Er weiß, dass er bald sterben wird. Doch noch auf dem Krankenbett kreisen die Gedanken eines Schriftstellers unablässig um das Buch, das er noch zu vollenden hoffte: ein Werk über die Mechanisierung und den Niedergang der Kunst in unserer Zeit. Schwankend zwischen Wut und Resignation geht er mit einer Welt ins Gericht, die wenig Sinn für künstlerische Großtaten hat. Zugleich gerät ihm sein Buch zu einer illusionslosen Rückschau auf das eigene Leben und Werk.

Zusatztext "An exalted! paranoid outcry! a last wounded proclamation of the idea of the sacred rootedness of true art." ( The New York Times Book Review ) "Gaddis's final novel is perhaps his most poignant." ( Los Angeles Times) Informationen zum Autor William Gaddis; Introduction by Sven Birkerts; Afterword by Joseph Tabbi Klappentext William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts, Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction. Zusammenfassung William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime! immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction! a subtle! concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts! told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998! he distilled the whole mass into a fiction! a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts! Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction. ...

"An exalted, paranoid outcry, a last wounded proclamation of the idea of the sacred rootedness of true art." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Gaddis's final novel is perhaps his most poignant." (*Los Angeles Times)

• Autorentext

  William Gaddis; Introduction by Sven Birkerts; Afterword by Joseph Tabbi

  Klappentext

  William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts, Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.