In Gaddis' as well as Heller's and Pynchon's novels there is always apparent an ominous vertical structure of society, which finally appears to leave the individual completely at the mercy of its manipulative powers and with no human in control. But Gaddis, it seems, is much more of a Romantic than either Heller or Pynchon: there is individual triumph, and the inherent possibility of it, though necessarily of a very localized nature. Wyatt Gwyon in The Recognitions does reject finally the superficial and impersonal determinants of society, just as Edward Bast in JR rejects J R—the sixth grader who becomes a corporation tycoon—and his tyrannical financial manipulations; Bast goes off to write his opera unmindful of his material well-being. It is as though Gaddis shows us the primacy of "counterforce," whereas Pynchon wants to establish an inevitable transformation of "counterforce" into "Counterforce" into "They."

Moreover, Gaddis believes, like William James, that the world is essentially chaotic and furthermore that there is no ontological hierarchy. He sees that the multiple imposition of formal structures upon the chaos results finally in chaos, too. (pp. 153-54)

The tension which underlies Gaddis' work can be seen as one created by the antithetical perceptions of human existence by the individual and by Society. The individual is aware of his body and his bodily needs: Edward Bast tells the students, "here's [a letter Mozart] wrote to a girl cousin about the time he was writing his Paris symphony he says, he apologizes to her for not writing and he says "Do you think I'm dead? Don't believe it, I implore you. For believing and shitting are two very different things." Society, operating as it does in an abstract and inhuman realm, is interested in individuals in only a formal manner. Society in our time has tended toward technological efficiency, in the course of which it has demanded that we ourselves become technologically efficient—that we be predictable, that we be consistent…. It is within [the] framework of the institutionalization of inhumanism that Gaddis creates his fiction. He wants to place the onus of our inhumanness squarely on the shoulders of Society, specifically "masculine" society.

Gaddis in both The Recognitions and JR sees the rejection of physicality and the repression of physical needs as a culturally induced situation. In his first novel he saw the dynamics as inherent in New England Calvinism and the Pauline doctrine as enunciated in Galatians 5.24: "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." The world of New York and Paris, of business and jurisprudence, is seen as the direct result of this; it is the world prophesized by God through "the Greek Clement: I am come to destory the work of the woman, that is, concupiscence, whose works are generation and death." Thus The Recognitions is a sterile and impersonal world of "poses become life." Fortunately there is a more balanced assortment of characters in JR—a result, I believe, of the more "restricted" vision of the book. (pp. 154-55)

In JR … we see the demands of society that bodily passion and desire be rejected; only this time rather than developing these demands in terms of the metaphysical and religious tenets of the American experience, Gaddis simply drops us into the American educational system, a system operating within a technological imperative to teach skills, viewing human beings as little machines. The running look at J R Vansant's school provides the backdrop for the future structure which will result from the programmatic demands of business and industry for persons who are "trained" and "taught" the proper answers, not how to think. (p. 155)

Coach Vogel … is one of the prize teachers in the school; he has come out to this Long Island institution from New York City. Asked to create a create a sex-education film for the students, the future inventor of the Frigi-Com and Teletravel processes for a subsidiary of J R Corp. comes up with a show befitting the "man: the incredible machine" metaphor. (pp. 156-57)

J R, the sixth-grade mastermind of J R Corp., is a product of this environment; he is himself as dehumanized and mechanical as the various images that barrage him throughout the day at school—it doesn't seem illogical to him that the museum diaramas of Eskimo life should have "stuffed Eskimos." Having no appreciation of even the forms he is seeking out and copying in order to succeed in the American Way, it is not surprising that he has no appreciation for nature or music (or literature or painting). (p. 157)

Edward Bast … is never really interested in playing the game in the first place; he gets drawn in by a seemingly innocuous meeting he has for J R with the stock broker Mister Crawley…. Bast just floats around; unable to decide what to do next, he does what J R arranges for him. (pp. 158-59)

In a sense, their relationship epitomizes the numerous relationships throughout the book, for those whose only satisfaction is playing the game and following the rules are supported by those who lower themselves to their level and support the game through the suppression of their own creative efforts and desires. The novel actually ends on a note of rejection by some of the characters, such as Edward Bast, Jack Gibbs and Thomas Eigen, of the meaningless games being played by the others. (pp. 159-60)

The various formalizations of human activity which society imposes on the individual rest upon language. The areas of human activity such as school administration or the stock market perpetuate themselves by creating discourse which not only establishes the rules for moving within the game, but which finally becomes itself the object for manipulation. The most important individuals in the company structure are the lawyers and the public relations personnel because they know how to use language most abstractly and, hence, most meaninglessly. Every statement and every transaction coming out of J R Corp. offices must go through the hands of the company lawyer, Piscator.

The resulting disembodiment of language from meaning—induced especially by advertising—which appears to be the "absolute" result of the swelling discourses, was a central concern for Gaddis in The Recognitions. Though the constant mimicry and repetition of each other's speech may have certain prescriptive foundations in the Calvinist deprecation of originality as articulated by Aunt May, there is a general atmosphere of meaninglessness which plagues both Otto the playwright and Esme the poet. Otto is reduced to writing his play by putting together the scraps of conversation he collects from those around him; whereas Esme retreats to "intuition," using words for their sound and shape only—"What does it mean. It just is," she tells Otto about her using "effluvium" in a poem.

The dialogues at the parties and on the Paris sidewalk throughout The Recognitions are reduced to images of what Piaget has termed "collective monologue." There is no desire to communicate with one another, rather the individuals just seek to be part of the cacaphony, thereby affirming their own existence. Moreover, the general problem of the meaninglessness of language is not restricted to the characters themselves; due to Gaddis' own existence in such a community of discourse, and given his penchant for philosophizing, The Recognitions itself-became a search on the part of the author/narrator for meaning and significance and answers to meaningless questions.

Gaddis in seeking, or in seeking to expose, the symbolic nature of words and images in the text itself, was caught up in a necessarily frustrating search through all realms of discourse. Like Melville's futile search for the "meaning" of the whale's whiteness, Gaddis in his first novel proceeded to reduce semantics to syntax, to hide meaning behind structures. Not only the words of the text but the characters as well become merely the sum total of their possible contextual definitions; not only do the characters deny their physicality, but Gaddis' manipulations tend to deny the characters their necessary physicality. We are left, often, with caricatures and types which exist only within a general abstract framework, the novel. The characters in The Recognitions become player-piano players with no possibility of being pianists—they are simply role-players.

This is not the case for JR. Here, Gaddis has not tried to elucidate recurring images or to encompass them in a general abstract system. He allows them to simply exist in all their ambiguity and meaningfulness within the various discourses established by the characters themselves. Furthermore, the characters' discourses rather than being speculative and metaphysical are the discourse of everyday life. The characters are, for the most part, not concerned with impressing others with their knowledge of arcana or in pondering philosophical truths; they use language as "communication."

To call their speech "communication" requires some explanation. It is to a great extent like the collective monologues in The Recognitions; however, there is an underlying illusion that their speaking will have an effect upon other people, which is lacking in Gaddis' earlier novel. Whereas in Gaddis' earlier work there were few people (notably Esther) who believed that speech could somehow effect things, in JR the dialogue again and again moves with the illusion on the part of the speakers that somehow what they say will have ramifications elsewhere, that speech is communication even though it gets permuted and lost along the way. Like the man sent by the Teletravel process through the telephone lines, however, there is no guarantee that what was sent will ever be located, let alone be recovered, again. Thus language becomes tyrannical. It is only a "writer" like Jack Gibbs—or an artist like Bast—who recognizes that the discourses are all incomplete attempts to control the underlying chaos of reality. With such recognition, Gibbs is able to easily move from one language game to another; he can carry on the discourse of the classroom or of the adminstration or of the financial world with equal ease without getting sucked under and drowned in the detritus of language with its nonexistent goals and meaningless valuations. (pp. 160-62)

Yet the vast majority of the characters cannot get out of the discourses they are caught in; they cannot see how life is other than the abstract concepts controlling the discourse they have been raised in. They subjugate themselves to such non-entities as "patriotism," "the American way," "profit," and "business" without realizing that the terms only have meaning (and the game only exists) while they are repeating and utilizing them, that the terms and games are inherently vacuous.

But, what does have meaning then? Briefly stated: physical action or the possibility of it is the meaning of language. Those terms which cannot and do not signify possible action by human beings can (and do in The Recognitions) float away in abstract meaninglessness. Meaning is restored to language through its direct connection to a sensible reality, and it is this connection of the dialogue to human action and to the objects of such action which makes it meaningful, and which gives the characters such immediacy and physicality. Gaddis, for whom the meaninglessness of language was such a problem in his earlier novel, avoids the dilemma altogether by relying upon the failure of others to communicate for his own communication. Gaddis has, in JR, overcome the ambiguity of language not, as some writers would, through parody but by making such discourse the object (or constituent) of his discourse. By reposing narrative within the characters' discourses rather than trying to formalize the chaos himself, Gaddis not only avoids the semantic dilemmas which plagued him earlier but succeeds in creating a viable and intense reality of human action. (pp. 162-63)