Name: Agapē Agape
ISBN: 9780142437636

William Gaddis

A dying man lies in bed thinking about how he will write a book and grumbling about the pending fall of civilization, in the final novel by the late, National Book Award-winning author of A Frolic of His Own. Reprint.

Agapē Agape

Donald

When I described this book to my wife ("a dying man rants about player pianos in a single 96-page long paragraph"), she rolled her eyes and said that I was the only person alive who would want to read such a thing. Not that far from the truth.

This is the locus classicus of unhinged educated whinges. Every author should have at least one Thomas Bernhard impression in their corpus.

But ultimately, the reason Agapē Agape is a good book is that it is a such an intense description of dying.