversial judge. Gaddis employs a unique narrative style, with much of the action occurring offstage and a plethora of documents—such as legal transcripts and screenplays—serving as a satirical critique of language and the legal system. The humor often arises from the clash between dialogue and these written texts, highlighting the absurdity of legal proceedings.
As the story unfolds, Oscar's reliance on lawsuits for financial stability reflects broader societal critiques of the law's tendency to favor the self-important. Despite a legal victory that seems to reconcile him with his father, the outcome proves hollow, leaving the characters in a state of financial ruin and emotional disarray. The novel ultimately portrays a bleak view of justice, suggesting that the law, while structured, often leads to dehumanizing outcomes and a fruitless pursuit of true justice.
On this Page
A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1994
Type of work: Novel
The Work
This novel is set thematically by the opening line, “Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.” Justice is conceptual and as an abstract ideal can be perfect, while law is about language and is limited, ambiguous, bound by context. The ideal is often invoked, while the practical application is used and abused by the greedy and self-important. The novel’s title itself is a legal term, referring to a contracted worker who does something not specified in his contract and in doing so injures himself: The example used is of someone blinding himself by shooting paper clips with rubber bands at the office.
College professor Oscar Crease’s life seems to be a constant frolic of his own: Readers first meet him in the hospital, having run himself over when he hot-wired his own car. He intends to sue the car company, Sosumi, and is in the middle of another lawsuit: Oscar claims that a vulgar, best-selling film plagiarized his play about the Civil War (based on Gaddis’s own unpublished play). Returning to the deteriorating house where he grew up and continues to live, Oscar is cared for by his current girlfriend, Lily, and his sister Christina, who is suffering a strained relationship with her husband, Harry. As in other Gaddis novels, a good deal of action occurs offstage and certain characters never appear but loom heavily over those readers come to know. Oscar and Christina must deal with their father, a controversial judge whose ruling on a case involving a dog caught in an abstract steel statue has stirred a frenzy in the local community.
As lawsuits proliferate, so do documents—newspapers, transcripts, screenplays, legal rulings—all of which are parodied by Gaddis for their idiosyncratic use of language. If the flow of dialogue in a Gaddis novel is meant to reflect the thought processes of human beings, then the written documents are more insidious for being more consciously crafted and thus manipulated in unusual ways. Humor is mined when dialogue and the written word clash, and Gaddis infuses a great deal of aesthetic criticism and allusions into the documents that litter the novel: Judges make elaborate references to literature, while lawyers debate philosophical issues—all, it seems, in the service of the law, all mere fodder to the dehumanizing interaction of frivolous legal arguments.
Freed from justice, the law in A Frolic of His Own swings back and forth: Rulings are held in the balance, decided in favor of one side, reversed. Fortunes also swing in more literal fashion as the Creases, apparently affluent, are beset by bills that they cannot pay, with Oscar counting on lawsuits ruling in his favor for future income. The familial and legal dysfunctions unite gracefully when Oscar wins his suit against the film: The decision in his favor seems to have been molded by his estranged father, who dies soon afterward but has at least made this strange rapprochement with his son. It quickly becomes a Pyrrhic victory, however, as the producers claim that no actual profits have been made, while the estate that Justice Crease leaves behind for his children is little else but the expensive, deteriorating house. By the end, Harry is also dead (his life insurance paid to his law firm), and the Crease orphans are broke. The novel closes with Oscar tickling Christina until she cannot breathe, both of them reduced to a powerless infantilism.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. William Gaddis: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
Comnes, Gregory. The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Novels of William Gaddis. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.
Johnston, John. Carnival of Repetition: Gaddis’s “The Recognitions” and Postmodern Theory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
Knight, Christopher J. Hints and Guesses: William Gaddis’s Fiction of Longing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Kuehl, John, and Steven Moore, eds. In Recognition of William Gaddis. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1984.
Moore, Steven. A Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions.” Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
Moore, Steven. William Gaddis. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Wolfe, Peter. A Vision of His Own: The Mind and Art of William Gaddis. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.