(2002) is a posthumously-published novella on the theme of mechanization in the arts, a subject dear to Gaddis's heart and about which he collected data his whole life. He originally planned a non-fiction study but when he discovered how seriously ill he was, he wrote the piece as fiction. The novella is a tirade about the debasement of culture by a nameless and very ill narrator who is surrounded by a product of a lifetime's research into the topic. His skin is paper-thin by the drugs he must take, just as his room is piled high with the papers that make up his research; papers that will never be collated and turned into a finished piece of work. Beckett-like, the narrator carries on his work in the face of death, energized, it almost seems, by anger alone. This is Gaddis's…

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Citation: Dempsey, Peter. "Agape, Agape". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 December 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10821, accessed 23 November 2024.]