Agape Agape - Opening

No but you see I've got to explain all this because I don't, we don't know how much time there is left and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, why I've brought in this whole pile of books notes pages clippings and God knows what, get it all sorted and organized when I get this property divided up and the business and worries that go with it while they keep me here to be cut up and scraped and stapled cut up again my damn leg look at i, layered with staples like that old suit of Japanese armour in the dining hall feel like I'm being dismantled piece by piece, houses, cottages, stables orchards and all the damn decisions and distractions

VIKING

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published in 2002 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Copyright the Estate of William Gaddis, 2002

Afterword copyright Joseph Tabbi, 2002

All rights reserved

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Copyright 1980 by Thelma

D. Toole. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

Excerpts from Concrete by Thomas Bernhard, translated by David McLintock, Alfred A. Knopf,

1984, and The Loser by Thomas Bernhard, translated by Jack Dawson,

Knopf, 1991.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirley coincidental.

CIP data available

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Garamond 3 with Schneidler Initials

Designed by Carla Bolte

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication

may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.