Apologies for running about a week behind on the lbo-digest, but seeing that there was a query relating to Master Gaddis, I thought I'd point whomever was wondering (Max?) in the right direction.
On page 45 of JR, there is a shard ("Empedocles...the second generation of his cosmogeny"), which can be traced back to Fragment 57 of On Nature: "On it (the earth) many heads sprung up without necks and arms wandered bare and bereft of shoulders. Eyes strayed up and down in want of foreheads." Another allusion to his cosmogeny can be found on page 161 ("the dawn of the world").
I don't know if it was ever published, but Steven Moore has referred to a paper by Mark Madigan, entitled "Marx, Entropy, and Empedocles in William Gaddis?s J R," which I have yet to track down. Sounds lbo-friendly to me.
Jeff Downing
--And what about me! What do you think those nine years have been like for me? You won't give me anything though, will you Jack. That Ninety-sixth Street Tenement when you used to come up there for dinner and we had to wait for him to get his typewriter and papers off the card table so we could eat Jack he's still working on that play, he's still rewriting it and changing it and rewriting it he won't let go of it, he won't finish it because he's afraid to compete with himself, it's himself he's... --Well look Marian what, as Freud said what the hell is it you want. --Just a man who, who's happy with what he's doing. --You're not asking much are you.
JR, p.269