A Frolic of His Own

Summary

Oscar Crease, a self-important playwright, is simultaneously suing a Hollywood studio for stealing his Civil War drama and being sued himself after his car runs him over, while a chorus of family members, lawyers, and judges talks past one another. Gaddis builds the novel almost entirely from unattributed dialogue and legal documents, turning American litigiousness into a vast, comic verbal weather system. The book is a bravura satire of authorship, ownership, and language as commodity.